Lessons of the Lilac

I am honored to be selected as the 2013 Lilac Poet for Spokane, WA.  

My poem I wrote for the Festival was "unveiled" at the Lilac Luncheon, at the Davenport Hotel on May 13, 2013.

Lessons of the Lilac

In the front yard by the grayed wooden gates

…the Lilacs grew.

Masking the cans of trash where the milk-box waits

…the Lilacs grew.

A place now only of childhood memories

Sweet, sad, dark, light, full, alone…

This is the spot where the Lilacs grew.

Wild, untamed:

Pruning they did not know.

The Lilacs were left

Unattended: free to grow.

Overpowering in all their glory

Blooms ripe and full

Allowed freely to explore

Shape, size, potential.

Just like only a child once knew

Sweet, sad, dark, light, full, alone…

This is the spot where the Lilacs grew.

Trying their hardest to make a mark in this world

As if knowing their time would shortly fade

Imprinting their essence into the heart and senses

Of all who lavished in their smell, petals, delicate shade.

For surely this determined flower

Has given us mind of our own nature

…our own beauty

…our own power.

For one day we will discover too

A halting need to plant our roots.

Sweet, sad, dark, light, full, alone…

Just like the Lilacs do.

~ Copyright © 2013 by Carole A. Smith ~2013 Lilac Poet

RESHAPE

It’s time to reshape

The misshapen SHAPE of me.

I am FULL.

Influenced by this world

…too much.

Selfishness

Pride

Arrogance

Materialism…

I need to reshape

MY way of LIFE

According to GOD’s WAY of  LIFE…for me.

Deep joy CAN be mine

WILL be mine

By deflating ME

And filling with HIM.

I choose to KNOW the LORD

NO world!

I choose to SERVE the LORD

You have been SERVED world!

It’s time to reshape

The misshapen SHAPE of ME.

~Carole Smith 4/9/13

Inspired by Psalm 119:36-37

“Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain. Turn me eyes away from worthless things…”

Once your heart is meek… A Sonnet

Truest love is sought by all

Imaginations of hearts a-flutter

Though it so quickly will befall

False dreams heap crushing clutter

I willfully earned this elusive desire

Though only through hardship and pain

My hearts own crushing breaking fire

T'was only through trial did I gain

My sweetest loves of all my life

Were won through hard fought time

So now am blessed as mother and wife

And all that lost was selfish mine

For truest love that which we seek

Comes only once your heart is meek

-Carole Smith * 3/5/2013

I Am Yours

Use me.

Fill me.

Heal me.

O Holy Spirit, I am yours.

Teach me.

Guide me.

Lead me.

O Holy Spirit, I am yours.

Fulfill me.

Transform me.

Reveal me.

O Holy Spirit, I am yours.

Whatever I was, forgive me.

Whoever I am, transform me.

Whoever I shall be, reveal me.

I am yours.

I Am With You

...This poem was inspired by the Bible Study I'm in, covering the Book of Deuteronomy... 

I am in a desert.
I have lost my way.
Oh Lord, speak to me...
I need to hear you today!

Remind me you are here.
...You've brought me this way.
You have more for me!
I need to hear you say...

"You too have a Promised Land!
Just look at my hand... see?
Lean into my arms, gaze at my plans...
Let Me set you free!

Though your lost in a desert...
Though you've lost your way...
I am with you here, my child...
I am with you today!"

~Carole A. Smith
10/3/12

The Dream

THE DREAM

~

I dreamt of you last night

…comforting me

…listening to me

…paying attention to me.

Caring about what I had to say.

Offering me words of kindness and wisdom.

I dreamt of you being all I needed you to be

…when you were alive.

~

 My Father passed away September 25, 2010...

I had a strange dream last night.  It was a sort of role reversal between my mom and my dad.  Instead of my dad dying, it was my mom.  And instead of my mom giving me advice and words of comfort, it was my dad.  Maybe it was because at the end of our phone call last night, my mom hung-up on me. 

I am half-way wondering if my dead father visited me in my dream last night.  By all of my standards, this could be totally viable.  I awoke, by the dog, at the end of the dream at 3:18am.  3 am, I have always heard, is the peak hour for spirit activity… and apparently for dogs to go pee.  3 is the prime number for me and my dad.  If I could only use one word to sum up the relationship between my father and I, I would use the word – three.  It is a very personal and symbolic word for me.  He left our family, his three young children, when I was only three years old.  And so, the fact that I dreamt of him being alive, pleasantly talking to me, comforting me about my mother’s rotting corpse lying within a coffin inside my garage, and that this all occurred at 3 AM  in the morning makes perfect sense that his spirit in fact was visiting me last night.  Otherwise, if not a spirit bringing this twisted scene, then what or whom else would I have to blame for this unwanted powerful vision?  Surely not myself…

It was the first dream I have had about my dad since he died.  I knew one would come, eventually.  But I was honestly surprised by the switch-up in roles between him and my mom. 

