From an Upper Floor

Valentines For Ever’one

‘Til ever’ name is called

Can we make valentines, he asked?    The younger looked as if he was torn by a big decision.

Why make them, I asked?   ‘Cause there are lots I know and they be real from me, he said.   How real I asked and he looked at me puzzled.   I waited for an answer I thought would clue me to the crease on his forehead.

So’s they know I care he sputtered. Don’t you know that for sure? Again I waited.   They just don’t know, he said, they don’ know.   What are they supposed to know I asked. He came over to me and sat on the floor at my feet.   ‘Member, he said, when you were like me and nobody ‘membered you and your name not called out and there were lots an’ lots of valentines in the heart box your name not on cards?

I looked at this tender younger and wondered where he wandered.   My stomach knotted as I remembered the little girl that I was who sat and hungered for my name to be called. The teacher was almost finished and looked around and said I have a few more cards yet and one had my name.   I rushed to claim it and knew it was from Guess Who ? But many of the cards were from guess who? because boys and girls knew the word embarrass.    Much later we learned that our teacher checked off names as she called them and to make certain everyone had a valentine she had a supply in her desk.   We did not know it then of course.

And what are your plans I asked.   He said in his take charge voice it was not nice for some not to get cards so I give ever’one card and I make them so they be real. Good thinking I said but no favorites?   When time comes for favorite I give real valentine.   That be my heart he said.   That be real valentine, think so, yes?

I lifted him up and hugged him.   Whoever gets your heart will be special because you are special. ‘Til I be grow up, he asked, you be my valentine?   With pleasure sir,   with pleasure I said and hugged him again. So we went to make valentines for ever’one so ever’ name is called. It would be awhile before I learned that ever’ name is called.

February 9, 2015

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 Prayer Altar

The Prayer Altar

There are always memories that burn the heart.   The only thing to do is take them to the prayer altar and do with them what you will.   If you cringe at the thought of prayer because of discomfort for whatever reason, think of prayer being the quiet internal place when your heart is allowed to grieve unashamedly. No look at the bright side talk allowed at the prayer altar.   It is the private place where you are with what you think highest and best in Mind and come naked to it with whatever justifications you require.

Forgiveness is easy when memory fails or the heart stops caring. Forgetting also comes easily to some.   It is somewhat a matter of genes and brain power, whether sufficient or insufficient. When intelligence and sensitivity allow memories to live on, it is hard to forget. It is not always a matter of will.

We assume that forgiveness means that the times will be forgotten. But when the times are entwined with memories that you wish to keep alive, it becomes impossible to forget. And when there are children involved, we know that children are aware of events because their questions are on target. Foolish are the adults who think that only what they wish to be known is what others know.   Children intuitively connect the dots and others, not emotionally involved see events in bas relief.

The past, the present and our futures are connected. The lines are not straight but wiggle and connect various aspects of our histories. In dismissing one aspect or set of memories, we must be sensitive to other portions we wish to keep close at heart.   There will be those jewels of our past we hold alive in us, polished by the many times we bring them to mind and the arteries within us all that connect our hearts. These connections are ours forever.   They are eternal.

Art by Claudia Hallissey

February 6, 2015

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.
Running Toward One’s Truth. . Paradigms

A child’s albatross. . . . .The old adage of what is done in the home must stay in the home is a bird wrapped around the neck and the damage done to the children is inestimable.

Stay away from the classes where teachers are known not to ruffle feathers.   You will be comfortable and safe and learn nothing.   No thing.

It is unwise to allow other people to form your opinion.   It is like second hand smoke. . . dangerous.

Welcome diverse opinions when it forces you to rethink your beliefs.   You may one day have to publicly own those beliefs.

Better than just believing will be the day when one will be able to say I know and claim this knowledge as one’s own.

There may be those who think your value system is off the wall.   It may be that your bar is set too high for this world and in place for the one you will graduate to.

We are our own relief (r is correct) system and no other.   Somehow we have to find our way.

Follow the one who sends you running to your own corner to sort out your thinking.   Especially if she has forced you into thinking your life depends on you. Scary, isn’t it?

Sometimes we have to crash the gates of heaven. In this day of great cacophony and so many devices, a simple knock is not heard.

The best that money can buy is often what money cannot touch.

Sometimes our lives feel like a harvest of obstacles.

