From an Upper Floor

A Thud Against Our Heart. . . .

Yesterday the world united in grief as we watched the fire rage and consume a large part of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It was with dismay and heartbreak we saw a symbol of our civilization consumed by a utility given to Mankind to enhance life. Yet at the same time we saw ourselves in communion with our grief.

We have lived too long lately isolated from each other and focused primarily on ourselves. We have evolved to a world where commitment to others is in direct conflict with the desire for proclaimed self fulfillment. We announce we are not caregivers and proceed either to neglect or farm out commitments.

Yet we saw our communion as we united in our grief and we all know what we have lost.

What we do in this world of 8 billion people is show our young that commitment is primarily to oneself. Yet we all age and our young may, to our dismay, shunt their commitments onto the shoulders of the unsuspecting in their lives.

I told my youngers with whom I live that I considered it a privilege to be able to prepare dinner and even do the clean up because in an institution I would not be let near a kitchen even to snack. And though my dotage inhibits much energetic compliance with more activity, I still can push the vacuum to keep the dog fur at bay. Thus stretching muscles wishing to atrophy I’m sure and forcing a heart to keep beating.

Children brought up in homes where value is placed on character, or simply on being human, good and loving will indeed foster care on their commitments. Can it be done in today’s world? To rethink a value system is necessary.

I harbor the thought that there is time and world enough for all of us. We can reclaim our innate knowledge of good in our actions. What is done from love is readily noted. Time now to reclaim the good in ourselves.

When the nudge in mind becomes a thud against our heart, it is the God Within urging us to listen.

Rest Well, Sailor, Rest Well. . .

So in this night when you lie still
and listen for the rain, listen for the wind,
listen for the stars moving about the sky.
Listen also for your heartbeat.
It is steady and it is sure.

It beats for all of your commitments,
both loving and lovable.
You are an important adjunct to this world
and your good you cannot estimate.

Rest well, sailor, rest well.
The seas have been rocky but now
we come to the inlet that will take us to port.
There will be nothing to bring in the ship.

She makes it on her own power.

photo by Joe Hallissey, Sr.

April 16, 2019

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.
Listen World, Listen. . . God In A Rock. . .

Listen world, Listen. God In a Rock. . . .

(As we head into Earth day, I am approaching my 88^th birthday and my world is iffy right now and if I could leave a letter to beloveds I would say this. )

There is a connection to all of our Earth. From the sky to the ground, the mud , the parched soil, the flooding rivers, the oceans full of debris, of everything I breathe. There is a connection.

The rain, the snow, the earthquakes and the tornadoes plus all that cannot be imagined by the mind that writes these words. All of these are connected.

And if we think from this minute on that we are separate, that we are not connected, when all of these malfunction and we cannot draw breath, we will know how connected we are.

It is our purpose in life to protect our surroundings with every means we can. From the wrapper of our candy or what we dismiss as garbage, to what we hold to be holy in hand and our mind. Because it can go down the tube again as it has in our past when mankind looked upon life with common disdain and treated our Earth as a compost heap.

It can be taken away. Not by a grandfather god whom you may think sits in judgment but by our carelessness which assumes Earth to be a disposal to grind our refuse. The world cannot absorb and decompose what is not natural to it. It accumulates and kills all life.

It does not take care of itself. Our lack of caring transfers to everything we touch. Everything. We have lost our respect for our laws and institutions which have sustained us because they were built on foundations of need , of prayer, of yearning for respect for our divine selves. We knew of our cosmic beginning, as everything was and is and will continue to be.

But what we lose is everything with our disrespect for ourselves because this is what decimation of our earth amounts to. Basically we have lost our respect for who we are and who we brought into life through our loins when we loved an other for the right reasons.

Not for anything we labeled other than the highest and best we could feel and give to an other because we knew love. But we denigrated even that to bedroom gymnastics with babies being brought into existence not because we loved wisely and well but by careless consequences.

