JULIE LINDAHL
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airplane

10/31/2021

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Behind the cement wall, an engine rises in my belly, 
Unseen but for the shark's tail

I, with the mind-less courage of a warrior
Run lithe, muscles gleaming steely bronze in the blistering sun

A swan yearns its neck skyward, the paradox of everything 
Resistance unfolds
 
Belief suspended before I see the nose 
Breaking into "I don't know"

Shout after a bird in the distance,
"Tears for your freedom!"

Fallen on trails through heaven left by a smirking cigar, 
"Nothing is for free."

On watching an airplane take off after a long period of not flying during the pandemic.

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The deserted

8/19/2021

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Weep for the legless peddler on the curb
               or for youth on the drip of a phone,
For the woman through a slit
               or her angry aged child,
For stray dogs hungering on the edges of broken playgrounds.
               
Weep for poppies and presidents and policy 
              or the face behind the bitter mask of desertion,
For the chasm between home and the airport
              or the rifles borne like handbags,
Or the bodies twisting like airborne foliage.

Weep for the murdered guardians of light
                    or the golden millions melting across the border,
For fibers of trust spat out on strategies
                    or the dust settled on reports,
Or the satisfaction of a vacuum-packed manual.

Weep, weep, weep
             a flood on the plain of parched hope.

On the desertion of the people of Afghanistan in August 2021.
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How shall we live?

8/1/2021

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The pandemic has been both beast and blessing. There is barely one of us who doesn't have a family member, friend, or acquaintance who is no longer with us because of it. Perhaps as a result and not in spite of this - beast and blessing are not separate - it demands that we value life, all life, more, This has been a time of worry, but it has also been a time to get lost in what fascinates us so that we can see the connections; to overcome hesitations about spending time rather than saying "later."

In this sense, the island garden series I have created on Instagram is an ode to the pandemic. In the prose poems that accompany the images, there is fear and ease, the unknown and knowing, doubt and faith, fragmentation and wholeness, mortality and eternity. Imagination births a deep sense of connection to each complex being which, in turn, invigorates our imagination, until we recognize that this process is our very source and begs the question of what this means for how we live. The collection consists of fifty-five images and stories, gathered daily through two months of this summer on a small Swedish island where a garden once grew out of little more than rock and sand.

Enjoy!
https://www.instagram.com/julcatlin/

Picture
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On patterns, frequencies and hesitations

2/7/2021

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If I knew my own pattern,
I'd find the sun in every repetition
Broken by the blessing of fresh thought.

If I recognized my own frequency,
I'd hear the wide vista on either side
Pulsing with the chance of new sound.

If I saw each hesitation,
I'd caress every leap of faith,
Commiserating with the lonely pilgrim

​Whose path is always her own.

Picture
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2020 Solstice

12/20/2020

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She said, let there be darkness, and there was light
                In the dried rose between handmade winter pages, 
The scent of summer incandescent under lanterns
                Flickering over the brown wafers, 
Stronger than plump young petals at blooming.

For we who have seen an empty year are alive,
                 Knowing death at the threshold, hearing the words
From the doctor’s beak that points inward to the blind soul that breaks
                 Free of “we weren’t enough," and follows
​T
he child who sounded the alarm because she cared.

Between ourselves and the shadow is a realm unknown,
               The space between, billowing like untameable silk,
Glowing unmistakably with the shiny cheek of spring,
               Whose skin colour is equal as trees
In an opera of flitting whispers under the canopy.

On a day of stillness there is no waiting, or longing for the restoration,
                For there are no advances or refunds in time
That meanders like a crooked stony creek, gnarled as used fingers,
                Offering a pure cup not to be mistaken
For insurance, which cannot save a flower.

Only the beholder can do that.

Picture
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4 a.m.

11/2/2020

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In the warm light of my desk lamp, you died tomorrow
At 4 a.m. in words from my fingers explaining
You were gone, that I stood at your footprint
On a plain of undone spirits I couldn't tend to
When the children awoke and I made them eggs for breakfast.

Tomorrow at 4 a.m. I live past you in each breath
My slim mouth mirrors yours on the mountain
You snatched a look at me through the fiery cloud, soon closing,
My lungs fill with walks, old movies
Waiting for the unsaid.

