From an Upper Floor

Entering Before Us

Entering Before Us

    We carry our values with us as silent companions.   When we enter a room we know immediately if we fit.   Our value system has entered the room before us.   And everyone already knows whether we are accepted. We might as well have the Sargent of Arms announce us.

      How important is this?   We are given knowledge to stay or on some pretext to leave.   If our value systems do not mesh, there will be no work accomplished.   Or if it is an event of important nature, nothing will be said or remembered as the event promised.

      It should give us a good and sound basis whether to continue with the group.   We know right away if we will be on the outside looking in.   It behooves us to find those of similar values.   There is no joy to continue being on the outside when there are those whose systems match or mesh with ours.

      It is a spiritual law.   Our values are honed to our prescription unless discarded as mindless dogma. When this knowledge of unacceptable values reaches our hearts and minds, we must start the journey.

      Heaven will take us on and open doors as material or new values are integrated.   The work begins when questions rise and demand from us honest thought.   The adventure begins a journey to the wise years of life.   We think the action will be with a sharp change, but as the essayist Emerson says ‘real action is in the silent moments because to think is to act.’   Not in any visible changes, but in thought patterns that will evoke behavior changes to reflect our value system.   Evolution in thought takes time and effort.

      To do this consciously signals a real milestone.

January 30, 2015

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
The Winter Sky

The Winter Sky

The winter sky
shimmers with the flints
of the icy shards
falling with purpose.

The glint of them, love,
has you remembering
the long nights
in a sometime past.

Where and who you wonder,
shared the beauty,
sparking a million stars,
in a time not to be repeated?

It was a sometime
that forged the memory
in Pandora’s box with the locked clasp;
daring to be opened but only if you, too,
want to disappear

into that sometime past.

January 26, 2015

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
Upon Entry

Upon Entry

Upon entry, we shed
the mufflers and the gloves,
the vests and boots,
ready as any warrior to fight the cold.

The hot tea is
a choice companion for us,
as we sit and warm ourselves
before the fire.

A promised relief
we find in each other,
as we no longer find the joy
in battling winter’s discontent.

We know our blood thins
and our patience ebbs
since we do not run and jump
with glee as snow inches up.

We remember though
this once held joy in things
not common to advancing age.
A straight shot of something

would not be unwelcome in the cup of hot tea.

January 20, 2015

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
Love Beckons

The Teachers Speak. . . . .

When you nurture love into being, when you expand the limitations of one and not labeled them insufficient or stupid, you have prodded a self concept into using strength and innate ability to understand something used and feared all of a lifetime.   They may not remember who taught this about love.   With a long ingrained habit of a heritage and a penchant for not remembering, they may not ever know except with a memory of a someone who loved them enough to press them forward into acquiring something of substance for themselves.

It is work, no doubt about it.   But someone taught us about the value of love, of honor, of commitment and the holy meaning of the weight of words.   It is an astounding venture of the correctness of things, of the meaning of life and of total commitment to the value of the soul and person. No one is irredeemable. No matter what.

The muscles may rebel at the work and the feet tire of dancing on a hot griddle.   Muse on the foibles of man in his understanding of what life is all about.   For he believes that today is born immaculate without the impact of yesterday.   If one does not understand the lessons of yesterday, today indeed will be sordid.

It is a difficult lesson to learn that one’s premises are not the premises of an Other, no matter how logical nor sound they may be.   An Other’s own observations are colored by the substance of ancient genetic heritage of which we can only surmise and try to comprehend.   The abuse inflicted by centuries of barbaric behavior on the human being cannot be estimated except when viewed with the eyes and ears and emotions of those who have gone the route and done the mind work.   It is not easy but what we do is reinforce the magnitude of what is being accomplished within the circle of where one moves. It takes a war of words, a lifetime of study of oneself and also the stripping of one’s self estimate to see that the work begins at home.

In fact what it takes is a Solomon, ready to make whole and not divide.

Love Beckons

To what heights has love been lifted
and dropped, nay pushed,
to the bottomless pit
from which no heaven could be seen?

To what lengths has love been stretched
and allowed to fall back onto itself
to where no life was left
to renew itself?

To what heights has love been lifted
by love returned
and scorned when trust was added,
as if the weight was unbearable?

How many times can hope for love returned
be dashed upon the rocks like waves
their passion spent?
And tramped as flowers by unseeing feet?

There is no limit,
for time again love has crept upward
to where a path of heaven,
like a beacon, beckons.
Where life has renewed itself
when vital signs could not be seen.

When hope, by faith has found the love returned.

Artwork by Claudia Hallissey

January 17, 2015

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
The Best Of All Worlds

When a teenage grandson arrived into our family, my talks with him were cerebral and pithy. We were in my basement study and on the wall was a quote which I had paraphrased from something I was reading and his mother, an artist, had illustrated. (We have since used the drawing on the cover of Kiss The Moon) I have searched out what I was reading but I cannot find what had spurred me on to paraphrase. And my grandson looked at it and pondered and I read it aloud. Wisdom begins when passion is exhausted. And being the good student that he was he said, but grandma, you would be dead then! I wish I had had the wisdom to add that only when passion is exhausted can you then begin to live. It is then that we more clearly see issues in nascent form and arrive at more thoughtful conclusions. In too many situations we reach conclusions colored by emotion when we need clarified thought. This is only one of many lessons this Earth classroom must teach us.

The Best Of All Worlds

It was said before
in this best of all possible worlds. . .
that we will surely miss this.

It has to do
with the sweet ways of greeting
to demonstrate love and
of mostly handling the common place.

There are those worlds
of which we speak
where frame of mind cannot compare
with our range of emotions.

