Dance for me little girl.
Dance your dance
and show the gods
why you dance.
In the garden I see you,
toes dug into the earth,
head lifted to catch
the glint of the sun
filtering through the leaves.
You nod in assent to breezes
whispering your name.
Your lips move in intonation
of the om which separates you,
momentarily.
You pirouette perfectly,
swayed by forces
caressing you to homage
of all who you are.
I long to kneel
before the image of you.
At one with your own music,
when your arms grace sweepingly
in the silent moment,
and you take all that is yours
and pray the garden
into a sanctuary.
Art by Claudia Hallissey
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.
Let us resolve to fall in love with our Earth. Other resolutions have already died. Let us fall in love with our Earth and keep her alive. Yet how does one fall in love with Earth? It is easy. It is a different kind of feeling, a oneness, a union that nothing dissolves or divides. It is the steadiness, the compliance of all things in Nature that yield to a bidding when it is done with love. She is not secretive. She is an open book.
This love is a desire to return to a place where the heart knows its completeness; in its wholeness with the laws of Nature. We become one and the same. We are its answer and its prayer, its meditation and its question. We are what the seeker chooses to establish when all else fails to come to fruition. When there is nothing that satisfies, there is always the hope and response in the garden, in the fields and in the forests. In its beaches and in its waters. It is a communion with the holiness in us and a love which puts all else to shame unless it measures up.
It is a comfortable place to be. It is what we choose in place of relationships that wither with disillusion. Nature does not. She gives from an unending Source, reaching into her carpetbag to bring forth bits of revelation to entice, to give one reason to keep trying. Yet when she falters, for every grievance she dispenses, there is redress. In time there is an adjustment, a correction for every injury. She is easy to love. But no matter how many other worlds there are, this one is worth taking care of. No illusions are necessary because she is sufficient unto herself.
In retrospect, this planet has suffered with our lack of stewardship. So let us fall in love with her. Let us resolve to take care of her. It is time now to assume guardianship of this place we call home.
For this time she is all we have.
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 received an e mail with photos of several large elephants making their way to the home of a man who had befriended them. This person named Lawrence Anthony spent his life caring for elephants in South Africa. His death occurred on March 7, 2012. Two days after he died, wild elephants showed up at his home led by 2 large matriarchs. Up to 31 of them walked over 12 miles to pay homage to his family. It does not surprise me that they thought of their caretaker as being more than just this person, Lawrence Anthony. The question was asked how did they know of the death of this friend and how was word spread. Growing up on The Farm during my most formative years I saw very old farmers and their animals in communication not only verbally but with body language. And the animals understood their caretakers without question. There was a symbiotic relationship between animals and their caretakers. They were of one heart. This is how word spreads in the wild or anywhere when the relationship is of heart and understood so. One knows at a level that our vocabulary has no word for. My mother thought cows were the smartest of all farm animals. She did not think dogs were smart at all. And yet having read a recent study on dog intelligence, some do have the intelligence of a 2 or 3 year old toddler. I am in awe. Yet I know as one who talks to my dogs and listens to them, that they tune me out when there is no need evident, as children do.
As far as the elephants making the journey to pay homage to their friend, it is not surprising. We are all connected. There is a common thread that unites all to the all. We in the western culture are a very small segment of civilization that does not believe in some level of reincarnation. Most of the world does with different interpretations to be sure. Many, many years ago I read that if souls wish to participate in earth life but without human experience, they can send a fragment of spirit or soul stuffs to experience physical life at some level of existence. Elephants, jungle life of many kinds, dolphins and whales have long been known to have language and systems of thought. We cannot close out whole systems of Life simply because we do not understand them. There are those who have spent their lives in service to an assembly of creatures and have learned to understand them. One day there will be words in our vocabulary to describe meanings not found now. Sometimes we have to step outside our frame of reference to begin to understand Other than what we are comfortable with. How great is our need to know is always a good beginning. Lawrence Anthony communicated at a level that went deeper than most people’s understanding of deep. This connection to all life , and some say just sentient life, is as far as some go. I would go farther and say ALL THAT IS is in everything. I go so far as to say God in a rock and beneath it also. I have had to redefine the word God to incorporate my views and friend, it is a long hard work.
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.
Let your mind answer
your heart’s murmuring,
for in the sanctity of self,
you will see your divinity.
In the august crucible
that is Earth,
latticed by clouds
hovering the trees,
you gain your peace.
In the musing
of the grass growing
to reach its height
and to color the bare earth
with a piled carpet,
you feel the hallowed crest.
In all,
gently tend the heart’s rending
and choose the teachers
who match the performance
of your innate goodness.
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.
Will I be born
into another world and time?
Will they swim
into sweet focus
and I, with them?
Or will I
just walk into that world
and find the place
just meant for me
because I visit there every night?
Could it be like this,
so gentle, so swift
that the dance my feet are dancing
will find the new steps
the very ones I have been practicing?
Is the ambiance
of new breath and color
just made for me?
Another sweet thought to think
that it is mine because
I’ve taken my Earth Dance seriously?
(photo by John Hallissey)
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.
Courage does not come in large containers. It is not bought by the jug, but can only
fill the cup drop by drop.
Love ventures into areas where courage falters but the heart makes waves.
The highest framework we can choose is one by which the heart is healed.
We aim to educate the heart.
