Sunday, 23 February 2025

Five Poems by Karen A VandenBos

 






Messages From the Forest

 

 

You kneel down in the forest grove, 

knees bent, hands clasped in prayer. 

Casting your eyes towards the mute 

shadows, your ears are tuned in to  

the wisdom exhaled in the breath  

of trees. 

Here where the Druids have passed 

through you linger and let yourself 

ask for help, this asking a form of 

ancient ritual and need. 

It is here among the sentinel trees 

where one learns to stand tall, drop 

their burdens too heavy to carry and  

learn to bend with the storms. 

Here they breathe in rhythm with  

the change of seasons and listen 

for the wisdom born on the choirs 

of wind and altars of fallen stars. 

It is here the maidens and mothers 

come to bleed on roots of moss 

and give birth to their dreams... 

As the trees drop their leaves you 

will begin to learn their poetry and 

sing their songs. 

All you need to know dwells in the 

messages of the forest.  It is here you 

are meant to reach towards the sun  

and rise from the ashes. 

 

 

 

 

The Colour of Sorrow

 

 

His skin clung tightly to his bones 

like it was two sizes too small, the 

cancer consuming him as the clock 

kept ticking, his brain losing time. 

Although his body looked so skeletal, 

his blue eyes still held the light. The  

light that told me I was still daddy's 

little girl. 

As my blue eyes looked into his, I  

knew that shade of blue was the part 

of him I would always carry with me. 

I knew we had seen the same colour 

of sorrow. 

 

 

 

 

Gift Me with Your Wildness

 

 

Please put away your fancy dresses, your polished shoes,  

your gloves, your glossy lips, your perfect curls and your  

proper etiquette. Gift me with the wildness that you hide,  

the you who snarls, doesn't brush her hair, leaves food in  

her teeth stained with red wine and nicotine. Gift me with  

the wild inside you that throws curses like daggers, spits her  

responses, has holes in her dungarees that make grunge wear  

look formal, who wears bad ass like a badge of honour. I am  

not interested in the perfect people pleaser or the you who is  

afraid to howl at the moon. I want to know that part of you  

that is wild and unruly. The one who isn't afraid to say No  

and mean it. The one who screams Fuck you like a violin on  

steroids. You see, I want to know the real you. The you who 

is visceral, raging, bleeding and raw. The one who questions  

authority, burns bridges and eats with her fingers. Please show  

me the wild part of you that dares to bare her tender belly, her  

sacred heart and all the unholy thoughts layered like dirt under  

her fingernails. Today please show me how to let go. 

 

 

 

 

House of Memories and Ghosts

  

 

I remember it as it was, our ghosts  

left behind in fractured fairy tales,  

stains hidden in the fiery orange shag 

carpet that smelled of stale beer and  

cigarette smoke that browned the walls. 

I wonder if the fort still stands in the 

yard or if the rooms still hold whispers 

of our childhood dreams. 

Perhaps the sound of our music still  

rattles the windows and the anthems  

of our youth can still be heard as the  

fan in the window exhales our angst. 

I wonder if the residue of heartbreak  

and grief ever made their way out of  

the empty beer cans and pages of my 

yellowed journals or if tears still drip  

from the faucets. 

Perhaps by now the bones of our old 

house have shifted, unable to bear the  

weight of these memories. 

 

 

 

 

To My Dearest Muse

 

 

She knows when I am empty, 

have struck a dead end and 

lost my magic and that is when 

she appears as an angel, wings 

fluttering softly like a moth in 

the ribbon of moonlight that 

falls across my blank page, her 

lips a healing balm that cools 

the heat of my fevered brow. 

I never know when the muse 

will come or what guise she'll 

wear for that is her way, to 

always surprise me. She is a 

time traveller and whisperer of 

secrets. She is a seer and pulls 

stories from me that she desires 

to hear. Together we write our 

own myths, dance across ball- 

room floors in mud caked boots 

and hang out in bars drinking 

our sorrows and regrets. We 

have been struck by lightning 

13 times, duelled with truth  

and lies, lived in the land of  

once upon a time and know  

how to sing the stars home. 

Ah my dearest muse, when  

my mind is silent and my 

thoughts are cold, it is to you 

I raise my pen. 

 

 

 



 

 



Karen A VandenBos was born on a warm July morn in Kalamazoo, MI. She has a PhD in Holistic Health where a course in shamanism taught her to travel between two worlds and she can be found unleashing her imagination in two online writing groups. A Best of the Net nominee, her writing has been published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Blue Heron Review, The Rye Whiskey Review, One Art: a journal of poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, Moss Piglet, Panoply, Peninsula Poets and others.


 

 

 

 

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