It takes a long time for humanity to grow up.   And some play at it better than others.

Even in the face of world chaos, we only add to it if we don’t clean up our own messes. And yes the bathroom must be cleaned, regardless.

Sculpture by Stanley Rybacki

February 2, 2015

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.
Entering Before Us

Entering Before Us

    We carry our values with us as silent companions.   When we enter a room we know immediately if we fit.   Our value system has entered the room before us.   And everyone already knows whether we are accepted. We might as well have the Sargent of Arms announce us.

      How important is this?   We are given knowledge to stay or on some pretext to leave.   If our value systems do not mesh, there will be no work accomplished.   Or if it is an event of important nature, nothing will be said or remembered as the event promised.

      It should give us a good and sound basis whether to continue with the group.   We know right away if we will be on the outside looking in.   It behooves us to find those of similar values.   There is no joy to continue being on the outside when there are those whose systems match or mesh with ours.

      It is a spiritual law.   Our values are honed to our prescription unless discarded as mindless dogma. When this knowledge of unacceptable values reaches our hearts and minds, we must start the journey.

      Heaven will take us on and open doors as material or new values are integrated.   The work begins when questions rise and demand from us honest thought.   The adventure begins a journey to the wise years of life.   We think the action will be with a sharp change, but as the essayist Emerson says ‘real action is in the silent moments because to think is to act.’   Not in any visible changes, but in thought patterns that will evoke behavior changes to reflect our value system.   Evolution in thought takes time and effort.

      To do this consciously signals a real milestone.

January 30, 2015

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 Winter Sky

The Winter Sky

The winter sky
shimmers with the flints
of the icy shards
falling with purpose.

The glint of them, love,
has you remembering
the long nights
in a sometime past.

Where and who you wonder,
shared the beauty,
sparking a million stars,
in a time not to be repeated?

It was a sometime
that forged the memory
in Pandora’s box with the locked clasp;
daring to be opened but only if you, too,
want to disappear

into that sometime past.

January 26, 2015

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.
Upon Entry

Upon Entry

Upon entry, we shed
the mufflers and the gloves,
the vests and boots,
ready as any warrior to fight the cold.

The hot tea is
a choice companion for us,
as we sit and warm ourselves
before the fire.

A promised relief
we find in each other,
as we no longer find the joy
in battling winter’s discontent.

We know our blood thins
and our patience ebbs
since we do not run and jump
with glee as snow inches up.

We remember though
this once held joy in things
not common to advancing age.
A straight shot of something

would not be unwelcome in the cup of hot tea.

January 20, 2015

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.
Love Beckons

The Teachers Speak. . . . .

When you nurture love into being, when you expand the limitations of one and not labeled them insufficient or stupid, you have prodded a self concept into using strength and innate ability to understand something used and feared all of a lifetime.   They may not remember who taught this about love.   With a long ingrained habit of a heritage and a penchant for not remembering, they may not ever know except with a memory of a someone who loved them enough to press them forward into acquiring something of substance for themselves.

It is work, no doubt about it.   But someone taught us about the value of love, of honor, of commitment and the holy meaning of the weight of words.   It is an astounding venture of the correctness of things, of the meaning of life and of total commitment to the value of the soul and person. No one is irredeemable. No matter what.

The muscles may rebel at the work and the feet tire of dancing on a hot griddle.   Muse on the foibles of man in his understanding of what life is all about.   For he believes that today is born immaculate without the impact of yesterday.   If one does not understand the lessons of yesterday, today indeed will be sordid.

It is a difficult lesson to learn that one’s premises are not the premises of an Other, no matter how logical nor sound they may be.   An Other’s own observations are colored by the substance of ancient genetic heritage of which we can only surmise and try to comprehend.   The abuse inflicted by centuries of barbaric behavior on the human being cannot be estimated except when viewed with the eyes and ears and emotions of those who have gone the route and done the mind work.   It is not easy but what we do is reinforce the magnitude of what is being accomplished within the circle of where one moves. It takes a war of words, a lifetime of study of oneself and also the stripping of one’s self estimate to see that the work begins at home.

In fact what it takes is a Solomon, ready to make whole and not divide.

Love Beckons

To what heights has love been lifted
and dropped, nay pushed,
to the bottomless pit
from which no heaven could be seen?

