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Alicia Kwon's avatar

I love the pic - it takes me beyond the poem, even. I love this: "Beauty is born in the womb of storms." If I may ask, what inspired this poem? You don't have to say...but I am curious the stories behind the poems, as for me, often I dance between prose and poetry, like the right and left brain hopping and skipping down the street of this awe-inspiring, totally fucking insane, beautiful world we live in and are here to both accept and transform to allow that light into the bones, crystalizing our higher self into a more full expression of Soul within form.

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Jamie Millard's avatar

Thanks! The start and end came out in a minute while on a speaking engagement in the prairies of Saskatchewan in Canada. I was in a new place and astonished by nature. Big sky. It swallowed me. I wrote a few poems over a few days. I left it, and came back to it months later and bridged it. I like to create my own words and Luminating found me as a take on how we perceive brightness. Light. Its all around us yet there is so much light to see. If we chose to see it. Thanks for reading! Bless you 🙏❤️

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Geraldine A. V. Hughes's avatar

Stellar, dear Mr. Millard ! ! !

A glorious beginning to my morning, traveling the information highway. I’m grateful you’re here and there and everywhere. My day is enhanced because you are in it. I value your steady, warm intentions, insights and masculine wisdom and recommendations.

Blessed be, Geraldine

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Jamie Millard's avatar

Wow! Thank you so much Geraldine! What cannot be seen with the eyes can only be seen with the heart. Thank you for reading and listening, and for reaching out with your warm light. May you have the best of days. Bless you. 🙏❤️

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Alison Acheson's avatar

Oh! Yes, the prairies--SK in particular in my experience--can do that for you. The province is a haiku. Deceptively simple.

You've captured so much in this work, Jamie!

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Jamie Millard's avatar

Thanks Alison! So true!

Beautiful people that blend into a tapestry of sky, field, colour and weather.

This was my tribute to them that I wrote once I got home.

A Gust of Prairie Sage

-Saskatchewan

The sky is big here

The wind is a swift flowing river

It has no rival

To slow it down

There is no where to hide

You just slowly weave

and lean into it

as it dances with your bones

I’m still standing

on both feet

I’m not sure where I end

and the ground begins

The land gets inside of you

We are one

Roots grow soul deep here

The grass is tough

yet braided in kindness

The colours are wild and wise

Drenched by the sun

Bleached in the rain

Fading and blending into the horizon

Always returning

Painted even brighter at dawn

This place swallows you

The circle is wide here

The ripple continues

to sing

Jamie Millard

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Alison Acheson's avatar

Absolutely lovely! Thank you for posting this--so captures SK.

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Sadhbh Adamea's avatar

We are the fruit within the seed! I love this! Responding and not reacting, indeed! As always, well crafted and beautifully recorded! Bless your voice some good hot tea! Thank you for sharing your voice!

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Jamie Millard's avatar

Thanks for listening! Am on the mend! Bless you 🙏❤️

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Philip Harris's avatar

Keep 'em coming. I guess recognition shines through us, catch it while we may? I recently wrote a review of a book by Jeremy Naydler and quote him: ‘Goodness streams through our bedroom window in the morning sunlight,’ And Jeremy quotes Thomas Aquinas: ‘sense-perceptible light is certain image of intelligible light’.

Does anyone read Ezra Pound? He made a disastrous political choice in 1930s living in Italy, which puts him beyond the pale for a lot of people, but has a remarkable theme of light threading his poetry.

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Jamie Millard's avatar

Thanks so much Philip for reading, and for reaching out. Ezra Pound! Indeed. “Either move or be moved”! Dancing into the light. Bless you.

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Geraldine A. V. Hughes's avatar

Greetings Philip, I am wanting to share a family story. My Italian Grandmother fled the fascist mussolini on a ship to USA and landed in Long Branch New Jersey, Little Italy. She never let me forget it, the Matriarch that she was, runs in my veins, I have her DNA, thank God the Father and thank God the Mother ! ! !

