From an Upper Floor

Seriously Consider. . .

Seriously Consider. . .

I go back to thinking time and again that one cannot ask to govern a body of men when one cannot govern one’s own body. And for those who say one’s private life has nothing to do with one’s public competence, I say character will determine private as well as public behavior. One cannot perform better in life than one is a person.

*****

Angels are about you. Sometimes the costumes can fool you.

*****

Information is often beyond what the individual can assimilate. It is for the taking but not for the assimilating. It somehow has to fit before it can be worn.

*****

There are those whom you cannot take seriously but you must because often they hold tremendous positions of power to do ill. They do not know the meaning of seriously. One day they will. Then the memory will nudge and the terrible weight will fall upon them and they will know that between men there is no other god but the weight of words with whatever intent spoken.

*****

Three things have guided me. To do some good, to do no harm and to never ever be afraid. The latter is the hardest to learn and the most important.

For to exhibit fear gives the hoodlums advantage to take over the world. And then it is no longer free to the majority who approach life in a concerned way. This will no longer be a classroom but a prison.

It will not be the learning experience for further evolution but become the place where those of ill intent are bent on destruction.

*****

In this world such little emphasis is placed on words like truth and character and bonding. If in another world you learned these guidelines of the heart, its absence has filtered down to you in this world and has caused you grief. The unease devastates with nothing tangible to grasp except to say you don’t feel well. And well you are not.

*****

The first step inward is the most difficult one to take. Most will run away from rather that toward themselves. Most do not know themselves well enough nor trust themselves well enough to take that first unsure step. That is where the work begins. It is foreign territory to most. It is territory that the Science Gods have filled with curious creatures and religions have filled with devils.

photo by
John Holmes

July 20, 2017

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.
On The Universal Watch. . .

There is a universally ineffable, inherent bedded value in all life that holds us all accountable. It is this which we must answer to. Not because of Others’ intent, but of our own basic divinity, our own intent.

We may try to dismiss this urgency within us, but we cannot destroy it. It will continue to disrupt our sense of ease but will eventually cause such dis-ease that self confrontation will be the ultimate dismissal. Intuitively we know this.

On The Universal Watch. . .

Glancing into the icy calm
of the darkened sky,
leaving little to the night’s magic,
is a knowledge from minds in action.

Saying little in languages understood,
it moves itself with intelligence,
looking for evidence bespeaking intent.

Always wary, ever beseeching,
reaching conclusions seeking
a desired peace with an enduring future.

Not only one world in motion with
an anxious search, but many
whose futures are determined by the
results of a whirling planet
whose emotions are in turmoil.

A learning place, a starting place,
whose tentative decisions determine
the times to come dependent on
the unbridled, unharnessed emotions
of a childhood still groping.

Worlds looming as non entities,
not proven by the laboratories
of the science gods,
is life in other forms;
as intelligent, viable, thoughtful,
as intent on living within the realm
of their possibilities as we on Earth . . .

Searching as we do as gods for an enduring Peace.

July 17, 2017

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.
Trust; Maudie Again??

Maudie Again? Impossible! Maybe????

In April of 2016 I wrote of Maudie and Jack, the doves who took up residence one year beneath the patio cover of our Michigan home. They sat on eggs and hatched two babies. I did not take photos of that time but I did take notes. Since then there have been three moves to where I am now in California, and to my surprise beneath the patio cover here, a dove sits on her nest and eggs, however many I don’t know. My son John took the photo of the dove and lo, she does look like Maudie. I don’t know how long doves live nor how far they can fly. It seems impossible that it could be Maudie, but who is to know for sure?

She is about ten feet outside the kitchen window and I look at her and she sees me. Her beak is turned toward me so I think she is looking at me. Her eyes are steady and I don’t know if birds blink intentionally. But she is beautiful. It just seems more than a coincidence that another dove should find the home I live in to be of such a secure place that she wishes another family to be born where I am. My grandson William could not believe that first Maudie allowed me to move her and her nest from one place to another without a squawk. A loud racket at least. But she didn’t. And he is much older now so I wonder what he will think of this dove sitting on another nest beneath the patio cover a world away from the time of the first Maudie.

In the previous essay I wrote that I learned that creatures, no matter the species, have memory. Birds are not forgetful. Maudie remembered my care for her and her babies from previous times so she built her nest outside my kitchen window the first time. Well, I am learning, there is either a telepathic chain of command or memory bank that involves all of us. And I am confronted every day with opening my mind to the vast encumbrances that preclude our thoughts from encompassing a very primary fact. That there is connection with all of life, even with the most mundane. And the bird species is more than simple, they are as complex in miniature as we think we are giants in intellect.

I will keep you in the loop with my companions. We are at the edge of understanding.

AT The Edge. . .

We are only at the
beginner’s edge of understanding.

So much yet to learn,
to ferret out in languages understood.
So much and yet so little time.

Let us then be serious
in offering our blessings
in gratitude
for what has been given.

But let us choose our illusions
carefully. Relationships have
been formed and dissolved
under illusions.

