Now Playing: Say what you mean, and mean what you say...and NO APOLOGIES!
Rage on through this battle-
But never fight in vain...
for life is a struggle, and the world is a stage
to host the foolish and slain

They say we all are born to die
And death we all shall see...
So STAND, if damned, and forge your own path..
The path that sets you free!


J Arnold
@2000

Wondering what the present would mean to those of the past......

Untitled
What heavy thoughts hath bent the backs
Of women long in years?
Whose hands have touched mortality,
through veils of blood and tears!
Who battle at the very gate of birth and death combined
And tug from life into this death, a being so sublime!
So, blessed are these royal guides
Who glimpse the heavens lands
And set among us one more soul
With brave and wizened hands.
And lest we grow too cynical, and so we won't
forget...In Genesis 4 verse twenty-five
our priveledge and fates are set.
What awesome powers or miracles wrought
could stop this march of man?
The child unborn, the sigh unheard
and the hush of this world
bereft of such hands.

Jane Arnold

Copyright ©2005 Jane Arnold




True Friends
Friends are like the autumn leaves
Wisely scattered 'round..
No need for you to watch your step!
They've covered all your ground!

And any way you choose to look,
They brush against your face,
And fill you with the colors of
their warm and loving grace.

Jane Arnold

Copyright ©2005 Jane Arnold



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Surely there has GOT to be more of us out there!
Mood:  incredulous
Now Playing: Dad's Impression with his 'rocks and hunting tales'
Topic: Travel stories/Poetry
All my life my dad has had a thing about arrowheads, hunting and making sure these ethical foundations were passed along to us kids!
One Father's Day i worked up something specifically about an episode I recall as a girl on one of his expeditions (and for those I am FOREVER GRATEFUL!). He was THE BEST storyteller when it came to picking up a real and tangible piece of life----thank GOD he loved us enough to pass on to us his perspective...plus all those trips cross country to monument sites!
I wrote this for my dad as a father's day gift to show him my appreciation for all of those moments in our past together...and for him to see the difference his wisdom has made in the lives of us kids!

The Zen Of A Stone

While walking long a creekbed
That clove a sunlit vale
My dad picked up a rock and bade me
listen to it's tale.....
I laughed and said "No rock can speak"!...
And then his face grew stern...
"Hush"! he said, "And listen close...
and maybe you will learn"!

"Two hundred years ago or more
A young brave passed this way....
In search of what may make him be
A better man someday".
Instead he met a brooding buck
Foraging alone
The stalking youth who watched his prey
prepared no wood nor bone.......
So all along this bed he crept...
A quick and stealthy stride...
To set about his father's work...
And this he did with pride!
Carefully, he delved the depths
Of waters now of lore....
To seek the tools his father sought so many times before....
But trees back then were foolish,
and they gossiped on the gale....
They nearly cost this boy his buck
by carrying his tale!
But GOD gives all a time and place,
and that's the way of life......
The buck fell here......
That boy grew up.....
And THIS here was his knife"!

J. Arnold
@1999

Introductions all 'round!
Mood:  happy
Topic: Introductions:
Well, I've been around a bit..(on the net, that is..) and so far it's been near impossible to find others who REALLY enjoy either telling a story or hearing a story crafted in rhyme.
As a kid I grew up on adventurous literature. Robert Frost, Jules Verne, Alfred Bester, Carlos Castaneda, Tolkien, Bronte and Rand were some of my favorites...along with a rather eclectic blend of poetry the likes of Dante, Goethe, Khayyam, Homer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Snorri Sturleson's 'Edda',....then Aesop, Brothers Grimm, Jim Morrison, Neil Peart (yeah...hehe)--ahem...Dr.Seuss....(:
The thing is...these wonderful writers, and what they had to say about the world around and within themselves really made an impression on me. Surely I couldn't have been the only one! And surely there are others today who can still find delight in re-living those fleeting sights,faded sounds, scents and impressions that seem all too vague nowadays except when sparked by a certain rhythm or a set of images brought to life in rhyme.
I have heard that a few cultures still pass their history on to the next generation through the art of narration and verse. I have also heard that this tradition is becoming extinct. It just seems to me that passing along life events and experiences through verse, poetry and song is the most natural progression there is! Which brings me to why I created this page.
I left my hometown here in Tennessee in (literally) pursuit of my mother....destination: Alaska....and along the way I was blessed with the company of some amazing and colorful characters. In addition to the impression these chance meetings made on me, and as a direct result of these haphazard adventures along the way, I found myself directly participating in the birth of my own spirit as I made my way across the country!
What I hope to accomplish by setting up this page is to provide a place for myself and others to share and enjoy our journeys through poetry. If you are delighted by the magic of an adventure told in verse or enjoy spinning a yarn or two of your own, then grab a seat and lay one on me!

First and last impression of Alaska
Now Playing: Poem about a certain time of year when the wind whips down off the Taku mountain range
TAKU WIND

They say beyond the mountain peak
There lay a barren land
A forging block of ice and snow
Set down by Winter's hand
A place where niether man nor beast
Would dare to make his home
Where Winter shapes the icy winds
And sets them free to roam....
High above the frozen deep
They race across the land
The centuries of stone and snow
Can't still their sculpting hands...
They carry brittle tools of frost
To valleys far below
Where living souls seek shelter
When 'The Taku' starts to blow.
But somewhere on a mountaintop
There stands a lady fair..
She sings beneath the midnight sun
While hell shrieks through her hair
She wears a veil of sorrow
Whipping wildly on the wind...
And bids goodbye the lover
She will never see again.
So when the mouth of winter
Whispers coldly in your ear...
Listen for the 'Taku Wind', and maybe you will hear..
A ghostly song of sorrow
Dancing lightly on the gale...
Slowing down the work at hand
To bear this windswept tale.

@1991
J. Arnold