View this post on InstagramA post shared by June Perkins (@gumbootspearlzpress) on
Tag: love
Love Each Person
My latest work contributed to the Nineteen Month Space
Threads
Time threads me into
you
Stars salt me with
the blue
Time traps me in
your silk
Stars sweet me with
your song
Fish threads me into
net
Ocean salts me with
your loss
Song sings me into
sorrows
Time hooks me into
blue
It threads me into
you
It leads me toward
you
(c) Words and image June Perkins (From my notebook)
Power of the People
There’s still a few hours to donate book and toys if you live in Brisbane. I was delighted to drop off some Magic Fish Dreaming books, and cuddly koala soft toys today.
Later on I will encourage some of the children and youth I know to think about sending letters.
It might be a small drop in the ocean of change, but all the more important to take that step.
Really hope and dream that one day all the children and their families are no longer in detention and can find welcome, healing and hope.
Love’s Flame
This poem and photograph appeared at Nineteen Months
I Choose Love
Dedicated to all those
who visited my facebook wall this week
I choose love, not hate;
I hear Martin Luther King knocking at the door.
I choose poetry, deny so called fate
I hear so many poets as they roar.
Maya Angelou says, ‘be the rainbow
in someone else’s cloud.’
I am a rainbow and I forgive, but still call
for injustice to be ploughed.
Mahatma Ghandi shows people how to resist
with non violence, so I wage peace not war;
I don’t wait for it to come knocking at the door.
I read ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Paris Talks
and picture when he brings Louis Gregory to the table
and makes acceptance more than a fable.
Actions always speak louder than words
but words have power
that can be absurd
or turn humanity into
a soaring bird.
I choose for my children
more than debate.
May they educate
illuminate, radiate then eradicate
prejudice forevermore.
I dream we’ll walk through unity’s gate.
June Perkins
I spent this week having discussions in my facebook space about racism and prejudice and what we can do about it.
It began with this:
After watching Q&A this week I am utterly convinced that Australia as a nation has to actively once and for all truly confront and end ignorance, fear and racism against multiple cultures, its Indigenous peoples, and ‘non-Christian’ religions, with love, friendship, community building and education.
We are truly a multicultural nation, a multi-faith nation and it is something to support not pull down as the cause of terrorism. I choose not pickets and placards, or reacting to haters, but instead the courage of intelligent everyday conversations,friendships, educating my children to love all peoples, to unify all peoples and the power of poetry. I choose love.
About 100 reactions, (75 likes and 32 comments)
**
Another day, another media commentary and now Waleed Aly and the Project say #sendforgivenessviral and start ‘construction’ not ‘destruction’ We need love and justice too and people showing true friendship.#ichooselove
We need to think about what fuels fear – things like ignorance, envy, systematic social injustice, inequity, a focus too much on differences and not enough on that which unifies us all. Forgiveness might be a first step for some but we have to go further to get to the ‘construct’ moments.https://www.facebook.com/TheProjectTV/videos/10153760912218441/
7 reactions
**
Just had a lovely prayer session with Nancy. Renewed strength for the week ahead. Thought of all our friends with illness, tests of various kinds, and of course just the world in general after all the unrest.
4 reactions
**
I decided to pose these two questions:
What fuels ‘fear’? What enhances ‘connection’ and ‘unity’? (for anyone who would like to discuss this)
16 reactions: seven thoughtful responses some likes
My response to what people posted on my wall:
There are many things that fuel fear as people have said, and there are many good points here. They point in many ways to the things we can do to overcome it. Arm ourselves with knowledge, broaden our experience so one experience is not all we base a decision on, keep working on our own development as human beings, change what we can in our lives and be detached about what we can’t change.
I love the suggestions here about how to build unity – work on something positive with others, make sure our information sources are trustworthy, find the points of connection, have some common goals, broaden and deepen our knowledge maybe about cultures, religion, experiences others have to go through, develop sympathy – wow so much of it is based around the development of ‘virtues’ and of course I would add LOVE others, love and don’t fear, the diversity, the challenge, the connection, the differences.
