Orna Ross: Life Mysteries & Family Histories

Read today’s #inspirationalpoem. THERE IS HERE For WB Yeats Our hearts of old were hearts of flame that from an ancient sunlight came, through drops of mirroring joy that fell into the moon’s pale silver shell. (But here hearts cry that hearts are slaves, and toss and turn in narrow caves.) Sit where there is no pain nor death, beneath our soft, bare-breathing breath, for there is here, and here is there, so long as moon reflects sun's glare. (Sooth hearts that cry hearts are enslaved. evoke the joy their cravings crave.) Our task is to succumb, accept the mystery of death and breath. Know how pale moon reflects sun's glare: that darkest night holds both with care. (Then heart can feel how heart is saved and fly free of its thought-hewn cave.) ▪️ 🙏📖🌹❤️ ▪️ Get your #freebook of #inspirationalpoetry and find out about Orna’s #poetrymembers at: OrnaRoss.com/freepoetry ▪️ 🙏📖🌹❤️ ▪️ Image reposted with thanks from @midnight_venture ▪️▪️   #poetrylovers #poetryisnotdead #poetryislife #poetryislove #wordpower #amwritingpoetry #indiepoetry #irishpoetry #inspirationalpoetry #poetrybooks #irishpoetrylovers #poet #irishpoet #irishpoetry #poetrybooks #chapbooks (at St Leonards-on-sea) https://www.instagram.com/p/CT9ajKnojSj/?utm_medium=tumblr

Would you like a free chapbook of #inspirationalpoetry? And the chance to win my entire library of poetry books in print? Sign up on the link OrnaRoss.com/freepoetrybook to receive the free chapbook instantly. Then tell me you’ve done so in the comments, and tag five friends. If one of them signs up, you’ll both be entered in the giveaway draw for three print poetry books and ten print chapbooks, all signed by me and dedicated to you, or the person of your choice. The more of your friends who sign up, the more entries you receive. And while gathering entries, you can enjoy First Flush, which is full of poems designed to soothe and swell your creative spirit. Thoughts? (at London, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/CRBlAdQltH0/?utm_medium=tumblr

Today’s #poem is “Floating” inspired by This fab pic by @yuki.t_photography • Dark gerbera shield her eyes as she lies lipstick perfected, in her new white water dress, murmuring for your slender, searching tongue your well-traveled thighs. Whatever happens to her soon you happened then, and now she lies a half-curled hothouse frond, in a milky bath trying to float. • • (at London, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/CQyNgL7gkmL/?utm_medium=tumblr

Today’s #inspirationalpoetry is “Unfurling” • And now the wave he is watching is breaking, breaking, unfurling long ribbons of white along the shore. Last time he saw the ocean, he was twelve. Then too he almost missed it, thought it a shade of sky, the color of jeans. When he has a mind to, He can half-be that child, stooped over a scissors in his mother's sewing room, cutting the bottom rungs off a pair of old denim legs, worn and washed and worn again. But who has he become, coming out here to try to discover the moment light ends? He knows that clouds deliver rain, that seasons open and close. Why circle the bewildering waves, wondering when they emerge, what they will have become? His segment of earth is sliding toward night, lifting its asymmetrical self to the unraveling sun, a ball of yellow yarn, trailing a thread of light across a blackening horizon as the moon once again finds its face. • With thanks to my patrons, who support my poetry—and are first to receive my books and best work. 🙏 🌺 Become a patron today to receive exclusive inspirational poems and books. [Link in bio] (at Hastings, East Sussex) https://www.instagram.com/p/CQq4DU5gj6x/?utm_medium=tumblr

Today’s #indiepoetryplease #poem is “The Old Port“. • Let me tell you how I dreamed that I travelled again to the old port, and found the boats still tied together with rope and with love. The small children were still yelling in their glee as the boats rocked them, back and forth. The seagulls still skimmed in circles above my head, thirsty for food. Or soared on the updraft of the wind out over the small waves, where my life once went. And let me ask you what you think it meant. • With thanks to my patrons, who support my poetry—and are first to receive my books and best work. 🙏 🌺 Become a patron today to receive exclusive inspirational poems and books. [Link in bio] • #dreampoem #seapoem (at St Leonards Beach) https://www.instagram.com/p/CQd9b_1AzXm/?utm_medium=tumblr

