The Poetry and Short Stories of Ingrid Showalter Swift The Writing Forum’s Writer of the Month - May 2001 THE WRITING FORUM’S WRITER OF THE YEAR - 2010   AUTHOR’S BIO: Ingrid Showalter Swift was born in Charlottesville Virginia in 1963. She was raised in Roanoke Virginia among the Blue Ridge Mountains and wrote her first poetry at age six. She then returned to Charlottesville to attend The University of Virginia. After moving to Boston, she studied at North Eastern University and the Museum of Fine Arts. Ingrid presently resides in Sudbury Massachusetts. She is a mother, a wife, a poet, a search consultant, a painter, an antique dealer, a collector, a house renovator and decorator. She is published in many anthologies, chapbooks, magazines and websites and joyfully finished her first book of poetry “Thin as Parchment/Red as Rubies”. Her life has many facets but her personal identity is poet. To read Ingrid’s fictional short story series,“The Telling,” please click here. Email: iswift.rock@gmail.com   POETRY BY INGRID SHOWALTER SWIFT Click on the button in front of any poem title in the list below to be linked to that poem’s location on the page:   When Night Slippers Its Sleeves Off   A Single Potato Chip   Lavender   I Need to Run to You   Silver Skinned Fairy Tales   Drifting On a Silver Sea   Through White Forest of Red Fire   Let the Jammed Cogs Be Damned   In the Cast of Mechanizied Light   Smoke n Mirrors   Waking Sobered   Wall Stone   Leaf Wild and Wind Wonder Full   Waiting As I Am On You   Feather Duster   Again Never Again   Yellow Strings   The Homeless Man’s Chant   Do I Miss You   "Raise High" North Road   A Thousand Years   A Maiden Voyage   And I Am Provoked to Speak ...of it   The Silversmith   Discovering Bliss   To Grow Weedlessly   There is a Secret   Water Street ~ A Midnight Swim   Channeling ~ The Handy Man   Falsetto   In Youth’s Hoodie   Fox Trott’n   Farfalle   When Night Slippers Its Sleeves Off by Ingrid Showalter Swift When night slippers its sleeves off frees its toes of star dust and microwaves drapes its white gown of downy dew across the crystal-ed green grasses I will be dreaming of you waking to your name silvered on my lips dripping in red petals from my whispering tongue the grip of your palm clasp strong along my wrists our bodies aligned in ours only formation an eternal question mark...to the Gods Drink deeply with yawning content the presence of each yellow white dawn finger the sunlight that hits your open palms falls across your cheek I am with you...ever with you...in the slivered realm that lies between us...a channel of golden warmth without flowing end ....ever going ...ever coming to and from our center satellites pulsing out forever on a frequency only we two can hear hear me feel me know me... with you though we may be held in stone ...sentinels forever apart we are forever together in a truth known from the beginning of time...a certainty one need never question     A Single Potato Chip By Ingrid Showalter Swift Seeing you so fleetingly loving you as I do is like nothing short of being given one potato chip... one peanut and only one lick of the best ice cream ever made.... To say I am left wanting more is simply and quite honestly ridiculously redundant   Lavender By Ingrid Showalter Swift Lavender light crests and falls around me in my ice castle of timeless waiting Curves of cicle-ed white sparkling wind wrap round sea gulls in flight dress them in ball gowns of photon-ed plasmatic power and I am sheer delight The sea rises up to me and reaching my quivering toes lifts me skyward… to the Wazmian Sea path cast my eyes below … I cast my eye above wonder rises in my chest and I feel my spirits voice Loving the world I embrace it and its every great and small Feel each human in their cells and walk fly dive and dare to go to each who suffers I take my flight on sound and song… music my wave I surf Feeling my place in a centurion plan As if it were all laid down far away and long ago in a golden room...filled with golden chairs by those who have golden skin and golden hair in a chamber in the mile high evervescent  air I walk this path of Serian seas Dancing with molecules flirting with fate tasting the pure nectar of God unshaken, untaken and irrationally calm no matter how foolish are we   I Need to Run to You by Ingrid Showalter Swift I need to run to you drenched in all this star dust fabricated by uranium's glowing light fired by mercury and burned by Pluto to fall into your cavern of darkest night and become again a blossom of twilight and sunshine touch me now love as I burn out and become nothing but a shooting star in your warm arms your quasarian embrace   Silver Skinned Fairy Tales by Ingrid Showalter Swift 1. Silver skinned you travel the ebonized highways of my torso see sunlight pouring from my fingertips and drink the lilted song of a thousand light-years falling from my lips now young and old 2. Listening to the highway sounds of us rushing in the circuitry of time I am still ...like a sculptured garden in England filled with nymphs and satyrs preserved in salt by the white witch's torch frozen joy in time...like I was on the day we met pristine and pearlized in granite turned to polished marble the vines grow rich and deep in our supple soil 3. You know my name at the back of your throat 4. the spell cast long ago...on some distant shore when a small child