You ask. . . . How do you go to your knees
and with tears bend
and lift your head and
to whom or to what?
I say. . . . To a loving, wholly, holy
Spirit that supports me
with an embrace I know. . . .
You say. . . . A verb cannot do that. . .
rolling thunder cannot,
only. . . .
I say. . . Only a heart
that knows mine and
what I say in answer
to what I hear and know. . .
and continue. . . only in obeisance
to what we both want
for beloveds, for Beings
throughout all life. . . .
You say. . . how do you get to that place?
I say. . . . I worked to remember
from where I came
and what I knew. . . .
It has taken my life
and the cost has been dear. . . .
You ask. . . .
Was it worth it?
I say
I am here to write this.
They rescued me when I crashed the gates.
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 lock up the room
and pocket the last remnants
of words laying about
unattended.
Fearful that pieces of my heart
may be found
scattered among them.
And why not?
Times such as these
leave us with little salve
to heal the open wounds
which once were hearts.
For whom do we weep?
The children whose siblings
will no longer come to the table
to convey with no doubt
the events which took their innocence?
Or the parents whose hearts
were transplanted
when word came that
these unspent stars were already
breathing the rarified air
as heaven’s most blessed?
Look at us here.
Pleading that our children
will be safe as they try to understand
what we in our dotage
have not learned.
To resort to arms
means death in any country.
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.
Lean, love, lean on me
and rest your tired heart.
Let me rescue you out of a dream
and allow you to awaken in a world of choice.
Bend to me, as the willow to the wand,
as the lily grips the water to float.
I have time enough and arms
strong enough to grant you rest.
Lean on me, love, lean on me.
Press your tired mind onto mine
while we give to each other
what we sorely need.
It is only a breath of a moment
that separates us
and but a breath
that holds us apart.
Come, lean for now.
(this Valentine’s Day with much love, Veronica (( from
the upcoming Psalms of Love, ))
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 am by nature not a mover, but a thinker. I think a lot and have been muchly criticized for it. By people saying I read too much into life. Mostly by people who never had a clue. If my friend Emerson is to be taken as an authority, then to think is to act. The body may slow as is the case of aging, but Spirit thinks itself a perpetual 35, which is a necessary preparation for ongoing life, here and elsewhere.
Awards may not hang on the walls, but many hang on the heart. One came this day to tell me that my repetitive lectures bear fruit because of the evidence in this poignant photo. Emma E. this newly minted daughter came home to arms that already know the shape of her heart. They will hammock and support her and catch her for as long as there will be need.
Her father knew his father’s arms when he came new to this world, so the new father with tenderness remembered. The emanating love in this photograph far surpasses anything this world could award. It is priceless.
The snow covers the grasses on this very cold day and is marred by the traffic in the streets. Soon its pristine purity will carry the dark residue of its activity. Once I kept shutters closed to the streets and opened them to the back yard where there was life I could understand and cope with.
There were birds at the feeder, arguing still, evergreens growing in trust that life is ever new each day, demanding our very best with the promise that life is ever good.
Welcome home Emma E. It is enough to know at this time that life is ever good. You chose well. There is love in abundance. You have rekindled in these harshest of times, my zest for ongoing life. You are a fresh dawn for eternity. Welcome home. I will always love you.
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.
If it were not for the fact that our David came home for chemo treatment on a regular basis and he and I had dinner together at home, I would never have had the mind bending conversations we did.
It was then I learned of world creation for the first time when he said in an unrecognizable voice, ‘ by damn, if anyone could create a world, you can.’ It was a possibility discussed in his major which was Philosophy.
I did not come across the creation theory until years later when studying Robert Nozick’s book, The Examined Life. He said before his untimely death that he thought possibly that humans were in the creation business, in training for world building. And here David and I were discussing this years earlier at the dinner table. (I have had some very good teachers?)
The following was from a journal entry of November 8, 1983 and I scribed the teacher’s words.
When your actions are such that no ill will is intended then acceptance of a decision need not destroy you. It is part of growth which allows a future to be decided. You have spent a large time thinking that a decision has been made before your heart knows that decision.
We do not take lightly a deference to opinions. Your philosophy shows already what happens to choices in a world of worlds. Yet you think a forced decision is no decision. You have already taken into consideration possibilities.
If possibilities are probable, then we have already built worlds. No need now to hesitate. No need now to reconsider what is already imprinted in a world somewhere.
We need to take all probabilities and let them fall where they may. Now we know that all things are considered at some level. Now we know there is a somewhere and a somewhen for all things.
Let the answers be what they may and you build your world with the intentions which come from your heart.
