Bernadette Pamplin Art & Poetry
Ideas, projects, development, finished work
Swaying blades of grass in a wind of melody punctuated by rhythm. We move. Arms lifted to the heavens. Reaching for power beyond our grasp. Reaching, united by the same song that means different things to us at different times to us, all different but uniting us.
The power of music, the frequency of life binds us in something larger than ourselves. Our shared consciousness transcends physical form for that one song. Just a song.
I am grateful for every morning I wake. I open my eyes blessed to have another chance at these precious days nestled in mankind’s slight time since the big bang brought particles into play racing through the endless void of time and space.
I open and close my hands, amazed to inhabit this vessel once more. One that has endured and carried me through heartbreak, self destruction and much loss.
I wiggle my toes. I am thankful for my feet. They have moved me countless miles. Taken me to places I thought I’d never see and danced the night away, true freedom felt as movement.
I thank the water for cleansing my body, the air for cleansing my mind, both for sustaining me. And the beautiful bounty of the earth, the magic of nature, the turning seasons that show us life will be reborn again and again.
The great swash of the ocean. The sunlight blinding. The smell of coffee. Love. Music. Art. Reading. There is so much to be thankful for, before we’ve even started on the day. And the more we notice that and hold that tight, the more joy will come to stay.
Eyes, at the lower centre, a cage growing out of the head with an open door, birds bursting out in all directions.
Based on this poem I published on Sonderful World March 8th 2015.
Welcome to my mind. My blessing and my curse, my best and my worst.
This is where the true me hides from you.
It is an aviary of birds diverse, a passionately adverse colourful verse to the dark hearted dead.
They chatter, squawk and swarm through my head.
Snatching under formed, fetalesque thoughts before they’re words to be said.
Before they’re comprehendable feelings rather than language that can’t be read.
The starlings swarm the most.
I am the starlings host.
They pull me apart by the threads of my characteral flaws
Unravel and leave me next to nothing, as nothing’s easier to ignore.
The Phoenix comes in my darkest moments. Eternal, internal, the starling’s opponent
Always almost too late to save my state from a fate that dilapidates all redeeming traits.
Before I am unsalvageable.
I’m simply unmanageable.
A tangible, consumable, notion of all that is unvaluable
The crows collect my bones.
They are the stones that condone any faith I seem to own.
The Magpies steal my eyes, my teeth, my wishes and beliefs
And they set to work reconstructing me in all my concepts
Building narrow, marrow bridges connecting the fleshy islands of my facets.
Creating a new world in which my tenacious conscious can reside.
Where birds of paradise bask in warm sunshine
Where toucans and puffins smile through painted faces sublime and glorious peacocks dare to flash uncompromising exquisity
I love each and every one who ever was and who will ever be.
And everything is beautiful
I inhale hatred and exhale goodwill
If only I could stay here without fear of self sabotage
But my entourage of starlings will return in a few days, to begin the process of self dismantling again
There’s no one I can blame. I have a mind I cannot tame.
A barrage of disdain.
A fear and sense of shame
If only I’d escape the cage that is my birdbrain.