wearing a white pinafore and holding a locket in her hand wishing with all her heart and soul that she could find her way across the wild dark ocean to her true home once more...knew your name ...the sailor who brought her secretly home feeding her your bread...and telling her tales of the sea to keep her from being too lonely or scared...while you crossed the dark wild terrifying sea to her homeland together   Drifting On a Silver Sea by Ingrid Showalter Swift Drifting on a silver sea just you and me...care totally free Drifting like a silver dime O my love...see us shine Drifting in a silver shoe just me and you nothing much to do Drifting on the silver line no need for time no need for rhyme Drifting in arms of gold something prescious but never sold and O so merry.... when were old Drifting in a dream come true ever me with ever you Drifting in the sky so blue like kites aloft... but tethered too Drifting in the ever sea a love that was always... meant to be   Through White Forest of Red Fire by Ingrid Showalter Swift Through white forest of red fire and black smoke the rider pursued happiness like a man determined to drink himself to oblivion or a woman on a quest .............for the right sofa to wash away the wrong marriage into dark channels and deep waters where eddies etch and abide in true silt and wet brown white mud making patterns only a true Witch Doctor knows how to read she fled penetrating down into the quasars of cellular debris left behind by so many helpless hopeless souls who shed skin after skin trying to find it... Happiness only to be met by bills lost houses lost jobs lost souls left families left friends left buildings...abandoned to rot and fall away brick by brick...does it matter if a brick falls and no one is there to witness its fall? Like a tree....who cares but me for the fallen? rise me up to a new .....dawn? skin me.......................please I will egg break .....I will crest fall I will take the heat of the new fire burning bright make it fresh like a flower seen in Home Depot in the dead of February's night a bloom so effervescence so resilient against my darkness even I can not turn away or deny its glory in my fear my grind has to stop and drop before a flower in bloom   Let the Jammed Cogs Be Damned! Ingrid Showalter Swift A flower...a real honest to God flower still blooms and in it I rise again from the dead reincarnated as a healer watch me create something from nothing...and making someone of myself and this life..more than a couch...a laugh..a drink...a broken brick ..a death...a foreboding and sure as hell more than...a damnation by defeat Not a threat...a promise   In the Cast of Mechanized Light by Ingrid Showalter Swift In the cast of mechanized light time... sound and reality for a fleeting whatever Stood utterly still and in high definition my mind settled on the lines of his face The edged curve of his lips where it greeted in slicing precision the scruff of his upper lip and everything was transformed by sudden slowing by the purity of my soul that runs at 900 miles per hour to instantly without provocation by heart or soul or even conscious mind Land...like some computer run amuck on a mathematical equation Numbers flinging by willy nilly my brain etched in finite detail each cell of his face and transfixed I stared openly and he knew and kept his eyes diverted in order to let me drink him in full Knowimg what I know now...it is good that I had that drink as it is likely the last   Smoke n Mirrors by Ingrid Showlater Swift It was a cold night filled with first snow flakes and last sighs I wrote it out in the snow and wondered how serendipity would serve us this time who would see it and tell you about it as much as months or even years later how you might feel when you saw it ...heard about it or even read it again the words ...the phrase ....so many long to read about themselves...romance being what it is and all......... the letters so much less than the whole I mean an S is a nice letter I believe it is used more than any other and R is also too often used but when you swing needle stick them together with a few Os and a number of I s then it starts to be so much more add a V for voracious an E for effort excerted an L for the laughter and the laughs and the ...over stated and a Y for the questions left unanswered that will now go unanswered for a lifetime perhaps and at long last a U for what is lost that may never be found again of it's kind and you suddenly have something far greater than the sum of its parts...redundant you say? well...a deep well of of course it is extraordinary and Over I would wish it for any seeker who longs to learn their own name inside and out and never for any who long to ride the safe and narrow path of provincial security where stops signs mean stop yield signs mean go back and wait and green lights mean proceed with extreme caution   Waking Sobered by Ingrid Showalter Swift Sobered by cold salted by night alone in life's "what ifs" I am a differest salad than I was yesterday Maybe I had fruit toppings a few oranges tossed in and a few almonds maybe a bit of salt n papper a few thinly sliced cucumbers now I am just lettuce and thanful as hell to be iced green   Wall Stone by Ingrid Showalter Swift Cement...no stones...many mortar...no raw hands...yes too often feet .....two feet apart braced back arched...muscles extended to bursting