We learned how to do that so well, haven’t we? Our world now bursts its seams with souls we cannot feed, nor time to love the babies. We scramble for space with fertile soil to grow food and house 8 billion people.

Listen, world, please listen. We stand now to lose the classroom that the universe waits in line to enter. It is the best classroom where manifestation of the idea can be handled and utilized to the highest degree. It is the place where love manifests in a human being with mind and body and soul.

It is a god participant in stature and thought and dreams. This is the bedding that will send our least imagined, last imagined, unbelief into soaring magnificence because it is the sendoff for the Becoming of what cannot be envisioned.

How else to bring the mirror in front of our faces and say look at yourself? It is you, us, me, that has the world in its hands. The universe that we cannot yet comprehend cannot be put into the laboratory to say this is how it works. Because that knowledge we don’t have, has not been conceived and will not ever be writ.

I pray you see god in a rock. I pray you see god laying beneath the rock. In all its forms. In the air we breathe, the sky that covers us, the earth that upholds our frame that took eons to stand upright. Listen world, listen. Take care of this planet. For many it is the only place that is real to them. For me, it is a place to love into being the souls I have chosen who chose me as mother and grandmother and grandmother great.

I loved these souls into Being. They in turn have loved their worlds into Being. Look about you. To the morning that will not come to those you love. To the day that will not harbor the ideas they have crafted into being. To the night that will cover them with love so they will engage also in what will give birth to more dreams. Would you deny them this?

They have your name attached to them. They will carry what you have done, and not done. Those ideas and thoughts of omission and commission. Our Mother Earth. Think how we refer to her. Mother Earth. There is not one of us who leaves her at the end of our lives without our thought always linking to who we refer to as Mother. It is with love, either hoped for, missed or known.

Give your remaining days of caring onto her. Do what is necessary to restore her well being. She will take care of you and what you have loved into Being. Do this for her and in so doing you will not have to pick up your mistakes which are costly.

Our names are attached and the mortgage is for eternity. Yes, eternity is forever, starting now.

photo of Rock from
The Farm. . .Kathy Qualiani
Photo of Emma E.
by Merideth Hallissey

April 14, 2019

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.
What Keeps Us Awake. . . .

To stand straight need not be at the expense of an other’s fall. It can be because of one’s need to reach higher than one knows.
******
Facing one’s self in one’s declining years is a task best left to those who point to the kudos on the walls. They have something to point to and their sights rest on accomplishments. Others wonder if they failed the mark.
******
God is a word most people stop at because the mind balks at its meager knowledge to proceed.
******
To not remember is to lock the vault only to have it burglarized. One is then called to remember without those whose presence would have made the memories bearable either in joy or sorrow.
******
But to put memories into a vault and to tightly lid them is to crowd the emotions into a body with sometimes a mind bending escape as a respite.
******
Justification is a personal thing. It is what keeps us going when all about point the finger of accusation at us.
******
In the work is the beauty and once translated, the beauty is in the work.
******
All dreams are for sale. They cost a lifetime and by then you realize it wasn’t quite what you wanted, more perhaps what was needed.
******
A cure based on someone else’s faith is a tenuous cure at best.
******
The ability to recognize what another does not want to do for himself is also the ability to know when the effort is wasted. Wasted because to use another is the easiest way to go.
******
When one has the knowledge, one also has the obligation.

photo by John Holmes

April 12, 2019

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.
Creativity. . Look, what I made! . . .

I scribed. . . .it is a bag of wind we seem to contend with and problems never ending. The problems stem from diverse personalities complicating and darkening what should be an enlightened situation. What is obvious to one is dark to another.

You think the world’s state of affairs too complicated to solve. Yet should they be solved, what then the reason to continue? People then would simply start trouble to spark things up a bit. Too simple an answer.

When peoples are not operating on the same level, coming from such diverse beginnings as culture, genetics, health conditions, etc, you have a coloration that confounds even the Solomons. One swipe does not wipe out problems. Even annihilation would not be the answer.