How like us that is. . . .
We boast of our capacity to love
and honor each other through all life
and then raise arms in combat.

Why I ask does it pain me so
to leave it all behind
when emotion has blinded me
and handicapped you
from peacefully coexisting?

Too much, I think.
My heart needs a quiet time.
One to stand (beside) aside,
to heal my heart and simply Be. . . .

in the next of all possible worlds.

January 14, 2015

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
In Awe Of Spirit

In Awe Of Spirit. . . .to believe or not to believe?

In answer to the question to believe or not, the author Rosamunde Pilcher,(excellent descriptions of the English countryside) in Winter Solstice has one of her characters saying ’I would find it uncomfortable to live in a world where I had no person to thank.’ To paraphrase it I would say it would be untenable for me not to be in awe of Spirit that has given me mind in whatever form and world I find myself.

To not believe would be a mockery of those who work with such diligence to improve the conditions of life, whether those receiving the aid be human or for a more encompassing word, being.

There is so much beauty and largess of substance to be shared that if it cannot be shared, lessens our pleasure.   However, if only one recognizes the value, it is still not a loss of its qualities because the qualities are innate.   They simply wait for appreciative recognition of these characteristics.

To wake up in a world of verdant fields, or sand carpets with the colors of morning sun,. or simply to wake up and recognize the ceiling from the night before is reason enough to pass the blessing forward. Grace brings us to where we are at the moment with the knowledge that it is with pleasure that we work to improve the world in which we find ourselves.   That what we do for one we do for all to improve the quality of life on all hearths.

It is a revelation that leads to the knowledge that to work toward the good of all is what evolution is about.   No matter what our status or place, it is for our own ultimate good that we work, toward a future we cannot imagine.   As the philosopher Robert Nozick hypothesized, we may be in world creation training. We may be the one who creates the kind of world we have in mind. All effort is valued. No effort or work is ever a lost cause when we elevate life.

Each of us, like the smallest particles collaborating for larger purposes, can also be called a God Participant. We need not apologize when our divinity shines along with our humanity.

January 10, 2015

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
I Will Sing Songs of Love

I Will Sing Songs of Love

You listen wisely and
I will sing songs of love,
concluding a life of harsh lessons.

They were not easy, love,
because you were eager for Light. . . .
The darkness penetrated every portion of life,

too deep ever to see Light.
So we gambled on a road
often refused and not often taken.

Too hard, they said, but for you,
the only one to make bulrushes
seem an easy route.

Your love and I, we make it home
and find it easy in retrospect,
for the new world

already stands in need.
And your balk does not match my bite.
We can only work.

It is a fair piece yet to life everlasting.

(from a work in progress, On Common Ground, My God and Me)

January 6, 2015

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
A Depth by Ascent

In discussing the inadequacies of language that plague me much of the time and have left me stuttering, searching for a word, I knew that somewhere I was familiar with a word that described a feeling or thought or some occurrence which was lost to me in this world. I knew I could go to the thesaurus and find a word no one would be familiar with but would more nearly describe what I was attempting. But what good would that be if no one understood the word? Can one go deep by ascending? Yes, there is a word for it but it is lost to me. I will one day know it again. I attempt again to share my thoughts.

A Depth by Ascent

It is with agonized words of
‘I don’t know’ whispered
as I entered the vehicle
stopping for me.

‘You don’t know what?’
was asked I thought with anger,
but later realized was a look of fear
and mine was a blank look returned.

I was again focused elsewhere
but still not knowing from where
the words had come.

Since then I’ve learned
from a lifetime that has quickly passed
that the source of those words
came from conversations held deeply
in worlds we do not enter
except by invitation.

I cannot recommend
what I do not know by route,
except the truth is my life
was lived with intensity
in a personal world.

It is a depth our language
has no words for and cannot describe
in this world we live in.
It is a depth the soul ascends
on its way to the Mount.

The soul only knows its own way.

December 25, 2014

January 3, 2015

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
A Toast to the New Year and Us

A Toast

Let us lift our hearts
to the Source of our lives.

Let us lift our thoughts
to the highest we envision.

Let us turn to one another
and embrace
to give of our abundance always.

Let us then praise
the goodness of our lives
and wish the new year
to be gracious .

With these thoughts in mind
we raise our glasses in

Salut!

December 31, 2014

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
The Divine Drama

When my beloved young friend was settling her mother’s estate, she gave me this wooden sculpture and said this belongs to you. My first thought was in awe that she thought this and my second thought to the monk was, ‘where have you been all my life?.’ Through moves and floods it has come with me and has stood on my work table since then, overlooking my journey. I am grateful to my friend to this day for giving me this sculpture but mostly for thinking that I am worthy of it.

The Divine Drama

Man’s god only works as hard as man does.

If man thinks it is a passion play. . . . .then Jesus was a class act who should have received residuals on the performance.

The heart of Earth known as the Garden of Eden, was the crucible for man in several places simultaneously.

Exposition always depends on the quality of motive.

The quality of life is assured by one’s assuming the burden of change.

Spirit leaves home on a journey and at times makes great strides and at other times not but the journey’s end always finds it equal if not enriched by the trek. Never bankrupt.

The ablest keep their silence and work. By their works shall they be known.

Directions come from an inner source connected to the Greater I Am.

The heart interprets the individual’s intent and yields or prohibits.

To fear one’s god is to barter for one’s life, inch by wretched inch.

To roto root one’s memory bank takes much courage.

To be without memory is to strip today of meaning.

A today with no meaning only attempts an already empty tomorrow.

To build memories for oneself and one’s nearest is part of one’s commitment.

It is not an empty effort to build good memories. The memories will be called up in time not yet spoken and by generations unborn.

December 28, 2014

Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.