Posts for June 16, 2026 (page 6)

Encouragement covers my path in every color of the rainbow,
Jokes mixed with Bible verses and the kindness of my sisters
Spreading joy to everyone who passes,
A promise of love and hope–but one thing is missing.

Clouds linger on the horizon,
Within a day these colors will be washed away,
The promises vanished in a single storm.

Yet one more drawing catches my eye,
Up on the covered porch, safe from the rain:
“All are welcome”
And a rainbow beside.

The promise remains,
This one eternal,
If one only remembers to have faith.

She bleeds her issues
onto everyone around her.

Treating people
like punching bags
because fixing herself
was harder
than harming others.

He became collateral.

Sharp knives cut into his back
while he walked away.
Diagnosed heartless,
when boundaries
burned bridges.

Sometimes sympathy
reaches first
for the hand
that strikes.

 After D.E. Green’s “Pink Cadillac”  

The sun pours down but nothing moves,
desert’s colors a pallette of pinks, best
seen just after a rare rain.  My love affair
with rock and sand and sky began in writing,
when I knew my soul needed bleaching—I turned  
to book and page and slow walks on rock-lined paths.  

Rain in the desert, when it comes, rips and runs back
quickly into sand, now dark.  Who knows what it leads to,
that water we’re blind to, once it vanishes into the pink,
those old covered layers of life and death, elemental spells
of time, erasing the everyday—the kind of world
our words might live in, if our want is strong,
if deep breathing can outpace our worries, if we can put
them under the table, tuck them into dark moist sand.  

At night the desert flowers bloom, desire gone mad,
songbirds quietening as rocks romance sky.
Where is the book of life I want to write and live?
Why can’t I cram my words onto the page
like rocks in my pockets, my lust for writing
outlasting the reds and pinks that race around me now?

The music is too loud 
In this carefully selected
coffee shop where I
fled the office chaos
to seek solace in my
thoughts.

I may add 
this caffeine-joint
to my black list of
post-work places 
with false advertisements
claiming calm
coffee-sipping bliss
surrounded by 
like-minded souls.

And here I thought
nothing could make
Starbucks an enviable
alternative to the 
pop-y, upbeat 
torture this place
has subjected me to.

Venti latte, here I come.

I found a hand written inscription in one of my older Journals (2005):

“My Mother talked of several things. She asked me what
I thought death was like. I told her I thought it might be like
being underwater, but that I didn’t think we could really know.
I told her I wasn’t afraid of death. She told me that she was,
now at the end of her journey. She has been feeling tired.”

I can hear your voice
in the ink across the page
still a river flows

Some months have gone by
though so cruely short
Your friend lays around
missing your rapport

Your mother goes on
as humans are forced to do
Know that she’s okay,
but still can’t see a picture of you

Your father plays it tough
He’s a man after all,
his pain he won’t show
but he’ll notice a fall

Your sisters regret
leaving so quick
But they never could’ve known
that you would get sick

There was nothing to be done
It all happened so fast
But now we’ve reached your birthday
and it’s to heaven that our wishes are cast

The Sylvan Glade:

Moss steeped in shadow
blankets stones in emerald
and delicacy

©️Winter Dawn Burns

i swear i’m going to get this right
even though i think i’m wrong now

If I may recount time —
            (I shall, I shan’t)
— then in this second try,
I chime: 
            Yes, indeed, I love this Dolly so;
            of course, with greed,
            I take and hold it close.

The peril, the tragedy, such travesty —
            (where was I? how did I not know?
             I am foolish, I am mad,
             I grieve without being sad)
— the end of all that is good.

The whimsy, the joy, the folly —
O, my Dear, my Dolly! I fall,
              I fall,
To my knees, for all —
I surrender, I surrender,
My love, my life,
   my self,
                — has lost.

the muck of figuring it out (will I ever?) and the zig zagging too muchness of my beloveds mucked figuring and honey bees are in peril oh my God, the African forest elephant too–the inconceivable White House fuck-upedness-stink-along the rude rot of so much human suffering. FUCK. And, the roiling sea thunder anyway. Overnight, sea turtles lay their baby turtle eggs on the beach, hundreds of them. Where the mothers walked, spirals of divets in the sand. A promise from infinity? The moss faced stones of the old mountain trail near my house–the mossed feet of trees, so quiet. The beads of sun there. People all over creation, beads of light noticing what’s good and praying. And what’s good, thank God, mending things. In my yard, a briar of old blackberries make their way up the fence through the rainy season muck.