Today’s #indiepoetryplease #poem is “Dark Night”. • Life said to the wanderer: wait without waiting. Kneel yourself down there, on stone-hearted stone.  Set down your hope too.  It could be mistaken. And fold up that map. It may also be wrong. Thought it be dark here beyond all believing, with no place for faith, no, just rock-hardened rock, unfasten, for now, the great weight of your seeking. It may, as you say, someday lead your return. But not even love is by you here needed.  Suffer the silence, let all rest in naught. Stay down if you can,  eyes blind and knees bleeding. All lost, all forsaken unready for thought. • With thanks to my patrons, who support my poetry—and are first to receive my books and best work. 🙏 🌺 Become a patron today to receive exclusive inspirational poems and books. [Link in bio] • #spiritualseeker #darknightofthesoul #darknight #poetrycommunity #wearepoetry #writingpoetry #readingpoetry #lovingpoetry #poetrylover #poetryisnotdead #poetryislife #poetryislove #wordpower #amwritingpoetry #indiepoetry #irishpoetry #inspirationalpoetry #poetrybooks #poet #irishpoet #irishpoetry  #poetrybooks #chapbooks  https://www.instagram.com/p/CPIkkVyAe7X/?utm_medium=tumblr

Today’s #indiepoetryplease #poem is “Whisht” • “Hold your whisht” the ancients of my country used to say, when I was young, advice we’ve now forgotten. How would it feel to hold ourselves like this, aloof and safe, in silence? To cease to speak, except from the unbegotten? To take our tooth, forever, from our lip, decline to weigh our thought, or lace it with retort, to hold the kind of quiet that lies deep beneath the shadows of the sky, the flurries of the sea, the movements of the mind? To live in self-protection from the unkind and the uncouth, so that only the unbidden flows, and then but slowly, from our mouth, with the soft swoop that unveils a truth. • • • With thanks to my patrons, who support my poetry—and are first to receive my books and best work. 🙏 🌺 Become a patron today to receive exclusive inspirational poems and books. [Link in bio] • #poetrycommunity #wearepoetry #writingpoetry #readingpoetry #lovingpoetry #poetrylover #poetryisnotdead #poetryislife #poetryislove #wordpower #amwritingpoetry #indiepoetry #irishpoetry #inspirationalpoetry #poetrybooks #poet #irishpoet #irishpoetry  #poetrybooks #chapbooks  #silence #truthseeker #mouth https://www.instagram.com/p/CPCmBCOgwIa/?utm_medium=tumblr

Today’s #indiepoetryplease #poem is Alice. The jet spurts. Alice's mother watches her girl's distilled delight in a water spout, as she turns the tap on and off, cascades of surprised giggles greeting each squirt. The jet spurts. Alice guffaws again Her mother wants to cradle her soul in her palms squeeze her body close to her chest heal the mind-wounds that haven't yet cut break the looking glass that lies in wait. The jet spurts. Watched through eyes heavy with child, Alice breaks into astonished raptures again, knowing everything her mother once knew and forgot, Alice is replete. The jet spurts. • • • With thanks to my patrons, who support my poetry—and are first to receive my books and best work. 🙏 🌺 Become a patron today to receive exclusive inspirational poems and books. [Link in bio] • #poetrycommunity #wearepoetry #writingpoetry #readingpoetry #lovingpoetry #poetrylover #poetryisnotdead #poetryislife #poetryislove #wordpower #amwritingpoetry #indiepoetry #irishpoetry #inspirationalpoetry #poetrybooks #poet #irishpoet #irishpoetry  #poetrybooks #chapbooks  https://www.instagram.com/p/CO17TslgLqM/?igshid=1viwlbrht2kgj

Are you a #poet, interested in #selfpublishing a poetry book? This series of tips is for you. There are seven stages in publishing a book, after the writing is finished. They are: editing, design, production, distribution, marketing, promotion and rights licensing. Becoming a good publisher means learning to do all of these well, managing a publishing team and tools. Which publishing stage are you in right now? https://www.instagram.com/p/COoUMamgkTJ/?igshid=ww5hucw3ro9z

Today’s #indiepoetryplease #poem is “Girl-in-waiting.” • Inspired by this #artwork by @donovansfitzgerald • Girl-in-Waiting • The moon is not a balloon. And I know, I know, I must leave here soon. Since the party, I have been a girl-in-waiting, hiding behind the sagging balloons watching their helium escaping their tinny puffed-up chests slowly caving. Outside, this month’s moon is in its final days of waning. And I know, I know, I must leave here soon. The moon is not a balloon. • #moonpoems #artinspired (at London, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/COjxNKCAlhe/?igshid=dv0pcbs5by9s