biceps thrust haul and move across dirtied field of cobbled mounds and felled logs He meant it when he said he would build her a house I MEAN IT when I say I will honor him and remember him every day I live in it as if it were for me ...heavy with child in a cold 1715 world a new land...no neighbors...just us and the walls he built to protect me   Leaf Wild and Wind Wonder Full by Ingrid Showalter Swift one day this fall  I was at the pond in Wayland ......... I was watching the leaves fall off this one tree most of them just fell pretty much straight down and were caught up in the normal fall dance but there was this one leaf... seemed like it was hell bent on landing in the water to get there it had to fly way up higher than the other ones and float then on the breeze ...a good thirty feet when it did finally fall it fell on a wave that took it outward and I thought of you...of us... of me... we are like that leaf ...not willing nor interested in taking the easy way out having seen the water and the far off shore it had to go see .................unlike all the other leaves it wanted to know what was out there to feel the water to know perhaps in time the other shore to go farther to adventure to know what it felt like to touch the water it had seen from afar for all of spring and summer caught as it were to its stationary birth place to reach beyond the normal ............leafy existence to experience what other leaves had no interest in finding out to truly go beyond... when it finally fell on the water I smiled and I knew how that one singular leaf felt I knew that all the other leaves would have called that leaf crazy...if leaves had such thoughts as humans do but too I knew...it did not care it knew what it was taking on and knew also that there was more beyond the shore and the normal cycles of a leaf I was glad for it ....that it reached its destination and was heading out to seek its unknown shore do you see what I see? and so I say from deep within the veins of my own leaf existence Leaf on Sailor Boys and Girls! ....you are as my compasses and my stars you are...my joyful foam and frenzy ...as unpredictable as the sea I could not be myself without you and I would choose no other path nor ask for any other destiny than to know you are out there circumventing the globe on your own adventure know you hold some singular part of me with you tight in your most secret place as only you who know how to hold me being born of the same tree as we are and so you can never be truly alone on your daring unique quest   Waiting As I Am On You by Ingrid Showalter Swift Waiting as I am on you my beloved building my vista clear my search and destroy the elements of fear that live in each of your corners...each of us our cobwebs hang deep with wetness the sills of you are worn to nothing by hungry termites and you do slant and glide off your rocker but I am here willing you...yourself to stand even as you find that parts of you fall waiting on me My Carpenter too waits on you his pockets grow skinny and his will leaner still and he can no longer return my call but my faith my unweilded unyielding faith draws you up into greatness again I will each corner to crown each sill each floor board ~all to bow to will of greatness to be more than you seem to find your each and every atom of possibility find your own solidity ...with me. let fate and will drive you forward beyond reality's clutch to a new realm of is so possible hold on and repair the dents the broken parts find within the power to self heal to become whole though physics declares it impossible I will you to be stronger still than the solidity of fate to rise up with me to something unexplainable greater ...........stronger and more powerful than the here and now ' to rise up by way of mere hope delicious is tomorrow when faced down by the facets of a faith so unwavering it knows its own name walk on water tonight fly on winds tonight stretch clear across the cosmos tonight and finger the asteroids and the tails of meteors wing wild with quasars speak only in the tongues of `galaxies and forbid descent! negativity and the quest of the word NO fall before such unrelenting Faith "anything can happen anything can be" have faith each and all in sentiment of we   Feather Duster by Ingrid Showalter Swift Feather duster in hand I go over the glowing ebonied wooden surfaces clean n sweep remember you and your laughter at cleaning for love's arrival how darling a man who cleans house how strange and exotic and so true intoxicating but then...also dare I say mundane in its typical manhood one who gives up such things for greater fortunes and forbids ...even the most beguiling of dust bunnies to alter his attentions away from the real and powerful quest of innovations design then I notice all at once the beauty of the feathers...stop work and revel in them...how I take them for granted these feathers that once lived upon a bird a bird that could take flight to Sky to soar in ways I will never soar not asking now in utter and true humility of death and reincarnation to be known but suddenly known seen heard I hear the bird's cry as it tears for darker blue higher and higher it quests drunk on its power of light then suddenly the table is just a table the duster just a duster but I am changed having taken flight   Again Never Again by Ingrid Showalter Swift Is it better or worse now that