'Healing' / 'Possessed' / 'Woman as Anchor, Taken for Granted'
Photo: "Oxygen" by Lynne Schmidt
Healing
Anna breathes safely
in the low-lit break-out room.
Candles, scented rose and musk,
embrace her like a lover.
Feel free – to take time out
For the first time ever since
that time, you know, yes,
that one, only one of many
but the first the worst.
Later, she learnt absence,
disconnect
to distance her from him
from her body-self.
Feel free – to take time out
She hugs herself and strokes
her scarred arms. Re-joins way-back
to here-and-now and times ahead.
At last
she’s freed
and comes back in.
~ Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon
Possessed
after The Air Suddenly Goes Cold, music by Olafur Arnalds
by the moon goddess
she stands in whiteness
her light translucent skirts swirl
in gathering ice-breezes
her three faces
crystalline and still
I am afraid of her beauty
afraid of the chill her shade casts
over my bed my body and my mind
as all becomes her
all becomes white
her hand beckons
and I follow mesmerised
I am finished
I am no longer I
I vanish into her
drawn through her six stark apertures
void of human eyes
~ Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon
Woman as Anchor, Taken for Granted
She dwells under currents of motion,
waves whipped up by restless children,
her partner’s parries with the world.
She steadies their long-ship home
tethers it to herself, irrespective of the cost.
The others don’t look down, see below.
They cast easy thank yous – when they remember,
small comfort to her freighted soul.
Over time, her metal rusts and she transforms
converts to a lighter feral frame.
Her final frantic storm, cuts her rope.
Salted by all weathers she drifts away
free at last to roam.
~ Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon
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Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon
Ceinwen lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and writes short stories and poetry. She has been widely published in web magazines and in print anthologies. She was Highly Commended in the Blue Nib Chapbook Competition [Spring 2018] and won the Hedgehog Press Poetry Competition ‘Songs to Learn and Sing’. [August 2018]. She graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from Newcastle University, in 2017 and is now developing practice as a creative writing facilitator with hard to reach groups. She believes everyone’s voice counts.
Lynne Schmidt is the author of the poetry chapbooks, Gravity (Nightingale and Sparrow Press), On Becoming a Role Model (Thirty West Publishing, Spring 2020), and Dead Dog Poems (Bottlecap Press, Summer 2020). She is a mental health professional in Maine and the founder of AbortionChat. Her work has received the Maine Nonfiction Award, Editor's Choice Award, Honorable Mention for the Charles Bukowski Poetry Award, and was a 2018 and 2019 PNWA finalist for memoir and poetry respectively.
Lynne is a five time 2019 Best of the Net Nominee, and when given the choice, Lynne prefers the company of her three dogs and one cat to humans.