And we too?

photo by
john stanley hallissey

July 13, 2017

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 Chance For Love. . .

A Chance For Love

Each day is a new beginning, each breath the birth of a new world. Time now to forgo the past and give life a chance. Accountable we are and to allow that to become a fact, it is the moment to begin anew.

The poem will only take on meaning for those ready for it. It becomes self explanatory and within one’s frame of reference, a truth. It will not distort nor become a trajectory for misguided action when viewed from the heart, one’s true compass.

A Chance For Love. . .

Each time is a new time.
Cast in the shadow
of a rock, a cave,
or even a cove. . .

Simply set and
inspired by a rolling coast,
a sunset, a glimpse of
a new place. . .

New tidings of good cheer;
a glass of sweet wine,
robust, quaffed in slow gulps
but favored by a thirsty throat.
Ever new, ever fresh
as a new beginning.

New worlds,
hammering their impatience
with promises;
limited only by how much

we are ready to forget.

photo by
John Holmes

July 11, 2017

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.
Rolling Thunder . . .

Last week I awakened with a memory of a place and trying to make sense of it. I realized I was given a piece of action to remember. I remember reaching for a framed photograph of silhouettes of the children when they were little. It was lying on the floor and as I tried reaching for it, it kept moving. The whole room was tipping around and the photo was nowhere still. I realized as I tried many times to pick it up that I was in rolling thunder and the implicate and explicate of quantum theory came to mind.

According to Michael Talbot’s Holographic Universe, the physicist David Bohm says this deeper level of reality is the implicate or enfolded order and the explicate, the outer or unfolded order. I remember it as the central part of the dream and the outer fringes. This is what every aspect of life means to me when explaining the rolling thunder of the universe.

Our Earth is the classroom of stability, the learning place that makes it easier to accept life and its principles, to adapt to and is wonderful as the learning classroom it is. The stability can be counted upon and makes it easy to acclimate to life and makes excellent sense to want it as a someplace to return to. Which is why it has a growing populace who learn the rules and apply them from lifetime to lifetime. And the sophisticated soon learn the place to excel is the Earth planet and the waiting list is unending.

I wrote Rolling Thunder last year and thought it might help with the explanation of the nighttime excursion. Since I see all of life connected, it was a natural selection to the dream sequence of last week. I hope you read it with an ahhh sooo maybe ??!!

Rolling Thunder. . .

from what was a formless start
were pieces sent scattering
into a nothingness. . .

Our Consciousness spoke
one to the other and the thoughts
formed a place ready to hold our dreams.
We then broke off pieces of who we are and
went in search of meaning. . .

For sport, for something to do to fill ourselves,
for then we came to that place where thought
demanded a something to hold.
It was called Manifest.

This thought was like rolling thunder
with a threat of storm. It was filled with power.
That power engulfed the whole of us
and we emerged as Man.

We grew and contributed to this great turbulence
and life took on a beauty which ennobled us
as creatures of this space now forming worlds at once.

In the center we knew our sense of power,
like thunder rolling and even now continues
its unrolling the events from our lives and dreams
and as it all enfolds it becomes part
of an Other’s dream.

The dreams unfold and pieces spark Other’s dreams
into an unrolling of the Great God’s Becoming.

It is with this understanding that the why and how has
neither a beginning nor an ending but is everlasting.

We always were soul stuffs and
were known by one name.
And when our thoughts grew with power we came into
Being and are known by one name again.
It is Creation we are involved with.

And we light up with surprise.

photo by
Joe Hallissey Sr.

July 8, 2017

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.
Pieces of Mind. . .

If it were not for those who make connections with events, mankind long ago would have eaten dirt. And it would have been the end of the sojourn.

*****

Heaven opens momentarily and closes but the glimpses from the view linger and haunt one forever.

*****

We endure those things we are powerless to change, no matter how wise the intentions.

*****

Commitments, destined or chosen, determine choices and sometimes close choices completely. Conscience will help determine needed adjustments in thinking.

*****

It is the lighted candle that sparks the heavens.

*****

Life is a balanced judgment.

*****

In the silence of who we are, we take flight.

*****

When we ravage the psyche of children, they in turn have difficulty cherishing anything with reverence, especially their Earth Mother.

*****

You must give them tools with which to work, not crutches. Tools.

*****

It is not the mystery of life which stuns man and does not beguile him to further thought. It is the work involved.

*****

The long face of gloom does not become the human at all in the face of so many small victories, but the constant grin bespeaks an empty head too.

*****

Considering the condition of the world and considering who we confine to psychiatric wards, the question should arise, how one defines who is mad in a world gone mad?

photo by
Joe Hallissey Sr.

July 6, 2017

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.
For Sitting On The Porch. . .

For almost half of my life, we lived in the one home during our marriage. And maintenance was my responsibility except for big construction work which was hired out. Every spring, staining the porch, (it is now called deck) was mine. And the first call of balmy weather had me with roller and brushes beginning. It was an all day affair to get it evenly covered. So the rest of the ritual was planting the hanging pots and barrels with the annuals. I stained the barrels and everything that was wood with Oxford Brown. I loved the color. The placing of the summer furniture completed the work. It was a secluded refuge.

