From an Upper Floor

The Weight Of Words

There are words not in fashion these days.   The words are so old they are perhaps Victorian.   Words like honor and commitment. When these words are used by someone who truly understands the weight of words, there is a time of hesitation, of expectancy and a heart stopping moment that puts the word into a time frame resulting in a memory.   We may forget the deed or the one who used the word, but we will forever know the true meaning of these words.

The meaning of commitment in this day seems to have flown out with all the trendy verbiage that seems to inundate the ethers. The word itself brings to mind a feeling of duty along with the knowledge that here is something expected of us or our work. It is asking something of us.   We are involved with the word.   We must take upon ourselves all that we are in performing whatever it is that we have either created or are part of.   Whatever our work, our marriages or our children, we are party to them and our responsibility should not be in question.   We know the meaning of the word because someone loved us enough at some time in a some place and taught us what commitment meant.   We may not remember the teacher but if we know the word and meaning, the lesson was well taught.

It means that we were worth the lesson.   It means that someone cared.   And we are here, now in the midst of the work and we know our responsibility. This does not mean that abusive relationships should be tolerated.   What this does mean is that in the ordinary course of our lives there will be those things which we will want to opt out of. Too hard, too messy, and no glamour. Certainly we deserve better we think.

What we must take into account is our attitude.   There is one very immediate term used by the young which I applaud.   Suck it up they say.   Exactly.   Suck it up. Stay with the program, change our attitude and make it better.   Somebody did it with us at some time. Remember the lesson.   The fact that we are here and breathing means that the lesson was delivered. Now it is for us to relearn the meaning. Perseverance, responsibility, duty and deliverance.   Many are watching us and our performance. Commitment. Show them the time and effort were not misplaced and we are worthy.

This is the classroom.   Paradise is the result

November 2, 2012

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 Housekeeper

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The Housekeeper. Illustration by Claudia Hallissey

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There bellows a wind
around the turrets
of the mind’s house,
ripping under gutters,
sweeping under eaves,
leaving no residue.

Clean, chaste
as the sweet wind,
stands she exalted.
Prudently swiping at corners
to eliminate even
the shadow of contamination
on her brother’s name.

In good time,
in due time,
the world will be
swept clean
and her father’s house
will sparkle.

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October 28, 2012

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 Into My Kitchen

Come into my kitchen
and use the back door.
Only dear friends are allowed to
walk right into
the center of my home.

Others have to earn the right
by walking through the halls
of my life to get to
the heart of my home.

But you can come
to the back door.

I will let you in.

October 22, 2012

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.
nuggets

Your heart will teach in ways the world cannot.

What is not finished here will be finished elsewhere.

This is called the long view. It is a choice.

When everything becomes a moral decision it

means that issues have been dragged through

the heart.

To suffer means to be aware of the damage

you do to the ones you care about.

Look always to where the sun rises and sets. It

is but half a world.

Dimensions are but changes in perspective. As

one world fades, another emerges where we have

earned the right to be.

As long as the eye beholds and another heart beats

to receive, there will be reason to keep breathing and

not give up.

The unfed Spirit is just as hungry as the unfed body.

Remember that when love does not accompany

the gift, there is no gift.

Uneventful is a merciful condition and that in itself

is a large blessing.

October 11, 2012

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 Strange Bequest

There was a man, a slim man,

whose head was bedecked

with a white cloud

and whose eyes saw dreams

he could not articulate.

He sat one day staring into space

and when I questioned him, he said,

`I am sitting and watching the grass grow.’

I hesitated far too long

and have lived to regret it.

I wish the courage had been mine

to have asked him

to share his dreams with me.

For he bequeathed to me

a mind that does not rest.

I have the thought that his faher

and father before him

wrestled the same misty vision

which now is mine to set in motion.

I question this strange bequest,

for I have not

the staunch heart required

to lay to rest my ancestor’s anguish.

Papa, I plead now,

to replace my heart with hot ore,

inject me with a vial

of celestial courage

and fuse my spine with tempered steel.

There is so little time.

October 5, 2012

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 Autumn Night

The velvet night plays host

to the September moon

hanging in suspension in liquid air.

Cold, crisp edges

seal in the lunar landscape,

forgetting for the moment,

the hot sky which sealed our noon.

There comes the night,

in desperation relieving

the cloddish insensitivity visible

in the unrelenting stubbornness of the day,

unable and unwilling to release itself.

With relief,

the jagged beginning of the moon,

just now visible to the naked eye

makes its way across the horizon

of the mental landscape.

Its ridges,

its volcanic valleys split in two

and on the other side of the mind

it falls into the sun to rise

from flames on another night.

Having healed with mystic splendor,

balm for the day's wounds, it rests.

I drink in the day and forget.

But the night . . . the night. . .

now bedded in honor, its place undisputed,

finds my words of gratitude hallow the ground

in worlds unattended.

September 27, 2012

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 Presence In My LIfe

(In May of 2000 I, with the help of family, had self published

a hard cover book of poetry called Kiss The Moon; A Woman

Speaks and Gives Grace. Except for a few copies I held back,

500 books were sold.   In the front of the book I explained how

the poetry came to be.   It will help explain questions put to me

and show the road traveled. The words are simple,

the work unbelievable.)

The sun was bright coming in through the high windows on

that first day of English Lit at the University.   The professor

was introducing herself and I don’t know when my attention

wavered but when I looked down I found I had written these words,

`Fear death, ahhhh I do because I love life so much’! I did not

know where these words came from but it was an affirmation and

I realized they had always been true.   Even today there would be

argument as to their source. My thoughts mix smoothly with what

I consider a given and myself the instrument through which they

come. I know when the work is mine.   I also know when a

thought is inserted or given.   And when one is given, there is

a giver or givers.

