The Quiet Rage

The Sunday Whirl: Wordle #239
http://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com

crispy, free, rage, volume, truth, sun,
yearning, still, phrase, start, two, attack

Sunday’s Whirligig: Wordle #47
http://sundayswhirligig.blogspot.com/

broken, chasing, wise, sheared, basket, jagged,
swims, remains, missing, pilgrim, sorrow, keep

Poets United: Poetry Pantry #290
http://poetryblogroll.blogspot.com/

Oh, you’d be amazed at what the soul can hear when you have
an extra hole in your head.

Wanderer in The People of The River
by Kathleen O’Neal Gear
and W. Michael Gear

The Quiet Rage

Lived inside, born of a child’s sorrow,
yearning after what had gone missing,
been unwittingly broken, sheared away
in crisp sunlight of a winter’s afternoon.

For the most part, could keep it still,
jagged edges wrapped securely in tightly
woven basket of nerve endings, forever
jangling to be free, to go on the attack.

Became a pilgrim, chasing after truth
and an unnamed justice. Scoured volumes
in search of healing, some phrase to ease
ache of misguided understanding.

Found two voices that remained steadfast.
First is a forest of words, branches reaching
for ancient wisdom. Second a nearby lake
of colors in which I swim daily.

Although started at very different times,
in very different circumstances, the two
voices grasped hands and have refused
to let go.

Elizabeth Crawford  2/21/16

Notes: When I was four, I ended up beneath the back wheel of my father’s reversing black Pontiac. Was taken to the hospital where surgery was done, replacing cracked skull bone
with a steel plate. Returned home to become the little girl with a hole in her head, forever wandering just how much “gray matter” might have escaped before they sealed up that hole. More recently, have been reading the Prehistory series by the authors mentioned above. In this book of the series, a small girl is hit in the head by a war club, and The Dreamer and Medicine Healer preforms surgery to release “the bad spirits” that are causing her brain to swell. Although I remember being shocked by the similarity to my own experience, when I first read the book over twenty years ago, I somehow missed the quote from Wanderer when asked by the child’s mother if she would survive. This time, I underlined it and knew I would need to write about it. The word lists simply made it much easier to do.

The image is yet another one of my created templates, colored with Artists Markers and India Ink. I usually create just a plain background for the colored images, but wanted to try different techniques this time around, and tried a splatter affect instead. It seemed to suggest a forest of trees and a nearby lake, so left it. And I did use all of the words.

If you’d like to see and read one of my first attempts at combining those two different voices, it may be found here:

Held Loosely