Poetry Appreciation (do NOT post your own poetry)

I Want To Age Like Sea Glass

I want to age like sea glass. Smoothed by tides, not broken.
I want the currents of life to toss me around, shake me up and leave me feeling washed clean.
I want my hard edges to soften as the years pass—made not weak but supple.
I want to ride the waves, go with the flow, feel the impact of the surging tides rolling in and out.

When I am thrown against the shore and caught between the rocks and a hard place,
I want to rest there until I can find the strength to do what is next.
Not stuck—just waiting, pondering, feeling what it feels like to pause. And when I am ready,
I will catch a wave and let it carry me along to the next place that I am supposed to be.

I want to be picked up on occasion by an unsuspected soul and carried along—
just for the connection, just for the sake of appreciation and wonder.
And with each encounter, new possibilities of collaboration are presented, and new ideas are born.

I want to age like sea glass so that when people see the old woman I’ll become,
they’ll embrace all that I am. They’ll marvel at my exquisite nature,
hold me gently in their hands and be awed by my well-earned patina.
Neither flashy nor dull, just a perfect luster. And they’ll wonder, if just for a second,
what it is exactly I am made of and how I got to this very here and now.
And we’ll both feel lucky to be in that perfectly right place at that profoundly right time.

I want to age like sea glass. I want to enjoy the journey and let my preciousness be, not in spite of the impacts of life, but because of them.

-Bernadette Noll


Edited version (edit not done by the author):

 

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Langston Hughes

 

How many deaths
have you died
to be so strong?

How many times
have you screamed
to be so silent?

-Steffi

 

© butterflies rising

 

Oft, in the Stilly Night by Thomas Moore

Oft, in the stilly night,
Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond memory brings the light
Of other days around me;
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood's years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone,
Now dimm'd and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken!
Thus, in the stilly night,
Ere slumber's chain hath bound me,
Sad memory brings the light
Of other days around me.

When I remember all
The friends, so link'd together,
I've seen around me fall,
Like leaves in wintry weather;
I feel like one
Who treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!
Thus, in the stilly night,
Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Sad memory brings the light
Of other days around me.