Early morning and dusk into evening were the best times for sitting. Early morning for the greeting of the birds ready to acknowledge, by a brief halt in their singing, my good morning. But evening when I sat in the oncoming dark with my mind’s work in progress, I was haunted by memories which kept me company. Never feeling alone but accompanied by centuries of companions who stood and looked with wonder with similar eyes fastened on the sky. Seeing perhaps what my eyes did now.

For Sitting On The Porch. . .

It is a night
for sitting on the porch.
The night is soft
and there is a breeze about.
Soft. A love night. . . .
How could it be better?

Only to share with an Other
whose eyes see as mine do;
the shapes of the trees
against the darkening sky.
The maples are round
like balloons;
the irregular Tamarack
whose wispy needles
look like bare branches.

The feel of the night
like a caress,
a loving touch,
a whisper.

I was the night and all of my Self in it.

July 3, 2017

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 Cosmic Experience. . .

From a past journal entry. . . emotions become a burden needing to be understood before they are shrugged. Once understood they become integrated and no longer need to be carried.

To understand the fullness of humanity is the first step toward the cosmic experience. When the feelings become more than the human body can carry, the heavens step in and with one fell swoop, open the understanding toward greater truths.

And those truths need to be examined and placed in context of the person who is exposed.

A Cosmic Prayer for Mankind

We would wish for much.
We would wish
for the sublime love
that was preached
from every mountaintop.

We would wish
for a mother’s love
to be there for the infant
and the father’s hand
to caress the brow of every child.

We would wish for peace
within the human psyche
and learning to be brought
to the dinner table
and the breakfast table every time.
And love to be served
as the main course.

It is much that
we wish for;
much that we yearn for.
But peace is designed
for the human in mind
from birth to the grave.

Bring peace.

photo by
Joe Hallissey Sr.

July 1, 2017

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.
With Your Name. . .

With Your Name. . .

From a past journal entry . . I seem to be aware of a depth this morning of a something that shoulders my weight and carries me. That the words I speak have little meaning. They are simply words. And yet, what I would wish is to reach down into an other’s pockets and find the stuff that is collecting there that is never brought to light.

That there is a collection of gems that are never used. And should I be able to do this, would the owner recognize these gems as theirs?

I don’t know. I can already hear them, as with the children in camp when presented with a shoe bearing their name, it is not mine. It has your name on it. No, it isn’t mine.

With Your Name. . .

I spread the gems
on the velvet cloth
and see them sparkle. . .

Not mine, you say,
not mine. . .
but they came from
your pocket, I say. . .
I didn’t have to dig deep.

There is perseverance
with all of its facets,
in the smile of your daughter
whose cost took years
of work to satisfy dental bills.

And the nights of standing
in the icy breath of the north wind
at nearing the midnight hour
to satisfy the young hockey skater
whose dreams only
another parent or brother could understand. . .

And hours on end
to put food on the table into ones
on the run who would again
appear magically for refill
just as the last plate is cleaned. . . .

Not counting the diamonds
your work demanded
as you swallowed your fear to appear
at the breakfast table with confidence
to hopefully infect everyone’s day.

Spilling profusely, I count
the gems before me and
know they are yours because
I reached down into your pockets
and find not lint nor fuzz
but a million diamonds sparkling
with facets shimmering,

with your name.

June 28, 2017

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.
You Are The Cherished Purpose. . .

You wonder if you make a difference. You’re those things that escape the notice of people. But without the daily doings of choice, of comforts, of niceness, the world could not go on.

The smallest act of mercy has large repercussions. Remember that. When the smallest act of kindness is received, it is passed on without thinking because the act gains a life of its own and struggles for expression. It gathers momentum as it moves through the person’s hands, their life and those about them.

It is these acts of kindness, of niceness, of love that keeps the earth’s purpose in mind. And the earth continues to vibrate its song and sings it for the ears that are destined to hear. One person can delay it but no person can stop it up completely. It will only be delayed but never destroyed.

The many acts of kindness and goodness dispensed by you took their proper route and touched many lives giving to each a measure of estimation they could not reach by themselves. You are an example and a cherished purpose. You are making an inestimable difference.

You Are The Difference. . .

Walking obscurely, you catch
a glimpse of yourself in a storefront,
not trendy nor polished,
a little unkempt,
not to be remembered.
Wondering why must you
always smell of baby powder.

So much to do
with so many needs.
Why do you hear them crying?

It’s always the children, you think,
for whom you would do much,
but some of them
are so big and so old. . .

You pass out treats
to the little ones
and listen with your heart
to the elderly. . . .

You wonder if your caring
can make any difference
in lives that are so needy.

You are the difference,
you who takes the time
to blot teary faces
and listen to abandoned lives. . .

Hazarding that. . . .
some are not too big to sit on your lap
but all the right size

to sit on your heart. . . .

photo by
Joe Hallissey Sr.

June 25, 2017

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.