He was sitting in his hospital bed, the one that he lived in for almost four weeks during his time in hospice care in his home.  The same bed I watched him struggle against death in.  And the same bed that death overtook him in.  What was different though was the way he looked.  He looked like my dad in this dream.  Not the shell of person he had become.  He looked like the picture they used for his obituary.  It had been a long time since he looked that healthy.  I find it odd how our minds, at times, will cling to life, to what is good, what is right, even if that was only but a small slice of reality from a brief season of his life.  We somehow take that small glimpse and turn it into what we know… what we remember.  And we feel somewhat better. 

The problem with that, is that this distorted memory of reality, messes with you.  You can look at the obituary and think… it was not his time.  Look at him, he looks so vibrant.  So alive. 

He was anything but.

He was so grossly overcome with death just before his last breaths that it seems it was too much for even my subconscious to deal with, even during a dream.  I had to turn him back…into his obituary picture.  I had to turn him into a dad that was actually there for me.  I had to make him into a dream to be what I needed.  What he could not be when he was alive.

... More to come! Excerpts taken from book I am writing:

After They Leave, Who Will Love Me?

A Memoir of struggle to find love after adoption, divorce and death

It wasn’t the germs …it was the catching

The back of our small SUV is packed with bags of outgrown and overused clothing.  Bags, as in four large garbage bags.  With my kids in the backseat, we head to the Women’s and Children’s Emergency Shelter to deposit our donations.  I have mixed emotions ranging from the good, bad and ugly running through my mind.  I process them unconsciously and simultaneously. There is relief and a sense of accomplishment for going through our possessions and getting rid of the unused unwanted excess.   There is pride for giving my leftovers.   There is the feeling of leadership for teaching my kids to give to the poor and having them see the people who do not have what we have.


 As we drive further away from our home and protections of the Home Owners Associations and manicured yards; as we travel deeper into the heart of the city, I find myself asking my children if their doors are locked.  We come to a stop light.  I look over my shoulder again and chant “Are your doors locked?”  We pass a homeless man at the corner “Are your doors locked…?”  Not really wanting an answer.  Already knowing they are.  But the words come forth on their own.

As we pull into the Shelter I am self-conscious about driving a Lexus, even though it is eleven years old.  I take notice of the families milling around in the common area that also serves as the gated parking lot. Those very gates will close and lock all who have been left inside once the sun slips away at the end of the day.

Entire families, minus the men.  Talking.  Laughing.  Living as if this is life as usual.  What I perceive in my mind based off of the very little personal experience I have is that this should be a place of sadness.  The end of the line or bottom of the pit.  But instead, for many it is the beginning.  It is a new start.  It is safety behind the gates that lock.  It is hope.

After I park and open my car door my seven year old daughter asks with anticipation ringing in her voice “Can I come with you?” And just as I am forming the word no to automatically spew from my pierced lips, my nine year old son says it for me.  “No!” he sternly replies.  And then he adds his reasoning, that he believes to be mine, “…because of the germs!”

My heart drops.

I immediately retort, “No, it’s not because of the germs.  It’s because…”  And my voice trails off. “…because I just want you to stay in….”  I shut the door.

I look at the people looking at me as I transfer my bags, one at a time from my trunk to the wall just outside the Staff door.  My stuff that has been on my body, on my kids bodies as they played and went to school.  As they ate cake at birthday parties and sat in Sunday school learning about Jesus.  Things that have been in my home and a part of my home now sit on the cold cement in trash bags for women and children without a place to call their own.

I have volunteered at this Shelter before.  I have given to it with intention because I know there is immediate need and there will be instantaneous use.  People start to rummage through my bags before I have even driven my car completely out of the parking lot.

I have shared poetry with some of the women that happened to find themselves here and the freeing power of writing.  But today, when it came to my children, I wasn’t willing to share.  I want to teach them about helping others but at the same time I want to protect them from the harsh realities of life.  I know what it is like to not have a father.  I have been in a relationship with an alcoholic.  It wasn’t the germs that my son was referencing that stopped my heart.  It was the catching that is inferred to when talking about those germs.

More than anything in this world I want to protect my children from catching all of the things in life that led these women to bring themselves and their children to this place.