Today’s #indiepoetryplease #poem “Body Knows”. Pic by @jojo_mars • What brought us, each to the other? That we will never understand. But always recall how out in that factory wasteland, held by our first mutual glance, my body already knew what mind fumbles to grasp, and got up and broke out into dance. • • • #dancingsoul #firstmeeting #bodyknowledge https://www.instagram.com/p/COUJL61gKZd/?igshid=1xxi8hg2xpci7

Today’s #indiepoetryplease #poem was inspired by this picture from @uminguyen_photo • Seeds When I meet a dandelion beyond its yellow prime, I like to take the time to look at it, weed run to seed, stalk and fluff and stamen, before I breathe my breath on it, let it sweep me back to childhood days when wishes were enabled, to recognize and greet it, for what it is, not just a flower by another label, but holder and carrier of a thousand flowers in waiting. • • #poetry #inspirationalpoetry #dandelions https://www.instagram.com/p/COPGZ7jgctD/?igshid=1l994doewtqkk

Today’s #indiepoetryplease #poem is a #haiku ( #474 ) inspired by this amazing sculpture “You Blew Me Away” by @pennyhardy. The picture was sent to me by @karenlotter, just as I finally got the ending to a novel I’ve been carrying for years and, in in perfect serendipity, expressed exactly how I was feeling. • • • after long years book ending crests in mind blows body open • • • #amwritingfiction #amwritingpoetry https://www.instagram.com/p/CNwtHZDAd7w/?igshid=hhy7lkoa1rsd

Today’s #indiepoetryplease #poem is “Wo/man’s World“. With thanks to @ecpaintings for the great pic and the inspiration. • Turn then, my dear woman, from the female lot, with your blank look, towards all that— home or babies, being the keeper of the light, or love, or beauty or what not. Step out onto the stage of the man’s world and give it what it asks. Slide on your mask. But don’t think it will cover you. And tell me why you would want it to. Woman. Such a being is manifold, multitudinous, infinite even, a universe of mystery and creative might. But we all know what, by definition, she is not. • • #radicalfeminism #feminism #womanism https://www.instagram.com/p/CNiJ-xVgG_n/?igshid=14w299sf9d54

Today’s #indiepoetryplease poem is “Rising”. Happy #easter 🐣 #poets and #authors • • RISING This is the promise of Easter, of spring: You can be killed off for a time you may need to rest, retreat, reverse, repair a wing. But keep the faith. Stay true to your need to do your thing. Then come the given day out of the buried time you’ll find some new devising. Then you’ll step forth again and up into your rising. • • • #creative process #writingpoetry #eastergifts https://www.instagram.com/p/CNPTGfBgskF/?igshid=uwtzip8u2apr

I come down to the ocean step out onto sand, curl a white, broken pebble into my palm. I feel sun’s slow slide upwards from level with my eyes surmounting the cloudscape, enlightening the skies. I breathe in the waves out-breath, Breathe it back to restart. Begin my day and its doings here at its quiet heart. • • #morningwalk #blacknwhiteart #seascape https://www.instagram.com/p/CNB4Oj5gNC_/?igshid=1flvnpa2w3glz

Today’s #indiepoetryplease #poem is “Mushrooming”. • • Just as a woman is not an animal, and a poem is not a mineral, a mushroom is not a plant but a fungus. This is a poem about that. Like fish, mushrooms have gills. Like trees, they have stalks.   Like us, they have memories and a kingdom of their own, neither animal nor plant, inhabiting underground realms run by their own rules, consorting with shape-shifters, fairies and elves, who sit on their protean stools. The mushroom we see is only the fruit of the fungi. Its body is a mycelium, made up of tubular threads. Hyphae (hi-fee). Filaments that spread in microscopic webs. Some travel as much as hundreds of miles on their dark journeys, invisible and dispersed feeding on the dead to know life. The fruit of their looming  is all we see, when conditions mushroom from some source of food and we get a collared earthstar or a puffball , or the jelly ear that grows only on wood. From the soil prefera or truffles, brackets or cups, and my favourite the ladies of the veil. Puff! They appear overnight. Their cells don't need time to divide. Just as a  girl is born with all the eggs she’ll ever have, a mushroom comes into being with all cells extant. They need water to grow But not too much, no. Damp is their domain. They need to breathe just as humans do And poems too. A mushroom is not a plant. A poem is not a mineral. A woman is not an animal. This has been a poem about that. • #poetry #mushroom #poemsdaily https://www.instagram.com/p/CM1MAY5Agne/?igshid=13tflwssfoimk