I have seen it ....................................definitively the last meeting our last dance... LOOK ...There is one! that is a thing a singular thing an event a joy to embrace ..to look forward to ..to hold onto like the life raft it is for us both hope and truth JUSTIFIED Sanctified...purified...upheld..... petrified ...........................................perhaps ... even in cold truth reduced to a singular all of us the entirety...summed quotient-ed...a mathematical equation finished real...hard    firm   solid...exacting...undeniable over it is our last time...I see myself watching you go and I am as sure as I am that you will come that it is your last going and I know it even as I stand watching you drive away...in a blur of love's casted snow white light I am not weeping but I know...and am ever acutely watchful absorbing the molecules of your leaving into myself for safe keeping so now you know is it better or worse?....To come and go or never to come at all? I welcome your comings and your goings and will blind myself when you come to the truth that you will go this time forever so that I will be washed in your presence...for this time will be different   Yellow Strings by Ingrid Showalter Swift Yellow flickering strings velvet turquoisian rocks silvered nights questing over with clouds of gray stone metal rod moons and knife point stars quivers full of arrows dripping with the intent of addiction's heat and heaven's hurt bend low like the weeping willow leaves as they brush in the red river of rhine rise up like a cat's head to the push n pull of its owner's palm readied for curl of fur and brush of cheek let your head fall beside the depth of well in which I reside hear the waves of me slimmering beneath your fingertips the mercury of me wafting on the wind the strands of my hair are caught in between your fingers under your nails leave them or take them divide them or shrine them next to the circle in the floor sacred ground hallowed and ghosted ever more   The Homeless Man's Chant by Ingrid Showalter Swift There is no place like home no place ...like... home there is no ...like .... there is place ....home ....like no place like there is home ...no place ..no home there for me   DO I MISS YOU by Ingrid Showalter Swift I feel you in sharp steely pin pricks slicing liket knives that singularly find their way to my psyche unbidden not often but...ten times a day Vivid lavender smelling thoughts flicker up and down the telepathic lines...I feel your hand in mine...fingers clutching on my wrist...arms wrapping me hear your tones ....your verbiage ...your turn of phrase turning on my sheets ....my bed whispers .................you were here I sometimes sit in contemplation late at night when the band saw has stopped its incessant drumming grinding whining and feel your subdued contemplation a plaintive-ness...almost like a just audible tiny whimper called "loneliness" loneliness wrapped in self-knowledge that it is by choice and yet still it is.................................lonely  ...to be great I want to cry out...beckon you by word or song or phrase or tear or broken heart scream to you that I am with you...hearing you ...knowing you...wishing you would let me take those moments away forever what is it to love a man...who strives to truly be great... sacrifice enough to save a nation...if purest love can   "Raise High" North Road by  Ingrid Showalter Swift I feel the rafters the sinews of the house its faint heart beating under the dust and the dirt it has been beaten down and neglected for so long it cries out to me I whisper reassurances to it in loving gentle tones tell it I will be there soon and it will glow from the inside of its house soul its windows will glisten with holiday light and the fires that once burned so brightly in the hearts of the man who built it and his wife will pulse once more in its fire boxes it will be warmed it will be beautiful and it will be loved just like me again   A Thousand Years by Ingrid Showalter Swift In the end I find I can not feed you comfort you hold you take care of you protect you from a harm laugh with you serve you or even be with you...in any common sense nor I suppose do I even wish to be with you but I can tell you I have loved you for a thousand years... and when a thousand more have passed...I will love you for a thousand more so you can not even if you will it  be utterly alone for I will love you when time has passed into oblivion and there is nothing left to testify of our existence save a stone ...on the bank of a river  that fits so neatly into the hand of the one who finds it that they can not help but KNOW I will love you for yet a thousand more   A Maiden Voyage by Ingrid Showalter Swift A maiden voyage...into reality a touch stone...cold as night in November but more like the stone I found by the lake that fits so snugly into my hand and...I know ...I know it was a tool ...of a man long gone I can feel him in it ...his pride his innovation as he broke a branch ...bended a log to will to boat I try to awaken! as if that drugged teen I once knew who from a lucid dream in a bathroom in a building                she could not recall how she got there.......... the tiles of the bathroom grew legs... and in her in lucid echoed mind...the dark tiles receded the light white ones grew stems grew limbs Ran at her ...and she was filled with fear even in the sobered telling but I am not afraid I beckon my dreams...as if they were children to a lunch table bedecked with balloons covered with juice boxes for all ...a scene filled with packages to be opened by the birthday girl Oh...but now....you must wake me! ....from this mysterious dream of love that seems always... one juice box out of reach what is real ?....in this silence?            