For the desire to create is so strong that another place would be found for manifestation. And the creativity that would explode would put the same situations into play. . . .

Creativity requires expression, which will take on the coloration of the individual souls, the emotional as well as all the previous adjectives. And memory being what it is, would soon also color situations and promote problems for people working and living together.

With creativity, lesson plans burgeon. Problem solving nests within the problems, within the creation, within the creators.

Unless there is personal growth, there will be unrest. Look to solve what darkens your life. Begin where you are. When you bring peace to yourself, you also bring it to others.

My argument. . . one man can ruin a world and a world of prayerful men cannot save it? (what is the lesson here?)

Creation. . .

An ear from here will touch an elbow there
and mid the deafening roar, hear the shout,
‘I am here!’ ‘I am here!’

And another world is given birth with form
strangely reminiscent of a time and place
where you held me and I, you.

Together then, a life, a birth and a new world
created by the unmistakable combustion
amidst the resounding silence of an I love you.

Sublimely exiting, noisily entering, within
the crackling cartilage of old and new forms,
new worlds are born of memory, of experience,

housed in the eternal mind.

artwork by Claudia Hallissey

April 9, 2019

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 World: Atlas Shrugged. . love her enough to shoulder her high. . . .

Value Systems. . .

A value system is what is honed by a lifetime or many lifetimes lived as Beings, and not necessarily only as the human that we know. It can reflect lifetimes of worlds not visible to the human system of values or cognizance of them.

What the value system will show is what has been driven through the heart of one to become what it is they are, who it is they are.

A value system cannot be measured by words, nor can it be described by words. We can say we hold this to be of worth but the meaning to each will differ. What it cannot convey is what the individual’s heart holds as value.

When the values of one are betrayed by someone of worth to the individual, either by words or actions, the eyes will tell you of the hurt the wrong has done. Here again, that hurt to be felt by another, can be understood only when it is within the frame of cognizance, of reference.

Otherwise it will be a matter with little meaning and as easily dismissed as a flick of the wrist. Or a shrug. Aaahhhh they will say, a nothing. No big deal. But a big deal it will be to the one afflicted. It will be a devastation and it will tumble worlds that have taken lifetimes to construct.

Values are gifts we shoulder from one generation to another. The thoughtful ones gather the cores of the worthwhile that enhances the growth of humanity. It begins always within the four walls of where cognizance emerges. It is a responsibility; it is a sacrament.

It is long past the time we treat it as such.

Come Into My Kitchen. . .

Come into my kitchen
by the back door.
Only dear friends are allowed to.
Others have to earn the right
by walking through the halls
to the center, the heart of my home.
But you can come to the back door.

I will let you in.

Photo of Kitchen-John Holmes
Dove Photo-John Hallissey

April 4, 2019

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.
To See The Day. . .

From Psalms of Love is the following poem entitled ‘To See The Day.’ The emotions and the times were painfully immobilizing. The inner journey means different things to all those who attempt it. I did not realize there was a name for what I was thrust into. All I knew was that I hurt. Heaven intervened and there is a paper trail that I leave. Perhaps it will prove helpful to someone. I live to tell you that I could not have survived without the ordeal of the journey.

To See The Day. . .

I’ve traveled distances
not measured in miles
through the intensity of love and found you.

I’ve broken barriers designed for men in mind
and found the freedom imposed by chains
within me ready. I took upon me a coat to wear
when first I chose to come with Mind.

I pulled it close for warmth.
Its protection saved me from invasion.
Little was known about the warp of weave
and how fragile the belief that kept me warm.

I was told that distances were measured in miles,
that love could be seen and cold could be felt.
I did not know the cold felt in a house of fear
was colder than the Arctic and that all the blankets
in the world could not the body keep warm
if the heart was barren. I learned.

I did not know that for some the barriers of mind
allowed the peaceful growth of children.
To have been so wrong was proved to me
by teachers intent on my freedom.