A leap must be taken when the truth of that statement is

confronted. It is the reason people go to their places of worship

and as a friend said, that what we hope is true. Yet when faced

daily with significant events or thoughts, it is a puzzlement as to

why the evidence does not speak to the person.   It will

eventually and when it does, it will be the right time.

For me the beginning was in the classroom but took possession

of a corner of my mind and stayed there while other things were

happening. Though I was alert to the thoughts that seemed to come

from nowhere, there was this portion that tested the limits of what

was my history. And one night while sitting at my desk I found

words tumbling over themselves and when I was finished a poem

was born. I wondered how this came about and surely I must

have memorized this long ago.   Nowhere could I find this poem

and it was not the kind I would do on my own. I read it to the family

and they laughed because it was comical, though philosophical,

and we let it go. No one of course believed how it came to be.

It took a letter to my mother to convince me there was a

Presence in my life. I started the letter and suddenly the

words were writing themselves and the missive was one of

good thinking and good psychology. And from that point, the

muses or the Teachers as I called them were my mind

companions.

There are those who say that within the layers of the human

being there is knowledge and this knowledge rises when stresses

demand answers or directions.   This could very well be and

I do not argue this. But when a grateful heart murmurs a thank

you and the response in mind is you’re welcome followed by a

sense of rightness and companionship and love, then one

knows there is a Presence.

It has been a war of words over a lifetime.   A philosophy

has been hammered out and though it may not rest

comfortably with organized religion, still I have woven a

philosophical blanket with mended holes that has managed

to keep me warm.   It has taken all the years of my life and

it has been a hard work. (I have no words to describe the work

involved.   None in my vocabulary.) But I would not have

missed a day of it.

September 20, 2012

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.
My Song Goes Out

My song goes out

on the morning air

and penetrates the sky

to where the stars hang heavy.

My lyrics ride the beams

that will meet the sun

and hang in mid-day

until even the grass hears

the melody or the mourning.

Look who it is! they say.

She speaks to us and

we hear, we hear.

And when they ask of me

I will say it is an enchanted place,

this Earth home.

Learn to speak her language

and learn to hear her songs.

Be the lyre on which

her music is played.

The music spells out

a beginning that never was

and an ending that cannot be.

She will tell us of a richness

that is ours

since we first were stars.

September 14, 2012

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.
Morning Comes

Morning comes

with dew hinting Autumn,

promising a long, clean winter.

Schedules are welcomed

and days end

at an appropriate time.

Evenings stretch

like warm welcoming mats,

rolling up at our heels

and sealing us in with what

will feed our Spirits.

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September 7, 2012

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.
How And Why

A grandson asked me to explain how my writing comes about.

How I give birth to things and the meaning of some articles and poems.

Some authors and musicians have said that the words and music are

heard with an inner ear. Often writers will say they are writing with the flow.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said we must keep the pipes free and clear so that

we will hear the muses speak. And with me the words will be there and it

is all I can do to put them down as fast as I can or like Emerson I am

in dialogue with the muses. Other times when I am out of sync, I

struggle for words. To be able to say this means that time has been

given to learning what life means to me and how I respond to it. I had to

find a balance with what I was taught and what I was experiencing.

It is not easy to make inroads. It is not easy being different. In another

time I would be called a mystic. This is someone who has an inner

life with a connection to things invisible and intangible, but altogether valid.

To me life is a continuum. We come from a somewhere and

we go to a somewhere we have earned the right to be.

I grew up in a family that took life seriously. I wish we had laughed

more, just as I wish I had not spent 18 months in a hospital when I

was ten with a bone problem. (Penicillin came to market two months

after I was discharged from the hospital.)These were conditions that

shaped me. The worst being separated from my siblings. There were

eight of us and even though the country was still recovering

from the Depression, I felt rich. There were six brothers and

two sisters so how could we be poor?   We had each other.

The previous post on the loss of our son’s baseball tournament I

realized was also for me. I needed to see the words written to realize

that the rules applied to me as well.   The same rules applied to

everything I have done in my 80 plus years. First and foremost were

family and home and all that implied with its care.   All the other things,

the writing and independent study which I did when the rest of the world

slept were to make inroads for me. What have I learned by digging

beneath the rock of who I am? That there is a substance, a weight,

a something metaphysical hidden in all of us within our skeletons.

There is a fountain of lore within us. When we apply what it is we

have learned in this life we come up with things that tell us where

we have traveled spiritually. I make connections. Some people have

difficulty with this. I connect life’s events and draw my invisible lines

and see no division in any of it. It unites in my thinking and I wonder

how it has escaped those in power in high places who have the clout

to do something. I have a son who told me that I make vacuuming a

spiritual experience. Perhaps I do for am I not a steward of this

place I inhabit? This continuous thread has been mine since childhood.

I link everything to All That Is. Some would call it God and others

Jehovah and still others what they think Highest and Best. I see

this link in games of children to those of adults as they dress

their lives with needed illusions.   The rules are for real and the

stakes are us. We either are the victory and our gods the victors or not.

A friend tried to convince me that this is an impersonal world

and not to be taken personally. I say this is my world and I will do

what is mine to do to the best of my ability because I do take it

personally. We must or else it will perish. Every action has

consequences, good or ill.   The roads connecting us to All That Is

are peculiarly ours because of our thinking. What we learn are codes

or Beliefs to live by. If the rules work in one place, they should without

bias work again. If our rules do not have favorable results,   we must

dig deeper and work some more. We are talking about life and it may

take the rest of our lives to find the why of it. Worth it?   Utterly.

The principles apply.   Universal principles apply and will work in

other places and times. These are known as true values. True

values do not change.   Because the substance of them has a

weight our hearts will recognize instantly.

Quantum, sumus, scimus.    We are what we know.

September 4, 2012

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.