can we in the end make soup from this stone? or must I awaken to the newest of days..reborn to myself and to man a mere mortal in a dress with curlers in my hair        ...preparing to go   And I Am Provoked to Speak ...of it (a poem in seven parts) by Ingrid Showalter Swift (1) And I Am Provoked to Speak of it your water ways slender lines...so slivered as to be transluscent silken pale pear...a peach without fuz the ebb and flow of your being beneath the surfaces almost imperceptible..or too precept-able with out cushion of excess to relieve the essence of impact (2) It Is... it is as it must be for God to run his fingertips down and along the fine clean slender lines in Autumn of the Euphrates River it glistens at night beneath its star frothed sky its wilds and wonders silver dipped by moonlight to liquid mercury irresistible even from above.... it is silk ....surfaces flowing undulating dark flowing orbs on its wave tops reflect the moons mind a sense of the softest impervious depths glossed over by a layer of liquid flowing steel...cooled by night air to alabaster and ebony (3)  ....our nations gray  ....our nations gray grays all the fad now in fashion and in passion we are in pre-mourning bow down nation to our sudden color not yet blackened by death ...only ashen-ed gray ..the gray of the widow's skin before she is actually told but she knows.......... we are all deeply afraid our colors are turning so unlike your ivory hip bone beneath such satin flesh as peach in ice cream can evoke from the newest latest designer eye...bring iced greens echos of frothed blue..the tiniest blush of a pear...again your peach our reincarnation hopes too soon dash-able but irrevocably impassion-able We long to rise again as a newborn leaf to sunlight (4) To Rise I rise to cup and hold the crescent moon dark against golden light see ebony and twilight combine...the gold highlights the black makes terror romantic for the moment...if you drink enough and wear a beautiful dress (5) The Field of Flames I can recall a young maiden standing on a hill on a rock before morning's horizon break hands on hips legs slightly apart to join in the powerful flow of energy as it frothed up from earth's surfaces toward the sky to catch the whisper of it...hope gasping to recall ...a forest so deep it hid her riding driving pain her fleeting feet...running with abandon to a field...in a field you have not known but he did walk those paths beside her or was it before her or after her he of twilight's glitter...of elfin eyes of 1995...and all its wealth his knowing glances ...the glint of certain connection he knew her but he drove on in the rain to over come her memory to forget blue eyes cast just as his were then (6) The Dungeon no red head fires the flames of the forest named forget for you only the white noise of machines drive it out the din that echos ..that on occasion when you least expect it ...whisper a name a sound a word a demand ...or worse a sensation of deepest desire You hear it ...shake it off...your head clear you mind ... drive on sand the pointed sharp edges down cast it off with wood chips and silicone slivers slivers of white and gold and yellow a yellow I can not escape like our sun gone mad into the din of motorized sensation you create beginning again and again putting it away again and again to be alone as only alone ...can create perfection and deliverance from Wall Street (7) And From Desire and from desire desire to stroke and flow with God's finger down the Euphrates in all its and your slivered silvered glory to be touched...Midas denied for the resurrection of creation....sits in wait in grays till we meet again...The NILE from whence we all began...in white disposing for all time the gray we have become how swift the feet of time are in a void of effort to achieve as there is nothing left to do but wait and listen beyond the white noise to the ever quickening beat of the clock like the heart beat before assent so swift...so clean so powerful and beautiful ...are the last ticks of time for us all   The Silversmith by Ingrid Showalter Swift Burn of fire... the heat of pain...the silversmith bears the rain to hone the piece exquisite taste with tongue sacrificed there is no waste the longing of a perfect wine to pluck the greatest grape from vine the work must be no less than fine so own the metal and the heat to go without is to be ...complete the fire is hot the sparks are fierce but the glory of victory will ever pierce through all the agony left behind when giving birth to the sublime   Discovering Bliss by Ingrid Showalter Swift Discovering bliss encircled by unseen arms clasped by strong powerful hands aligned by delicate perfect wrists and forearms of softest fur fistfuls of my hair ..my skull cradled alive not as feared in death alone held fast to center of gravity so intense that being becomes reality has sudden substance and is instilled on electron levels by certainty I swell outward with waters of purest white ...grow massive...then