"Without" - a poem

I'm not exciting, not terribly memorable--
even my body seems to know this.
So if my face is marred beyond recognition
in some freak accident
and they need to identify me,
I'm letting you know now--
I don't have any tattoos,
just take my right hand and turn it palm up,
find the mole there.
That's my most unique feature,
a boring mole on my right palm
that's lost its pigment over the years.

This mole is the way I learned right from left as a kid,
like when playing the childhood game Twister.
I'd look down at my palm to see
if it did or didn't have the spot.
This became a habit, checking my palm
for any directional situation.

By comparison, my left palm is smooth.
I'm left-handed, by the way,
and thinking about it now, it's so fitting:
I'm not exciting, even my body knows this,
and though my handedness makes me a minority,
I have learned to identify myself
by the hand without, as the one marked
by the lacking.

--Ellen H.

New Assorted Poems

I finished typing up and working on some poems I've been saving on my phone, from inspired walks and at-home thoughts, from the last year. Now it's time to share them. Enjoy! 

JETS
Two jets diverge in a sky, and I-
I think of my father,
when I would announce to him at sunset,
after examining the wide mountain view from our house,
"It's a two jet night,"
for example, as if the number of jets
determined the evening's destiny,
like lines on one's palm, or
like the sailor's red sky.
We knew secretly that this was a totally arbitrary
judge of the night
but he accepted this game and its pretend omens
and that I was too old to be playing it at all
so now, as I see two jets on an evening horizon
and think of him,
it has real meaning after all.


QUESTIONS FOR BABIES
My baby likes all the toys with tags on them
and I told her that's how we know they're not real:
real animals don't have the tags.
I wonder if she'll ever try to check?

My baby plays with all our household things,
like zippers and shoelaces and my wedding ring,
which she twiddles with when she nurses.
I wonder if she'll have an affinity to that ring
when she grows up, but not remember why?


SNOW RESTS
Fresh, crisp winter snow
sits like a musical top hat rest
on the garden fence wire
but the heavy, wet spring snow
hangs from that wire
like the longer musical rest,
weighted down by
                                 twice the moisture


CHILDLIKE FAITH
God clips his toenails
and I can prove it to you:
last night I saw a curved white sliver in the sky
too thin to be the moon.
And angels have brown lipstick,
here's how I learned:
I have freckles on my cheeks
in the shape of kisses.
And I know my baby loves me
without ever hearing the words:
for she snuggles her tired head on my chest
and says Mama when she wakes.

---

Now here's to writing even more poems in 2018!
--Ellen H.

So My Passion Doesn't Burn You - a spoken word poem.

Someone said journaling

is just another kind of navel-gazing,

attaching guilt to this activity.

Then I see

I’m more Peaceful Person than Steam-rolling Babbler

when I put half my words on paper

and not in people’s ears or bottling them up where

they bulge out my eyes and wrestle for air

then punch me in the throat.

In TV’s Parks & Rec, I’m the Leslie Knope:

mission-minded leader yet

steam-rolling pusher to get

what she wants, not listening when she’s upset, 

but not intentionally mean. She’s just passionate.

That’s it, passionate. 

My passion is like an eager waiter rushing to serve you

a mug of hot coffee filled to the brim,

meant to be

invigorating, pleasant, filling,

but when hustled to you, it sloshes and spills-

sloppy, painful, unwanted,

a mess in your lap

instead of a warmth in your belly

so that I wish I’d never brought it to you

at all. 

That’s why I journal,

so my passion doesn’t burn you and all

I touch but keeps doing good

while staying where it should.

Some people run to live, some ride to live-

well I, I write to live 

at peace in my own mind and body,

passionate yet wise in community.

-Ellen H. 

Mindfulness - a poem.

Walking out to the garage after an autumn rain,
I notice my black and white rain boots
stepping between soaking yellow oak leaves
on the sidewalk dotted with recent rain drops.
Sun shines anew and the air is humid for once,
thickened and warm like a friendly hug,
scented by damp earth.
It's too bad I can't enjoy it-
my brain sternly cuts in to remind me-
Life has too much worry and burden and sadness
to linger in such a luxury

as the present moment.

Post-massage ache: a metaphor.

The last massage I got was a year ago for my birthday - I was 35 weeks pregnant, so I figured I deserved a professional massage. It was short but relaxing, good for my aching body weighed down by a growing baby inside. As I was leaving, the massage therapist informed me she had worked out the built-up lactic acid from my knotted muscles, and warned me that I might feel achy later that day. The irony struck me: getting a massage could make you sore, not just fix the soreness. There might be uncomfortable after-effects of even a good thing.

I was reminded of that massage recently, due to my August birthday, and then of the warning after a particularly tearful counseling session. For those of you who don't know, I started going to counseling at the beginning of this summer. I felt that I was not handling the stress and anxiety in my life and that it was significantly affecting my personal relationships. Thankfully, God led me to a female counselor in my small town, who both accepts my insurance and has been a good fit.

So it's been a couple months of counseling now, and my counselor and I just uncovered a painful childhood memory that many negative emotions have wrapped themselves around. We began to untangle these old feelings, and for the first time I truly grieved the pain I'd felt back then. It was validating and cathartic. It helped to mentally summon my current self as a sort of stand-in sibling to comfort my younger self in that difficult moment. I left the session emotionally raw but hopeful for beginning a path toward healing.

Later that day, I surveyed the mountains while walking baby girl in the stroller and reflected on my progress in counseling so far. Per my counselor's suggestion, I listened to the song "Dear Younger Me" by MercyMe on my phone, stroller wheels clicking over the sidewalk.

"Sometimes I wish it were a smoother ride..." 

...And my heart began to ache. It was that post-massage ache I'd been warned about. My knots were doing better, I knew, but sadness that I ever had to experience that memory in the first place now I began to surface. Why must childhoods hurt at all, Lord? Oh, how I long for a day when no more innocence will be lost! I grieved the sum pain that my past had shaped Me Today into, for better and often for worse.

"If I could tell you everything that I have learned so far /
then you could be / one step ahead / 
of all the painful memories still running through my head"

It's a powerful perspective, to imagine myself putting an arm around my younger self and comforting her with loving yet wise words: "That hurt. That matters. But you're gonna be okay."

"If I knew then what I know now / Condemnation would've had no power"

Truly, I'm gonna be okay. My childhood was not deeply traumatic, unlike so many others', and I am grateful for that. But it's time for me to stop waving away the hurts that I experienced back then. They shaped me. Many of them still have their claws in my nearly-30-year-old heart because I never learned to listen non-judgmentally to them, to work through them, then forgive and heal. What's encouraging, however, is that I know I'm in the process of healing because I'm experiencing this delayed soreness of sorrow.

I love how that song quietly climaxes, and it moved me to tears as I walked on:

"Dear younger me / it's not your fault /
you were never meant to carry this beyond the cross... 
You are holy, you are righteous, you are one of the redeeemed... 
You are free indeed."

This is a mournful ache right now, but it will fade. Then I'll simply be left with good tools for dealing and a healing heart. Ultimately my goal with counseling is freedom. I want to release the talons of negative self-identity planted in tender childhood.
I want to be more in control of my stress.
Way more content in Jesus and in who I am.
More free indeed...

...do you?

--Ellen H.

 Dear Younger Me: Listen to the whole song. Really. It's good.