Day 202: For This

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Images from the great northwest of Washington State USA. By Samantha Craft.

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For This

What is love to me, my angels asked

I answered, your eyes in my heart

Shining bright upon the drinking flowers

I watered and listened

To the voices in my mind

And they came like sunlight

The waves I am

Blessing me with the softness of your face

I peeled back the day then

The greenery and cedar grand

Bowed in recognition

Of what I held inside

The joy

The hope

The invention of me, reborn

All stood back, the heaven’s cloud

And asked, as one

Are you certain

Is all worth

This

I stood there then

In quiet

My view slowly shifting

Reality a game

And I answered aloud

In the way a soul speaks from beneath

I answered

Yes

All is worth this

And the questions came:

And what of pain

Shall you hurt

For this

Shall you turn from your very wishes

Shall you sacrifice

For one moment

For one chance

And I sang

As the raven to her love

But for a moment

I would give my life

But for a moment

I would change eternity

And the unity spoke again

Questioning my faith

My desire

And you would alter everything

For this

They asked

Change your world

For this

And I answered with a tear

Yes, the silence said

There is no love

Without his embrace

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~ Sam Craft, August 2012

Day 201: Strangled Love

Strangled Love

I cannot love you anymore

I am done

I have given everything

And you have taken nothing

But the best pieces

Now shattered and disfigured

Unrecognizable to even death

 

I cannot love you anymore

You are torture

The cruelest kind

That wrings the neck wet

And sticks probes of fire

To ignite electric harm

A fence singed into screaming flesh

I cannot love you anymore

My heart a piano

To be tuned and banged upon

To be opened

Used for company

And left in isolated silence

No longer

I cannot love you anymore

You are the slow bleed and I am emptied

You are the wind and I am chaffed

You are the widow black

And I am babe

Last light extinguished in poisoned bite

I cannot love you anymore

If I am sun

Then you are surely night

If I am proximity, then you are distance

If I am truth, then you are bundled secrets

If I am voice, then you be the empty echo

I cannot love you anymore

With throat aflame

Eyes streaked crimson

Ears mangled in blistered bursts

Soul purged of stagnant dreams

I dismiss you

I cannot love you anymore

This pleading woman

Garbed in netted veil

lingering in your vacancy

I strangle her with vengeance

Until she knows with last breath

I cannot love you anymore

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Images and Words by Samantha Craft, August 2012

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Photos taken at Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington, USA

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Captures my heart, indeed.

Day 194: Treasured Images

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I took the images at the 625-acre Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve in Washington, USA. Soils formed as glaciers melted about 11,000 years ago. This site protects native ecosystems and rare plants and animals. There are many theories about how the mounds of earth formed. My favorite is the giant gopher theory!

This is an interesting video about the mounds:

and laughing…here’s what it looks like MOST of the year:

Images 

I imagine your voice as the sea alive in the deep night
A rhythmic strength, a moonlight lullaby
I imagine your presence the solid branch set across clear stream
A place to cross over, a passageway to the other side
I imagine your taste the ripe fruit cleansed and divided whole
A sugar to tongue, a craving reborn
I imagine your chest the mossy grass of midsummer
A softness to palm, a tingle to my skin
I imagine your hands the breeze through the evergreen of cedar
A visiting ebb, a caress between limbs
I imagine your lips the cotton candy of youth
A melting satisfaction, a spiral of sweetness
I imagine your soul the wings of the monarch
A flawless design, a freedom to flight
I imagine your movement the rapids over boulder
A cleansing crush, a cool rush of nature
I imagine your image the reflection in still pond
A mirror to myself, a partner to my imagining