Go well, Geraldine

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Jamie Millard's avatar

Us North Americans have pretty similar stories! I wrote my own version in my post Beyond Ithaca. I marvel at the bravery and the courage it takes to carry all of your possessions on your back, and just leave, knowing that you’re giving yourself away for the future of your own. You had one beautiful grandmother.

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Geraldine A. V. Hughes's avatar

My Granny fled with five children, and her husband who died soon after arriving. So, she married his Uncle, who was old, keeping her married name and they begat my Mother, who was the only child born in America. I am second generation Italian, and raised Roman Catholic with the whole nine yards, ceremonial and passionate to the max!

At the end of the day, I am an Earth Muffin, a renegade pilgrim poetess, who writes poems to her loved ones, here there everywhere. Thanks for listening, Geraldine

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Philip Harris's avatar

Yes, of course. Thank you. I am old, British, born in the outskirts of London. My first and still vivid memory is of being 'bombed out', the stars where the ceiling should have been, fire in the street, a woman calling trapped in her house with small children and fearing fire. I can hear my mother's voice reply, but not the words. I was holding an older brother's hand. My oldest brother ran back to get the men to let our neighbour out.

Over a lifetime I have thought hard about that war and the ideologies and the antecedents, the consequences including the atrocity of revenge. My children have worked in Germany and Italy and Russia. I am not sure why I mentioned Pound today, except that light and the relation with beauty came to be the dominant theme of his poetry. He returned to Italy after his release from prison for the insane. I doubt I would have read him except I was introduced to his poetry by a poet and literary scholar raised a Roman Catholic in England.

I wish you a long pilgrimage.

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Jamie Millard's avatar

Thank you so much for sharing Phillip! The choices of our ancestors have dictated the geography of many of us today. I too love the literary work of Pound. Thank you so much for shining your light and beauty and for seeing the bigger good that connects us all. ❤️

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Geraldine A. V. Hughes's avatar

Good afternoon Philip, I feel a calling to respond to your personal story which moves me, I will, this evening when I’m finished with my errands about town. I will carry and think upon your story as I go about my business. I appreciate you, more later, G

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Jamie Millard's avatar

So beautiful! I love how history unfolds the wrinkles of all of us! Thank you so much for sharing. I can feel the passion.

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Veronika Bond's avatar

I love your vignettes:: »The journey will always be our home....«

They remind me of Elias Canetti and Pablo Neruda

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Jamie Millard's avatar

Thank you so much Veronika! I appreciate your support and symbiopaedic inspiration 🙏❤️

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Jason Holliman's avatar

I have to say

that I dread reading (most)

other people’s poetry

Because all

They do is

Write their

Sentences in a

Funny way

Allow me to

Say, however

What you have written

It’s truly a beautiful

Piece o’

Poetry.

We done

👏

I look forward to supporting more of your content.

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Jamie Millard's avatar

Thanks! I appreciate you reading and reaching out. 🙏❤️

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Sadhbh Adamea's avatar

I totally agree with this. Jamie's poetry is transformative. I read it and it moves me deeply. I listen to it and it reaches even further. Stirs my soul and wraps my heart.

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Jamie Millard's avatar

Thank You

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Jenn's avatar

Beautiful words and landscape photo. ❤️

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Jamie Millard's avatar

Thanks Jenn 🙏❤️

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Jo Sundberg's avatar

I found myself reading your words aloud even before your invitation. A beautiful poem. Thank you Jamie.

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Jamie Millard's avatar

Thanks Jo! 🙏❤️

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Eva-Maria Smith's avatar

Jamie you truly have a way with words.

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Jamie Millard's avatar

Danke Eva-Maria 🙏❤️

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Jen Hitze's avatar

Your poetry is illuminating

The depth

The fervor

The truth

It reminds me what it means to be alive

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Jamie Millard's avatar

Thanks so much Jen! There’s lots of us out here, saying the same thing so many different ways. Bless you 🙏❤️

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