(if there is energy left I may do a small volume on world building with the Given poetry on worlds through this lifetime. Right now though after much time trying to choose a short poem on decisions, my thoughts lead me to choosing a heart theme, with the words of the last line from the entry. ‘You build your world with the intentions which come from your heart.’ So close to Valentine’s Day and within a short time that my elder will be ready to give the word on The Psalms of Love, I chose the following. In journeying what one wishes is not what one thinks is priority but what one gets, IS. Not up front at first, but in the final analysis, it Is.)
Not Wished but Needed. . .
It is a heart
full blown
inclined to burst.
But for now
it beats its song
too sweet not to hear. . .
Why, can it not be
forever inclined
in a direction of choice?
Instead fully charged
toward what is not wished. . .
but needed. . .
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 awakened one recent morning in conference with someone who said it was again time for the article on the lesson in strawberries. Several years ago it was printed in The Detroit Free Press and has since been reprinted several times. A man appeared at my door the first time with a quart of strawberries from his garden and several stories to tell about his mother and her philosophy. It is with wonder that some ideas will strike a warm bed of memory and spill its essence. I cannot bring to mind to whom I was talking when awakened but no doubt a classroom again. I think I am nighttime’s perennial student.)
I was a young girl, about 12. It was our first summer on The Farm and it was a hard one. But it also was filled with good food straight from the warm earth. My mother had a talent for growing things in the city despite its polluted air; even 70 years ago people knew to be unhealthy. But in the clear air of the country, in the soil of her loam filled garden, her talents blossomed as did her crops.
We were getting produce ready for the stand down near the road. As we were preparing the fruits and vegetables, selling them as fast as we put them out, friends from the city were arriving. They were diverse characters. Some were people in her circumstances with many children and little money. A few were wealthy but the outstanding characteristic of all these relationships was mutual respect.
Toward the late afternoon, I was tired and whiny. The source of my irritation was the fact that my mother was giving to her friends, without charge, the best and finest of what we were putting out. A bushel of potatoes here, quarts of strawberries there, a basket of fresh vegetables here.
But the strawberries were my argument. I loved them and the ones she grew were the reddest, juiciest and largest I had ever seen. They were sweet clear through and the dream stuff of that first June on The Farm. With the heavy cream separated from the rich milk the excellent cows gave, these were mine she was giving away. The strawberries summed up my resentment.
“You can’t keep giving away our profits,” I said. “you have given away half of all the produce!”
She turned to me in a voice I have not forgotten and a lesson that has stayed with me.
“These are mine,” she said. “I will do with them what I please. These are for me to give away if I want to. No one can tell me who to give to. My friends may never do anything for me, but if one of them does something for my children or my grandchildren, then that will be payment for me.”
I have thought often of that lesson in gift giving. In giving what is yours. In the course of my days, when someone did something for me I did not expect, there was the lesson in strawberries. When so much has been done for our children by their friends and ours, the lesson in strawberries comes up.
When time, whole weekends of time, have been given to sit with a sick child, to listen to an impoverished spirit, to make dinner when the task seems insurmountable and appetite non-existent, to do any of these when time has become our most precious commodity, it is a gift of Spirit. When a check arrived unexpectedly from someone whose only reason was “I remember how I would have felt to have received this” or the someones who oftentimes helped our children through school because “it was done for me.”
I thought of the lesson in strawberries.
As I review a life where so much has been done for me and mine, from sources unexpected, I am grateful for the lesson in strawberries. My mother gave what was hers to give, what she worked for and gave freely. She was paying it forward long before the idea became novel. I do not forget.
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.
Journal entry of November 3, 1983—(keep in mind I work with all time is simultaneous, a quantum premise, though I did not know it at the time when 35 years ago I was into black holes and white holes where this entry picks up) . . I scribed. . .It is no small thing when we start commenting on theuniverses within universes, penetrating and interpenetrating, we then go into which had its beginning, yet when?
It is still happening you were told. The past is still happening and the future has already happened. Take your pencil and make circles extending even further and further out. You will find that the circles become interlocked and in them you are, picking up material for a book, for living, for a problem which yet is not solved. We like to see material stretched and the mind boggled.
(I did what you see here and then the teachers comment). The interlocking circles show the universes. That is as good as it goes. From your I Am you then project into an I Will Be and then the will be will show your then I Am. Following this procedure you see where the reverse will also be true. Your I Am falls into the I Was interlocking and in the I Was is the center of the I Am and it is still happening. The past is never finished, never done. It is in progress.
When you looked upon the Amish material simulating the book cover, it peeled your hide back again. You found a tugging to where your present I am is still a part of that present. This is what does the arc angle in people’s heads. They don’t know why they are drawn, but that part of them that still yields to that present, the past present is where the turn of events draws them.