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Samantha Craft, August 2012

Day 192: A Walk with Light and Shadow

The Light

You make me young again

Twelve or twenty, or someplace in between

I want to run and skip and sing, and be so free

You are everything to me, my sunrise and my sunset

The prettiest ones

The very best ones

You are the stars I count on

You are the clouds I dream upon

You are the ducks dipping, the ferris wheel spinning

You are the lights strung upon the summer tree

You are all that makes me smile

And more, so much more

I can’t begin to explain

It would take a lifetime or two

Just to count all the reasons I adore you

Your hair, your eyes

Your nose so cute

I want to nibble you whole and in completion

Bite through your sexiness

I want to run my fingers through you

Every part

And dance on you like some worn out disco floor

I want to tap and spin

And glide on knees

Feel your smoothness beneath me

And eat your very soul

The Shadow

Release me bloody panther of the night

The one I spear, who keeps rising

With claws to chest

Carving name into my flesh

I run and you follow

My scent, your prisoner

You are naught but heavy stones in my pocket

Backpack on weary shoulders

Silver spikes beneath my feet

A broken time piece

Your face a façade

You are unwelcomed fever

The torture of still birth

A labor of death

You are the stripe of the honey bee

The symbol of nectar’s sting

I will not be your dance floor

Your river or mountain

I will be nothing you move upon

You feed me not, whittler of bones

And nor shall I be your prey

I turn you mystic muse

To the muds of moors

And make the howling hound your bed song

Cry for me now

This light slipped through your fingers

So I might collect your tears

And spit them at your shadow

I am blood-dry to your enchantment

Fed upon the last time

To me you are the stinging nettle of pain

The poison oak of itch

The jelly fish of sting

In leaving I shall paint the walls of you

With my echoed screams

So you may sit now

And hear the wing-clipped raven

Crying in the attic’s mind

It is your turn

Of empty ghost

Your turn to grasp

And find nothing but empty cloud of drought

I will be not your star

I will be not your sun

Instead I shall step dark upon your grave

And kick dirt at your memory

My laughter, your sorrow

My victory, your loss

My hope, your awakening

To the world without me

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By Sam Craft, July 2012

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The Walk

The following are photos from the bird sanctuary. There is a mile long platform that stretches across the wetlands and leads to the salt-water sound. There are hundreds of birds flying everywhere and adjacent nature trails.

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Day 191: Purple Toes and Love Clouds

A song I can’t get out of my head. There’s always one that sticks around for days.

“I have a deep angst in the depths of me that I have been carrying in my soul since May of this year. I do not have the words to describe this experience, except to say I feel a vast depth in my inner being that is filled with a mixture of love, passion, and longing. I have carried this from when I awake, until I sleep.

Dreams bring escape.

I have tried to figure out what to do with this feeling that feels akin to unconditional expansive love—a bottomless pit I want to fill with all the beauty about me.

I have had no choice but to pour the angst out of my soul day after day into prose and poetry. Each day I think I am emptied, only to find, time and time again, that I am not relieved for even a moment.

I have tried to pour this love into one person, and find that this love is not made for one.

I have tried to cry it out, walk it out, starve it out, laugh it out, talk it out….but alas it stays, lingering in the forefront of my every waking thought.

This love will not depart, and instead seems to grow with each coming day.

I know not what to do. The feeling is akin to the huge cavernous hole I would experience with the thought of expectation, a joyful event about to take place, a reunion of lovers, an anticipation of marvelous ecstasy.

The butterflies are a million. The energy persuasive and all-encompassing, as if heaven’s angels are all at once swirling within me, their wings stirring a golden dust of light.

I cannot move at times.

I cannot catch my breath at times.

And there seems to be no antidote.

I am slowly realizing that I am not meant to solve this riddle of love.

I am not meant to dislodge the love or give this love to one.

I am meant to embrace this love and welcome it. To say each morning: Welcome my angst. Welcome my calling. Welcome heaven’s voice. Thank you for letting me know I am alive. Thank you for letting me be your instrument. I welcome you with open arms. I embrace you. I walk with you for as long as you wish to be here. And I carry you for the world. This light seed. This watering can for the masses.” ~ Sam Craft, July 2012

We went to Mt. Rainier National Forest in the state of Washington, USA, yesterday.

I felt this unbearable love the entire drive there. I listened to music through my headphones and daydreamed of a forest glen, me as an elven princess, and of a charming knight. When we arrived at the basin of National Park I asked the heavens for a sign, for validation of this vast love I am carrying. Within minutes all the dark clouds began to disperse. Not long after, when I stepped out of the van, I turned, and this is what I saw.

This heart cloud was only there for a matter of seconds.

Later I asked for more signs. Greedy little girl I am…..because one heart in a beautiful clear blue sky was not enough!

I’ve always said that the angels have a sense of humor…. These are the signs I was given.

Signs on the path my family made for me and my youngest, so we could find our way to the end of the trail.

I am still learning to SPECIFY when I make requests for signs!

Hours later, as we finished our 5.5 mile hike, I looked up to the sky, and specifically asked for a sign to validate the overflowing love I have inside and to confirm one of my deepest desires (a desire which I shall not mention because I don’t have to–giggles and blushing)

And in an almost cloudless sky, another heart cloud formed right then and there above me.

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“Your truth speaks for those still listening for their voices, between the frayed and hanging stitches of their seams.” ~ My Aunt’s words to me

Oh, and here are my toes.

Tomorrow I shall post some lovely photos of the National Forest. Almost as lovely as my big toe. Or I shall share a silly slumber party poem that mentions the word shagging! Or both. Or something else. Isn’t life wonderful? All these choices. And toes…..glorious purple toes.