All in me, as I in Life was a lesson I came to learn.
The hour creeps toward dawn and I hasten
the good night toward a day to be broken
with promises kept. I never thought

I would live long enough to see the day.

Artwork by Claudia Hallissey
Psalms of Love on sale at Amazon

April 3, 2019

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 World I Worked To Build. . .

The World I Worked To Build. . .

Where hearts open to each other, where minds are keen on learning, and where love intends to see its full bloom. Where beings are intent on growing to their fullness and work becomes a blessing.

Do I want much?

I want only what I worked and hoped for. Where parenting is approached with a reverence bent on new life nurtured.

Where talents are perceived with a reverence granted the giver and where life is held in the crucible of love and needs are cared for when they arise and lovingly attended with appropriateness.

Is it much that I ask for?

Do I work hard because I think I am the prime mover and instigator in my life? Are we, each and everyone?

And if it were a known, would there be chaos? Would we be immobile because within the each is the knowledge that our god would rescue us? Would it be knowledge or faith?

Is this why people don’t try harder? But try they do. Doing is what they don’t.

THE WEAVER. . .

Standing on a shrouded hill,
integrating worlds in a body, split,
is a she-man, weaving the old and the new
to warm a world gone cold.

Walking and usurping man’s ego,
split from his metamorphic mind,
she knots her splendour with magic.

Jealously guarding the expenditures,
she weaves the woolen mat in metaphysical colors,
unidentified by he who walks.

Marvelously melding with utmost utility,
she embraces the fabric, whole, with never a glance
to see the world spinning into it.

Splendid is she at her task as she gains
strength from silences filled with howling voices.
She separates them in her mind and makes more magic.

Look up, look up, we say,
at the wondrous unfolding! Rain ponders its drops
as they fall but the woman weaves and weaves and weaves.

She will look up when it is finished.

April 1, 2019

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 Love We Pray. . . amen and amen. . . .

As dawn breaks, my fingers of both hands curled about each other and I marveled at their slimness, their ability to elicit the feel of themselves, each digit wrapped around the other.

And I felt that nothing, no other world would ever make me feel such blessedness in my hands’ ability to do so many things over the course of a life.

To kneading bread, to winding the yarn, to smoothing the brow of my very sick child and have him telling me later that it helps him sleep.

Everything I touch holds a lesson for me. The square inch of soil I spooned with young hands yielded secrets kept from generations.

The eyes of a child as my hands embraced young shoulders tells me what went into their ancient heritage. And I grasp their hands in mine and convey my love by touch.

I would use these hands to mold and make and set trends never before thought. I see the beauty of the great god in the blending of these human genes and see the perfect Adam and perfect Eve emerging and see the virtue in the making and the doing of the homely tasks that will start the holy process once again. And I will open my arms and spread my hands to grasp the youngest by my hip and be grateful for hands that show

how very much I can love on this planet called Earth.

Spring Prayer. . .

As we enjoin the Universal Spirit to entrust
with another spring, another resurrection, awaken
within us the desire to nurture the world
that has nurtured us.

Let our hearts lead us to that place
where we intuitively cherish the mother who feeds
and clothes us and gives sustenance. Let us
not forsake our responsibilities to those yet unborn,
whose futures we have already mortgaged.

Blessed Spirit, enliven our curiosity about our daily world,
remind us that the bird’s song needs our acknowledgement and praise,
that the sun needs our greeting and night wishes it bid good.

As we nourish those of our commitment, speak to us of our commitment
to the home we know, our planet Earth. Let our love guide us
to make beautiful, to make secure and to guard diligently
what has so faithfully harbored us.

In love we pray, amen and amen.

March 30, 2019

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.
And Sunday Comes. . .

Sometimes there sweeps over one a feeling saying ‘that’s how I always felt’ whatever prompts a memory. It could be a scent or sunlight or something triggering a wave awakening response long dormant. Often one knows where it originates but often the ‘always’ has no beginning at least in this lifetime.