To what lengths has love been stretched
and allowed to fall back onto itself
to where no life was left
to renew itself?

To what heights has love been lifted
by love returned
and scorned when trust was added,
as if the weight was unbearable?

How many times can hope for love returned
be dashed upon the rocks like waves
their passion spent?
And tramped as flowers by unseeing feet?

There is no limit,
for time again love has crept upward
to where a path of heaven,
like a beacon, beckons.
Where life has renewed itself
when vital signs could not be seen.

When hope, by faith has found the love returned.

Artwork by Claudia Hallissey

January 17, 2015

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 Best Of All Worlds

When a teenage grandson arrived into our family, my talks with him were cerebral and pithy. We were in my basement study and on the wall was a quote which I had paraphrased from something I was reading and his mother, an artist, had illustrated. (We have since used the drawing on the cover of Kiss The Moon) I have searched out what I was reading but I cannot find what had spurred me on to paraphrase. And my grandson looked at it and pondered and I read it aloud. Wisdom begins when passion is exhausted. And being the good student that he was he said, but grandma, you would be dead then! I wish I had had the wisdom to add that only when passion is exhausted can you then begin to live. It is then that we more clearly see issues in nascent form and arrive at more thoughtful conclusions. In too many situations we reach conclusions colored by emotion when we need clarified thought. This is only one of many lessons this Earth classroom must teach us.

The Best Of All Worlds

It was said before
in this best of all possible worlds. . .
that we will surely miss this.

It has to do
with the sweet ways of greeting
to demonstrate love and
of mostly handling the common place.

There are those worlds
of which we speak
where frame of mind cannot compare
with our range of emotions.

How like us that is. . . .
We boast of our capacity to love
and honor each other through all life
and then raise arms in combat.

Why I ask does it pain me so
to leave it all behind
when emotion has blinded me
and handicapped you
from peacefully coexisting?

Too much, I think.
My heart needs a quiet time.
One to stand (beside) aside,
to heal my heart and simply Be. . . .

in the next of all possible worlds.

January 14, 2015

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 Awe Of Spirit

In Awe Of Spirit. . . .to believe or not to believe?

In answer to the question to believe or not, the author Rosamunde Pilcher,(excellent descriptions of the English countryside) in Winter Solstice has one of her characters saying ’I would find it uncomfortable to live in a world where I had no person to thank.’ To paraphrase it I would say it would be untenable for me not to be in awe of Spirit that has given me mind in whatever form and world I find myself.

To not believe would be a mockery of those who work with such diligence to improve the conditions of life, whether those receiving the aid be human or for a more encompassing word, being.

There is so much beauty and largess of substance to be shared that if it cannot be shared, lessens our pleasure.   However, if only one recognizes the value, it is still not a loss of its qualities because the qualities are innate.   They simply wait for appreciative recognition of these characteristics.

To wake up in a world of verdant fields, or sand carpets with the colors of morning sun,. or simply to wake up and recognize the ceiling from the night before is reason enough to pass the blessing forward. Grace brings us to where we are at the moment with the knowledge that it is with pleasure that we work to improve the world in which we find ourselves.   That what we do for one we do for all to improve the quality of life on all hearths.

It is a revelation that leads to the knowledge that to work toward the good of all is what evolution is about.   No matter what our status or place, it is for our own ultimate good that we work, toward a future we cannot imagine.   As the philosopher Robert Nozick hypothesized, we may be in world creation training. We may be the one who creates the kind of world we have in mind. All effort is valued. No effort or work is ever a lost cause when we elevate life.

Each of us, like the smallest particles collaborating for larger purposes, can also be called a God Participant. We need not apologize when our divinity shines along with our humanity.

January 10, 2015

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 Will Sing Songs of Love

I Will Sing Songs of Love

You listen wisely and
I will sing songs of love,
concluding a life of harsh lessons.

They were not easy, love,
because you were eager for Light. . . .
The darkness penetrated every portion of life,

too deep ever to see Light.
So we gambled on a road
often refused and not often taken.

Too hard, they said, but for you,
the only one to make bulrushes
seem an easy route.

Your love and I, we make it home
and find it easy in retrospect,
for the new world

already stands in need.
And your balk does not match my bite.
We can only work.

It is a fair piece yet to life everlasting.

(from a work in progress, On Common Ground, My God and Me)

January 6, 2015

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.