Rooted Hearts

  Sometimes the hardest thing to do is wait, especially when it comes to Love. Wait       Like the last breath of winter before the earth gives birth to Spring, I wait.    Longing for the warmth, I wait.    Your words like blank stares.   I wait.   Patiently, prayerfully, intentionally, I wait.    Your eyes are open, unable to see.   A heart beats with lonely rhythm, unable to love.   So, I wait.    How I long for the yesterdays I can no longer have, like ashes vanished to the dirt.   Love once mine.   I will always wait.    

  With endearing tenderness, I will forever be grateful for the love that surrounded me growing up. Especially the example of undying Faith and fidelity shown to me by my parents. I was exhausted Sunday. After working at the shop all day, I came home, sinking into my favorite chair. I began my post workday ritual; removed my earrings, taking off my boots, finally removing my necklace. My beautiful cross gifted to me by a special friend just before Christmas. It held a great deal of meaning to me and I have worn it with great pride. I began to try and undo the clasp, my fingers almost frozen, unable to manipulate the necklace to open it. I kept trying and my attempts were futile. It seemed the more I tried, the more frustrated I became. I worked myself into frenzy trying to remove the necklace. All at once I fell back crying out " Lord, I can't. I cannot do this any longer!!!! "  The stark reality of my medical condition had crept into my very core. I was overwhelmed, sad,

  Life as a couple is often filled with forks in the road. But what really counts is in the end, you remain one spirit. This poem was written during one such fork in my marriage, but in the end, we emerged stronger than we were before. Funny thing about adversity, you can choose to grow from it, or let it silently destroy you. Thankfully, we have always grown.    The Couple     His words were sharp like wind through snow   Tenderness to fade.   Two scores of days gone dark,    And with it took their youth.   Like tarnish on the silver,     life was muted.    Goodbye to days of glory,   beacons for a cause.   Laughter ran like rivers   Oh ,    to be loved in a world of wars,   A blessing to behold.   The silent eyes need not say,   The heart already knows.   So, in this dusk of latter years,    Come kindly take my hand.    What was past a part of us,   Ours to understand.     Teri Carlson      

  As my mother lay dying, she perhaps gave me the greatest gift of my life, a glimpse of Heaven. It was a warm, sunny, Spring afternoon. Clouds danced through the blue sky like a child with their whimsy. A breeze flirted in the curtains as my mother lay dying. She had not spoken in days, and her eyes had fallen deep into their sockets. She was a fraction of herself, cancer had returned and ravaged her once graceful body.   My husband and my dad were in the living room entertaining a neighbor who had stopped by to check in with us. I could hear their muffled laughter as I sat at her bedside. I wanted desperately just to lay my head in her arms once more, but the frailty of her circumstance had prohibited it. And so, I sat, rubbed her hand and told her how much I loved her. I recounted my incredible childhood. I was loved and supported in everything I tried. She was my Girl Scout leader, Day camp counselor, biggest cheerleader and confidant. Her laugh was infectious, and when she played

I  wrote this poem after watching a documentary on Ernest Hemmingway. I have long admired his writings, beginning in grade school when I read The Old Man and the Sea. As I learned more about him and his life, his writing sometimes masked the inner pain he must have felt. He was always chasing after that feeling you have when you first fall in love. His legacy is marred by divorce, infidelity, and alcoholism. To me, I prefer to think of him as a genius the world little understood. He will always be that romantic ex-pat spinning words into masterpieces.     Certain Loneliness   He did not see the world,   blinded by the tragedy that had shaped his life.     The only beauty he had known was the love of his mother.    She was gone, leaving before the boy became a man.    His childhood was a string of prose.    His friends were not friends, rather bystanders of his memory.    His heart was void of love.    He scarcely knew how to try.    If ever a man was ensconced in sadness, it was he.