Your Circa 1840 speaks to a time of a woman and family. She lives yet and draws on you. And you on her. Your feelings surmount the time element and give to her the needed support. Her lack of knowing circumscribes her knowing. Both of you are in the process of requesting a greater something and you think you knew it from a somewhen. What somewhen? The somewhen is in your memory bank and you knew of it and wore it with splendor. Where did you come from?
Circa 1840: Revisited
She could say in reverent tone,
I love you.
I polished the hearth and
set the bread to rise.
While her heart cried silently,
do you love me?
The children came, one by one.
She loved them, each and everyone.
They were good. She said I love you.
I’ve borne you sons
and taught them how to pray.
I’ve polished the hearth
and set the bread to rise.
While her heart cried silently,
do you love me?
The sons grew up and one by one
they went away. He never knew why.
He never knew that they too, said,
I’ve fed the chicks and bedded the calves
and got a perfect score in sums.
While their hearts fairly burst,
do we please thee?
He accepted the polished hearth,
the risen bread, the handsome sons
who tried so hard to please
as that which was his due.
One day the hearth no longer shone,
no longer was the bread set to rise,
no handsome sons to plead
with eyes that tore her heart apart.
‘You do not love me!’ he angrily shouted.
Wearily she turned away.
Did you not see the polished hearth,
the bread set to rise,
the sons who tried so hard to please
and love that died?
(click on illustration for details)
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.
So much to be said. To take a hammer
to a word and splinter it. . .what’s to be gained?
I say,
Where is the meaning if you don’t?
You say,
Let everyone take what is theirs and build on it.
That is the way of the world and the way illusions
are granted a solid state.
And darling woman, it is all right.
I say,
They say that life is too hard just to be illusions.
The people will say of me she was off the wall!
You say,
There will be those who say you have a fine
imagination. And others will say you took an impossible life
and created a philosophy to sustain it. Does not everyone?
I say,
Not every child is shown tender mercies. And
without them there is a long sleep when transiting. Remedial
help is needed.
You say,
You shored up when fault was found within your system.
You continue to love and lady, continue I ask.
And I ask,
Where will you be?
You say,
Until the day you can no longer do it, walk to the fields
and lie down and say no more. . . . I will pick you up and we will
again set fire to hearts which do not flicker yet and create that
world where love abounds and commitments and priorities take
their proper place.
Time is limited and it grows dark. We work, we work,
with love, lady, with love we 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.
The bones creek
and there is lack of motion
because like the deep freeze
enveloping the lakes,
the skeleton is immobile.
The comforter wraps
around bony knees
and hugs my chest
while eucalyptus bathes
what is left of my senses.
The scent is clearly
reminiscent of a world
where row upon row of bushes
yielded itself to memory
where love held sway.
And children ran
on green grasses and
waters filled lakes
with clarity and sky was void
of black plumes.
Our motives were obvious
and good and love was rampant
in abundance.
All this too was a dream dreamed
by a need shouted in a whisper.
It was lived in and children
prospered and grew into adults
whose dreams
fathered other dreams. . .
When did they become a nightmare?
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.
My ears cleaved to the door frame
of the dining room. Her whisper was hoarse,
were there many?
Lots, he said, lots, as he held the letter
that told him what they saw. Speaking
in broken English, he continued.
They pushed for space, women and children
and their men. They wanted to see.
My people saw he said.
Their words burned my brain
as I strained to listen, afraid I wouldn’t
catch a sorrow hushed. It didn’t last long
he said, because they fell. Matko Bosko she said.
Remember our history he said.
As if that could explain what I heard.
And I knew the god they called
upon to save them from whatever they feared.
He whispered again, somehow trying to
make this horrid time an all right matter.
My people saw them, he kept saying.
And I loved those parents who made things
seem right yet what my heart knew was evil
and my head fought them and argued
till I would vomit. We would go
into holy week and pray just as
my cousins across the waters who saw
what was done went back to their tables
and supped as if nothing had happened.
These were friends and relatives
whose prayers were different and
they said that made them different than us.
And the us that I was born into made me
ashamed and sick to my stomach and I kneeled
in front of the toilet and emptied my shame
washed with the tears of I am so sorry
and threw up all of my ten years
and so went my trust.
(Much of what was happening at that time was what I overheard to be Poland’s part in the holocaust. Relatives wrote what was happening there. Being an ailing child at home led me to listen carefully to everything. The whispered conversations were fewer and not fully understood until as an adult I happened upon Winter Journey by Diane Armstrong. The impact on me was visceral. The memories connected with family at that time rushed to surface. These events were deep in the knowledgeable ten year old I was who was frightened and ashamed. How does one live with shame? )
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.
