A row of blue totes,
Stuffed with clothes,
Make up and shoes,
Blank notebooks,
A white pencil case
With names of authors
Long-dead, painted on the side,
Love notes
And candles,
Matches,
And medicine.
A fall coat
Off white,
Knee length, tags still on
Folded on a morning- yellow ottoman.
Your belongings,
The things you need,
To begin
Where this ends.
The start of a new
untraveled journey.
By J. Hamilton
There were stars
Instead of leaves
Lingering above
Long
Sweeping branches.
If not for the stars
This tree would stand under a midnight blanket
Unlit,
Unseen.
J. Hamilton
I hear the leaves rustle around your feet.
You sniff the air with a thirsty curiousity
Then you disappear behind a dogwood that has turned from red to gold,
Leaves,
Curled up
Ready to fly.
After a minute or two
You return
To my side,
Nudge my hand
And as I reach down
You rest your head inside my hand and
The world around us seems suddenly so small
And you
The centre of it.
By J. Hamilton
You have taught me
A new way of loving.
As a morning bloom of sun
Lays across your back
And your quiet breaths rise and fall
Like slow, soft waves
I know how lucky I am to know you.
Your love sits in that cove
That beats inside my chest
And even in the coldest of winters
I know I am not alone.
You lay beside me,
Warm,
Lids pressed shut and dreaming.
J. Hamilton
Continue reading
How hard it must be for you
To see the empty spaces in your closet
Where years of ballet costumes hung
And beneath
Where piles of worn through ,
Pointe shoes gathered.
You remember where it all began,
Through my memories
And your earliest ones.
It started even before your first dance class
Even before you learned how to walk.
When you were a baby
The only thing that took your pain away
Was when I danced with you in the night
All hours of the night
When you couldn’t sleep.
You would rest your head on my shoulder
And there was peace there
In the unsung melody
And the rhythm of movement
With the two of us in a hallway
Or unlit room where night kept us company.
The next best thing
When you were only 2 years old
Was your music box ballerina.
We both laughed as I twirled you around on your wood bedroom floor
As we listened to the first few notes
Of swan lake
Winding it over and over again
Until eventually
It broke.
Then at 3
The first time you put on your
Brand new
Ballet slippers
You found the very thing that you
Would love,
For years to come.
It would follow you
From the room
Where you learned to dance
To the stage
To other schools in different cities
To your dreams at night
Where your feet would still move as if they were dancing.
It has been a relationship of love and pain
Passion and perfectionism
Beauty and destruction.
You tried to dance through your injuries
Maybe if you pretended you were okay
You would forget the pain.
But the most catastrophic injury you had
Would not let you forget it existed.
It crept into your spine
With an ugly rage
That ravaged you of your ability to dance.
And broke your spirit.
I put away years of tutus
And those worn out pointe shoes
That you loved so much
Because the tears in the once smooth satin
Showed how hard you worked.
I hope that when you do look back
One day
You will think of it as a part of your life that didn’t leave you behind
But a part of you
You have kept alive
Through other things sacred
Creative
Self-affirming
healing.
By J..Hamilton
You have always loved storms.
I think it is because
You have come to understand them
Because they are not unlike your own.
The ones inside you
Brew
Pull you in
To their dark wilderness
Where they move and twist.
Sometimes you wait for them to pass.
Other times the storm swallows you
In its belly
And you struggle to re-emerge
To come back up for air again.
But you do
You know how to navigate these waters,
You are a harbor in the storm.
By J. Hamilton
Continue reading
In Solitude we are least alone. -Lord Byron
Today I spent some precious moments alone with my thoughts, in my garden. I cut the grass, pulled weeds and examined all the plants and flowers that are ecstatically growing and budding. These moments of solitude are sacred. I am alone and not alone at the same time. My garden is awake and thriving and I am surrounded by birds, squirrels and rabbits. A lone bumble bee circled me today because it didn’t like me working near its flowers. I admired its boldness and carried on with other garden work, while listening to the song of birds, smelling the perfume of lilies of the valley, and taking in all the colours, shapes and shadows around me. Solitude creates a special connection to our inner thoughts and to the immediate world around us.
This afternoon as I walked with my children in the sunshine, I stumbled upon my old haunts. We journeyed to my childhood home, and I pointed to where my mother once planted marigolds and to the tree I loved, which stood on the other side of the fence.
I took my children to the tiny treed playground, next to my house. My children played in the swings, where the sunlight fell, and tried to see, who could touch the sky the fastest. Strangely, enough, I had been dreaming about this place. Haunting dreams. To return to my childhood home with my children, gave me peace and happiness. I knew those strange dreams, would become replaced with new happy dreams. The place where I wandered as a child, had become a healing place.
After we left my dwelling place, I strolled past the high school I loved as well as the foot worn path I had journeyed along, to and from school. We kept walking until we crossed the field that belonged to the elementary school I had detested as a child. But at the far end of the field, the orchard where I had spent many childhood hours, was still there. It was the place where I would escape to at recess to find peace and solace. It was the place with the secret path to the other side where tree-lined streets stood, with tidy lawns and quiet houses. I often followed the path to the land away from the confines of a school where I felt i didn’t belong.
As I cut through the beautiful orchard with my children, to the other side, I smiled. There was peace now.
Le cose piu belle (the most beautiful things) 