We need to be having conversations about to how to support women in Australia and the world and how to create true equality. Perhaps many of the same things apply to this as apply to dealing with prejudices and racism. But no one challenge is more important than the other, and sometimes the cause of the problems might even be the same. Imagine too, where you experience multiple prejudices, racism, sexism and Class (poverty) and think about how all of that might compound. we should be having conversations about to how to support women in Australia and the world and how to create true equality.
Perhaps many of the same things apply to this as apply to dealing with prejudices and racism. But no one challenge is more important than the other, and sometimes the cause of the problems might even be the same. Imagine too, where you experience multiple prejudices, racism, sexism and Class (poverty) and think about how all of that might compound.
18 likes to the above quote and 2 shares.
My final response:
A very big thank you to everyone who has been contributing to the discussions here, for your compassion, sensitivity and intelligence. You all give me hope, especially those of you who have welcomed into your families and neighbourhoods, diversity and who are patient, kind, forgiving, but also want to see real change. Keep the discussions going with those around you for the sake of our future generations and let’s all think about concrete everyday actions to make our world a better place.
25 reactions so far
(Sharing the link, and reblogs of this post are encouraged, spread the dream, spread the love, but please keep my name at the author on the poem please and thanks so much to everyone sharing this and discussing it).
Balance
Oh Gemini man with your magic shoes
rocking the beat on
Melbourne’s Babel Towers
juggling your feet as if they’re wings
my natural bungee jumping man.
You’re the ying and the yang
of my heart beats
taking dizzy prayers way on down
to your feet.
I’m juggling my days
to your rock and roll
now is the time
for my shoes to sprout wings.
So take me to the limit
my Gemini man
as we fly with our feet
magic angels with a beat.
Oh Gemini man you’re sure my kind of man
leaping tall buildings without a blue suit
the ying and the yang of my heart beats
my natural bungee jumping man.
(c) June Perkins
Link for image is here ROBERTA
From Shadow Puppets, p. 13
It’s only the beginning
I can’t censor it
my imaginary name for you
forward rolls out of my mouth
‘Dan Nomad.’
You laugh at my guess
at your name, shake your head
‘Jackson Wheeler’ you gently reply.
‘The Deborah Conway song
‘It’s only the Beginning’
pops into my head
my mind is lost
daisy chains are made
I am doing cartwheels in the park
diving into multicoloured
rippled water
are you my ‘love of a life time?’
I am already walking
hand in hand with you
my butterfly man
I see our children’s
fingers
intertwined with ours
this is our beginning
Jackson Wheeler I think I knew even then
you were the one
my sweetest day dream …
(c) June Perkins
Miranda is back again, and she has found out the name of her true love.
What’s in a Name?
The issue of names
would come up once again
when their child
still wriggled in the womb.
This unborn child
loved to kick to Opera.
She didn’t want to think about
the lost child
and had been avoiding opera lately.
But this man from the butterfly house
who she walked beside
what could his name be?
She had to read what his face said
open with dark eyes she couldn’t see into
but wanted to.
He was almost precisely her height
putting them on an equal footing.
He moved lightly
as she glided besides him.
What about names that went with
hers?
Could this be a test?
Could his name be Ferdinand?
What if his name was Caliban?
Could people really be matched by name
or astrology, or perhaps his name was something
to do with the birds he loved?
Peregrine?
Merlin?
It would be so strange
to meet another who seemed to be
named just for her.
She opened her mouth and the name
she thought he should have tumbled out …
(c) June Perkins
Miranda wonders about names, could she have just met Ferdinand?
Our First Walk
Our first walk
past the rainbow mosaics on the path
developed the beginning of
our short hand.
His short sentences about working as
a falconer
had me intrigued.
I had heard of this ancient art
but never before met a practitioner.
We could barely breathe words into the world
of our first meeting.
I didn’t know where his sentences
would end and he kept leaving me
wanting to know more
I would later discover he had a tendency to leave
them hanging …
like cliffhanger.
When I asked him his name
he countered me with a question.
What do you think it is?
Miranda discovers her true love is a falconer, but she still has to guess his name.
(c) June Perkins
What do you think Miranda’s true loves name should be?
Ripple Poetry 