transparent and fly earth bound once more supported by downy feathers slenderest skin folds of humanity embrace me with open hearts touching heads and arching toes and I am no longer alone but en-wombed by all who ever loved as I love encompassed in the great mass of energy that courses and flows from the center of a ball of brilliant light called you   To Grow Weedlessly by Ingrid Showalter Swift To grow ever more weedlessly stretching the being upward from plantation of dark mother earth her warm womb a sanctuary of silence to the cathedral of white light through evered practices of choice and release   There is a Secret by Ingrid Showalter Swift There is a secret that few know or share something hidden in the air if you believe it can change...your life believe it with all your heart it can happen in a day thus then ...imagine what a week can do hold on no matter how dark the night how destitute your dreams have become hold on! every old can be new again all things broken and lost can be fixed and found you just have to know where to find them in the air...in the air it is everywhere in the air   Water Street ~ A Midnight Swim By Ingrid Showalter Swift In arched light too gentle to be real the waves flowed over my purified body knowing every inch of me as their own and I was for once not afraid to be laid bare to be known with all my humanity and flaws exposed to wash in the foam of it without struggle and to drown in the perfection of beauty froth from the blessings of the Gods themselves fingered shells penetrated my hair and rested in skulls embrace and I was held fast to creation's chest and chin its acceptance of me absolute my perfection no longer in doubt home at last beneath watered stars in the downy soft caress of ocean's glistening surfaces   Channeling ~ The Handy Man By Ingrid Showalter Swift It is your typical white washed out Wednesday not Monday nor yet the thrill albeit small of a Friday. Today the gray weather is matching to a painful exactness the gray of the shingles the blue of the shutters blending downward into the grays of road taupes of sand Nothing seems to be inhaling everything and I drive…just drive sounds of metal and power converging on the engine drone in my head a systematic automatic register of time standing still I pull out a cigarette with only enough regret to acknowledge I am so... even to myself...low class the radio’s tinny one speaker sound annoys till I just turn it off turn off down the only completely deserted road I know that will not be traveled by the rich prep kids who pay our wages and keep us in Budweiser It is here in this awful stillness that I bask in my utter silence As if I need to go here to find it Once perhaps I did have to go seeking peace...a space …a small span where time and I could go for a walk and listen to the sea now it all drums inside of me in a constant surge and fall of ocean waves and tides because I am now so utterly alone silence is my companion and sound of the human voice has become the estranged and those I work for are all strangers   Falsetto By Ingrid Showalter Swift False bravado sings statically in soprano to egocentric wallowing willow's alto bend while heart strings plucked slowly keep the beat in baritone and when then torrential rains fall down from her to shirt collar entering at her cleavage...streaming down to her waste she knows they are the only things leaving tracks on her white skin and she shivers in mile high falsetto bereavement for his lost caress   In Youth's Hoodie by Ingrid Showalter Swift When wearing youth's hoodie we walked on high rocks holding hands ever so lightly carelessly oh yes...we were careless Can you imagine it now? choosing to teeter from one rock to the next needing to leap occasionally for the next one can you see yourself? barely holding the hand extended to you or would you cling to it for dear life...praying that your friend will never let go and so let you fall   Fox Trott’n by Ingrid Showalter Swift Fox trot me baby all around the floor we can do the two step right out the door Wave your soldier colors high above your head cause this is tomorrow and our soul is being fed Fox trot my fears two step my tears rock up the windows cause high hopes are here Solve all the problems cure all the ills take all the pains replace em with thrills ring in the moment take down the cross ........from his burden shoulders for hope is NOT lost Sing loud the morning shine on the sun bring it ~Moon baby till our days are all done Ain't no use in fighting the war is long won birds are a chirping and the long race is run .............................So fox trot the daylight two step the stars light up the pathway tomorrow is ours!   Farfalle by Ingrid Showalter Swift Like a dish of pasta warm and forgiving the ...sauce creamy kindness grilled asparagus ~recollections of fires                                              .....of hungry cave men of needed nutrients flexing muscles in joy and strength in the hunt of fierce hungers too often put off by secret fear                      ...add a little diced chicken and some cheese for realism's commentary on far too many a man Ahhh but ...let the gentle comfort of living simply be a down blanket of new fallen snow over a well tended garden snug beneath the leaves carefully mounded there ....while the bowl is full for love has too often left me empty but I am still a seed ©ISS