Eyes that once are opened will always see and ears that once are opened will always hear.
Yield always to the heart. It strongly upholds when argument does not.
Those whom we trust, reach out and touch the fear in us and lay Grace to it.
To see through the eyes of an Other will put one’s heart into divine orbit.
You wrapped me around your heart and now you will have to wear me like a pacemaker.
We are the cabbage and the rose at once. Earthy and ethereal, at once.
The Spirit needs a daffodil once in awhile.
We choose not the dream or the believer but the One who sparks the dream.
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 clapboard house we lived in was neat. It had a mystery about it and even now memory brings forth details. Being of an ethnic background, there were certain things incompatible with today’s understanding. Things done in a certain way and values kept.
The cellar was where we lived our lives with meaning. Within the nooks was space for us all. The round belly furnace was the center and was near the eating area. Mother’s rocker was placed nearby and here she did her crocheting to the radio soap operas of Helen Trent and Ma Perkins. The table held most of us with the fallout on a small table father built. Generally we were on good terms. In
such close quarters it proved better for all of us for when arms went swinging, the innocent were caught in the crossfire.
My sister and I had our play area in one corner near the fruit cellar. But between the wall of the storage room, my brother nearest my age, (he 13, I-11)had his space. A long table braced by the wall held all his balsam models. They hung from wires at the ceiling and smelled wonderfully of wood and glue. This brother spent hours bent over his models with the sensitivity of a surgeon. The fine line of his particular schematic were followed diligently. The tissue paper used to cover the stick frames was zealously guarded.
The balsam was my undoing and his. I would sneak a piece now and again and happily munch on these rare and coveted pieces of wood. I can still feel my teeth gently smashing into them just for the pleasure of it. I would be on the lookout for these rare strips finding their way to the floor. But one day, in a fit of craving, I walked off with a section marked for major work. Possibly a wing or a side panel of something. When my brother found out what I had done, his anger took on proportions bringing on tears and loud voices from everyone. He was after me in hot pursuit ready for revenge. Suddenly my father appeared and the entire episode was no longer between siblings but a confrontation whose results stay with me yet.
My father brought out the cat o’nine tails. It was heavy and rubbery and I shuddered when I saw it. I don’t know where it came from but it was always there reminding us to behave. This day my father held it while he tried to hold onto my brother. I saw what was happening because of me and I screamed a scream that rang through the house and out the door and into the ethers and no doubt rings there still.
‘Stop it, stop it! Don’t hurt him! He is my brother! He is my brother!’
And my father no doubt did not realize how he turned into the bad guy, trying to protect his daughter from being killed by her brother. I do not remember if that black zombie ever came down on my brother’s fragile psyche but it did on mine symbolically. I shrink from violence to this day. I swallow injustices and insults and they lay like iron allies in the pit of my stomach.
The balsam act was that of a thoughtless but not malicious child. But the fear and horror I felt at the sight of my brother’s punishment was that of a god witnessing the violation of another god. I could not articulate this of course but I knew intuitively that this was what I saw.
And my words? Torn from deep within me, perhaps screamed lifetime after lifetime but elevating that portion of us residing in flesh. When violence is presented on the television screen, I hear myself again.
‘Stop it, stop it! Don’t hurt him! I love him. He is my brother! He is my brother!’
I walk away. The teacher said that out of the heart’s abundance the mouth will utter its words. Out of sheer frustration, out of love, our of hatred will come the heart’s abundance.
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.
Come to my table
and sit awhile
and I will tell you tales
of years gone by,
attended by loves and those
who held magic in their hands.
We have supped
and laughed and cried some,
but mostly told the tales
that love spun out of gold.
It was a rich time;
not the coin of the day
but the values in the hearts
of those who dined.
It was magic
that threaded us together
through the years to find us
all at the same place, entwined.
But the love and the magic
may have been one and the same.
Do you think?
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.
There is a sense of time
stretching from here
to other worlds whose names
are not in my vocabulary.
I am certain of here
because this is where I am.
I pushed away the snow
no longer pristine as first it came.
I took off my coat;
too heavy now with the approaching spring.
Too bad, I think, that the season of snow
is now so short.
Once it embraced the whole of me
that looked upon its arrival as enticing
as whipped cream on a piece of pie.
Its anticipation included holidays
that swallowed wicked witches,
soon followed by grateful hearts
seated about the table
swollen with the summer’s harvest.
I put away the significant things,
sorting them for another year;
carefully storing memories
to be added to a life
already crowded with them.
I will remember this holy season
because of my fill of joy,
of heart shedding happiness.
In this world are the ways
we measure lives in holidays,
in holy days, in births and deaths,
only because of our sense of time.
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.
We sit and we break bread,
the four of us less one.
We think of him but do not speak of him
who misses us as we miss him.
Our loss so great, the pain so blue,
we can but weep.
Yet so close we sit,
the thinnest veil between us,
the four of us less one.
We are who we are,
created by slow cooking
of heaven’s desire for perfection,
like garden vegetables simmering.
We’ve come through long years of drought
with parched throats and no cold storage
for the scrubby pickings of the mind’s fruit.
Now it is morning,
fresh and free of pain, newborn.
We’ve slept the night on buckwheat pillows.
Now the promise
that our bowls will be filled
and we will eat.
Communion at the rail on bended knee,
waiting to be lifted up.
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.
Dance for me little girl.