This following feeling is a comforting one and a loving one to me. Whenever it comes upon me the memories are good and I wear them like a stretched sweater . We are our memories and if this day we look upon our lives as surviving triumphantly in spite of a hazardous journey, bless all memories because you have overcome and are the victory.

I started this entry years ago when waiting for guests and family to arrive for dinner. This is as far as I got with it but coming upon it now the feeling was fresh. You have these incidents also, perhaps never thinking them special. But they are. . . . and so makes you special.

This is a Sunday morning at almost noon and I sit here at my window in my beloved study and look out at the snow piled on the evergreen boughs albeit like sagging angel wings. The sun comes through the opposite window and the brightness bespeaks somehow a Sunday morning.

Why is there always a different look to the world on a Sunday? Everything looks somehow different, almost as if there was a visible sign on the day saying, this is Sunday!

As a child on The Farm, with the inside door open, leaving only the storm door with its weeping windows and the sun streaming through, there was the smell of chicken soup or whatever the stove was cooking signifying that this, even this, smelled different because it was Sunday.

So my Sunday in this house smells like Sunday with the beef roast and baked potatoes, as I await the family and our guests. It will be a good dinner and this is what Sundays are all about for me.

It Is Enough. . .

It is enough. . . just breathing and feeling
the north wind coming through the night.

It is enough. . . to stir my senses,
to lift me from my bed to get on with life.

It is enough. . . to raise the dust
out of the corners too long neglected.

It is enough. . . to lift the dirty and sweaty labors
and point out that in these are the gifts of life.

These are the beautiful,
along with the first snow and the harvest intact and sealed.

And to find a reflection
of what I hold dear in the eyes of an Other.

It is enough.

March 28, 2019

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 Memory. . . Once Upon A Time. . . .

Still with talk across the dinner table I asked this philosopher-legal how my philosophy sounded to his professional ear. Well, he said, it is not new and I have heard it before, Plato, for instance. Uncredentialed and unbelieving, I still gulp. In memory, this day, of his leaving this Earth, we consider ourselves forever privileged to have known him as David Hallissey.

Once upon a time. . . .

As before, this is going to start out once upon a time when humans took form, there was an openness about them that we say was almost biblical. Until the fig leaf was needed.

When man first walked he knew from where he came. It was a large picture he held. In the classic Iliad, the gods involved with the physical characters were in various stages of growth. Both gods and angels created.

What is considered myth by the educated was really an openness that was not a something everyone enjoyed. There was a time when it was but came the nemesis of dis-ease, of fear, of flight and of desire and the brain’s doors were closed.

To this day a handful of mavericks with open heads are employed, scattered among the populace wearing the costumes of the day. They are depended on heavily.

What should have been a rapid rate of growth is a snail’s pace. The grinding of the mills is studious, well intentioned not to upset those who cannot handle the subject at all.

Survival has become the prime reason for being. Just to breathe and keep living being goal for both animal and human. One does not change horses in the middle of the stream unless the horse becomes too painful to ride and rides the rider. Change is then necessary.

Genetic manipulation has the strongest surviving. The how must answer in the head of the one needing to know. The picture of this planet must be a priority when negotiating for changes. This is the school for learning the rudiments of behavior for universal existence.

We broaden the premise from earth life to life elsewhere, other worlds. If a closed physical system is preferred and we all transit, more thought must be given to where.

If nothing but clouds are in mind, we must consider harp lessons since heaven is waitlisted with guitar players.

Overheard . . .

I hear them say. . .

I cannot follow
what she says all the time.

And you say. . .

I don’t either all the time,
so don’t blame yourself. . .

But then I hear. . .

But she says things I know are true
and I think I only
could know them. . .

And you say. . .

that is why she can say
what only you know to be true,
because she has been
to all these places
we don’t understand . . .

And you say. . .

I can only wonder how long
it took all those doors

to open for her. . .

March 25, 2019

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.