Journey of the Heart

Skin whitening is the use of cosmetic products or services to reduce the amount of melanin, or pigment, in the skin to make it appear lighter. It’s a huge market around the world that exploits women’s insecurities about their appearance,  estimated to be worth about $4 billion in India alone! India’s younger generations, however, are starting to fight back with body-positive messages, such as the one delivered in this poem by emerging poet Navratra from Jaipur, India.    Beauty-fool by  Navratra   Rosy lips, dimpled cheeks your long black hair. Celestial nose, pretty eyes, your color is also fair.   Such attributes of beauty: I am amazed to see such grace! But more amazed to realize something missing on your face.   Alas! These features of yours are not attracting me towards you. I see beauty in a brown-cheeked lady sitting just beside you.   What power could this be? I wonder for a while. Then discover the miracle is her alluring smile.   Stuck and confused I thought while keeping her

  Nocturne   With thanks to those who saw and captured the magic   Before, when the sun slipped away coruscating wonder and wisdom reigned above; Hablik looked up to find earth grasping for a whirling, scintillant firmament; Van Gogh beheld intense, shimmering spirals of power surmounting a sleepy town; now, city-bound, I am greeted by a murky veil harkening to Whistler’s night visions, but bleached of his delicate beauty.   Abscond, throw off time’s shackles, escape blinding excess; gaze skyward anew, rediscover the painful, lost art of patient, faithful waiting.   […]   Dusk settles over pastorality, crickets serenade dancing fireflies, a dog a farm or two over bids farewell to the sinking crescent moon and, channeling Sappho, welcome to the glittering diamond signifying Venus. Jupiter, lord of the planets, is soon shepherded in, followed by the Martian mote cloaked in dusky red. The first stars, Dickinson’s Arcturus and Auden’s Vega, sparkling across unfathomable expanses lead a tri

  Grief Seeds by Kalindi Dinoffer  Oh death! I feel the grief seeds tugging at my heart. I cry out why why oh death must you take  so many loved ones? Don't you see mothers crying, daughters lamenting,  lovers lost adrift without their beloved,  wives broken,  husbands weeping, children without parents, parents without children?  Oh death! I don't fear you. Not for me anyway- dying I mean. But losing loved ones my heart can't bear it for myself and others  take me not them.  I would offer myself as a sacrifice  if it would stop the pain of all the parents, children friends, lovers, siblings losing their loved ones' beautiful company in this life. Oh death! As the seeds of grief take root and bury deep  in the hearts of those that have  lost so much,  I wonder what will grow  from these seeds? Are you trying to teach us about the preciousness of life? How delicate and incredible  each flower is, so that  we remember each day to shower  each flower around us: each flower 

  A Bucket of Love by  Helene Cauchon I can't wait to pick up my bucket and fill it with love. I will put on my garden boots and traipse across the wet grass, gather flowers, weeds and dirt, and pile them all in my tin bucket of love. I will skip down the street in my summer sandals and gather wildflowers in my apron and scatter them across the roadway to fill the path with love. If I can spread love everywhere, like seeds in the wind, maybe I will find a door to a secret garden  where everyone will visit, hug and get along. As I write my story of fantasy, I pick up the old rusty bucket left out in the rain. It is empty. I fill it with love. Helene Cauchon is a retired research attorney from Southern California who spends her time writing poetry in her journal and hanging out with her grandkids. She yearns for a world free of suffering, but has finally come to accept that suffering is part of the journey. She believes we are all called to help each other out as much as we can duri

The Owls’ Teachings by Carolyn Chilton Casas From beyond the darkened orchard, I hear the blossoming calls of a great horned owl and his companion’s reply. From oak to pine, they converse in a secret language while I sit in between, guessing at the meaning. It’s a blessing to feel their presence though they can’t be seen, and yet with my closed eyes, I picture their soft, feathered bodies, heads swiveling side to side. Could there be a teaching in this— to open a space in my heart, to consider them friends for whatever time they are near, until they take wing? Oh, the jubilance among wild things! An indigenous man in Guatemala told me my spirit animal is the owl. For a time after the death of a loved one, a barn owl visited at dusk, bringing much needed solace from another dimension. And the clear message— a cherished love between two beings can never die. Carolyn Chilton Casas   lives on the central coast of California, the perfect landscape for a love of nature, hiking, and playing b

    Learning to Lie Still by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer It isn't easy. Good, then, to have a cat come lie in the curve of my arm with her full weight on my weight, her warmth against my side. If she purrs, so much the better. How could I rise and disrupt her low gravelly song? So I lie still. Awake, but not scrolling. Not speaking. Not running to fix. It comes to this—my great hope for learning to lie still is to become a cushion for a cat. It’s a noble hope—to lie still as a cat in the curve of my arm, still as a pool of daylight on the sill, still as the sun itself, holding the center as the whole world moves around it.  Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer  co-hosts  Emerging Form  (a podcast on creative process), Secret Agents of Change (a surreptitious kindness cabal) and Soul Writer’s Circle. Her poetry has appeared on  A Prairie Home Companion ,  PBS News Hour,   O Magazine ,  American Life in Poetry,  on   Carnegie Hall stage, and on river rocks she leaves around town. Her collection