Today, I am deeply honoured to feature a poem by one of the most prolific, talented and graciously human thinkers of our time: poet, singer/songwriter, playwright and political journalist, editor, and activist, Sandy Leonvest.

 

 

          Damn the world

and all its pain.

 

          I am feeling light

at the moment,

so just let me be.

 

          Lighter

than the child

with a gift for song,

who spent

long summer nights

spinning threads of sorrow

into grace notes,

and weaving

bright white lies

into snowflakes,

while dancing

for her life;

 

          Lighter

than the moth

who once imagined

herself

a butterfly

in the fleeting reflection

of a mother’s eyes …

 

          Lighter than dust

drifting amid the soaring souls

of the newly departed,

where I once followed

my mother

into the womb

during a moment

of dreaming;

 

          Lighter even

than a cloudless sky

just after a summer storm,

giving rise to a brand new star,

Or the first moon of December

waxing faithfully

over a war-weary world,

to share its luminous nature

with snow-capped mountains

and rivers of melting ice.

 

~Sandy LeonVest has, over the course of her writing career, been a poet, playwright, singer-songwriter, political journalist – radio and print – and the editor/publisher of SolarTimes (solartimes.org), a groundbreaking energy publication and newspaper distributed throughout the San Francisco Bay Area from 2006 through 2013. Today she spends most of her time writing poetry and fiction, which she believes was “who she meant to be all along.” Sandy’s poems capture the spirit of the 21st century, with all of its circularities and contradictions – fathomless beauty and incomprehensible ugliness; infinite joy and endless grieving; and the inevitability of “the ever-spinning circle.” Sorrowful endings followed by new beginnings. Her poetic voice seems to channel the poets of long ago, at once emanating from another era, yet echoing universal and timeless themes.

 

Title photo is the Helix Nebula, a dying star that is 650 lightyears from our world. Source: NASA.