Journey of the Heart

  My Power      by Carolyn  Chilton  Casas           —after “To Change” by James Crews              Then came the foggy morning at summer’s sad departing in what is most likely  the last third of my life when I understood  that no matter how carefully  I orchestrate my living, a lot of what happens is not  in my power to control.   What  is  completely  within my power  is to meet each situation  with kindness, with compassion for others and, of course, for myself.  Sometimes the most difficult. To let it go, as they say, to stop  chewing the cud of wishing for a different action,  another outcome.   So instead, I look at my face  in the mirror and ask,  Did you show the world you care today; was your heart  an open reservoir of love? Carolyn Chilton Casas  is a Reiki Master and teache...

  You Ask Me What a Calling Feels Like by Laura Johnson  It's irritating. A calling sounds like the beep-beep beep-beep you faintly hear in your sleep-drowsied dreams. At first you will be dimly aware of its alarming persistence, until              slowly, slowly,        maybe then with a start you'll curse the break of day. That is to say, it's unpleasant, a calling; like a fly, buzzing around in reckless circles and you can't predict when it'll laze your blasted way again. It's wild like that: a calling. Unpredictable. Supremely swat-able. It keeps you on edge- flirting by your periphery, loitering under your nose, its whispers too close for comfort.  But, it will make itself comfortable. One day. Like a charming, mysterious friend. When it saunters by you'll pour it a drink, hoping to coax it into staying, at least long enough to spill where it's been    what it's doing     where you fit in "Why...

  Winter Sunrise by Jennifer Wenn Too early for me in summer, but now it’s there, waiting. Shadowed blackberry bushes deep in slumber, squirrels not yet scrounging stray bird seed, but cardinals will soon touch down and greet the orange and rose glow stealing in off to the south, just over the cedar hedge, behind the wildly growing evergreen on the downslope and the stately sleeping oak reaching over from back and left, dangling a few stubborn leaves, the spreading blush not reaching the patio sundial but caressing the top of the little arbour and awakening here and there from the largesse of yesterday’s squall a delicate opalescence, bestowing a hushed peace, a pause between breaths, the fragile promise of light to come shimmering on the chilled zephyr whispering through the pine needles. Jennifer Wenn  is a trans-identified writer and speaker from London, Ontario. Her first poetry chapbook,  A Song of Milestones , has been published by Harmonia Press (an imprint of Beli...