Crooks, all of them. Don't trust your own mother.
Take care of your own. How I tried
But couldn't stand the weeping of the leaves
On another path you never walked, it's different here,
Shuddering in the wind, I wear another coat, keep you in the lining.

I eat the fruits of your life richly, but hunger for the stories and the spruce 
On the wings of gulls hovering over the catch at dawn,
Waiting for their time, long past 4 a.m., 
When the beak clenches the body, swallows it rising
As I you on this day, so you can watch it through my eyes.

For my father, a Republican I loved.
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autumn Notes from the kayak

9/29/2020

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In a deserted still sea
Gold does not shine
Yet caresses the shore,
Gives the trees faces
That gaze at boulders 
Like giant turtles
Incapable of lying
Either to me or the flocks
Flying low in fog's padding
Toward new land,
On a fleeting surface.

Unshifting skies weep droplets
Slight as cygnets among the reeds,
Parents circle
Feed, nestle
In the pause
Before the freeze
The oar breaks molasses
On lifting it heals,
No trace of anticipation
Or my giddy heart
Once here.

In the lost realm
Where fish graze
A tree grows from the deep,
Once ignored
By famished sailboats
Hungry to be free,
Witness to the fullness,
No wind
No need
Breath rising and falling
On the thickening eve.
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garden Story #22:

9/5/2020

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Summer sun echoing
Through a curtain of fairy dust
Tender as first fall rain
On ears in waiting for the peace
Of winter's weightless bright cascade.

Picture
Almost a quarter of a century ago, I was privileged to move to a small island that had the early makings of a garden. More than thirty years before, an old man for whom this place was therapy for depression had planted some flowers that tolerated the rocky, dry soil. After over twenty years of tending this garden with the help of pollinating insects, I have watched it become a small paradise that in June-July defies the wildest imagination.

In between the heavier poetry and prose in this blog, this is the story of a garden in spontaneous unedited images and butterfly words. It's all play, but that is survival in the most challenging of times. Through play we experience perspectives that change us and our relationships to the world around us. In a garden there is rhythm but also the promise of a new way.
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garden story #21:

8/31/2020

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Straight path
Right path
Singular road to go.

Trusted
Certain
A once reliable show.

Broken
Swirling
Dimensions all unknown.

A million
Forms emerging 
Retreating to the whole.

All tracks
Are no tracks
Dissolved in the flow.

Right ways
Are wrong ways
When there's only one road to go.

Picture
Almost a quarter of a century ago, I was privileged to move to a small island that had the early makings of a garden. More than thirty years before, an old man for whom this place was therapy for depression had planted some flowers that tolerated the rocky, dry soil. After over twenty years of tending this garden with the help of pollinating insects, I have watched it become a small paradise that in June-July defies the wildest imagination.

In between the heavier poetry and prose in this blog, this is the story of a garden in spontaneous unedited images and butterfly words. It's all play, but that is survival in the most challenging of times. Through play we experience perspectives that change us and our relationships to the world around us. In a garden there is rhythm but also the promise of a new way.
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garden story #20

8/21/2020

0 Comments

 
Remember me in an autumn storm
In the forever of winter
When cults are born
And the end is nigh
Darkness no end
A velvet white petal
In the warm summer wind.

Picture
Almost a quarter of a century ago, I was privileged to move to a small island that had the early makings of a garden. More than thirty years before, an old man for whom this place was therapy for depression had planted some flowers that tolerated the rocky, dry soil. After over twenty years of tending this garden with the help of pollinating insects, I have watched it become a small paradise that in June-July defies the wildest imagination.

In between the heavier poetry and prose in this blog, this is the story of a garden in spontaneous unedited images and butterfly words. It's all play, but that is survival in the most challenging of times. Through play we experience perspectives that change us and our relationships to the world around us. In a garden there is rhythm but also the promise of a new way.
0 Comments
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  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • WRITING
    • Books >
      • The Pendulum >
        • English
        • Swedish
      • Rose in the Sand
      • Letters from the Island
      • On My Swedish Island
    • POEMS & SHORT PROSE
    • Columnist
  • Collaborations
  • Events & Media
  • CONTACT