Posted in Jamie Dedes, Poems/Poetry

NO-BALONEY SANDWICHES

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

“ONE’S-SELF I sing—a simple, separate Person.” Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

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For Zabaida on her 98th birthday.

Maybe next time around …

 NO-BALONEY SANDWICHES

by

Jamie Dedes

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This is dedicated to all those fine beings . . .

Those who are blatantly themselves

You know the ones I mean –

Some, when seedlings, had folks

who jabbed a finger yelling: You! You! You!

accusing them of being quintessentially themselves

. . . as though that was wrong.

They are the YOUs who come from multi-colored places

and varied dreams

with hearts woven of wonderlush.

They are womanish or manish.

They are childlike and adultish.

They run from the gray streets to the green forest.

They take to long-lost roads and never-found pathways

with their song in a backpack and

a brown-bag lunch of no-baloney sandwiches.

When they elder they arrive back at the beginning

knowing who are they are

. . . and why.

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© 2012, poem, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved

Photo credit ~ Jon Sullivan’s “Woman on the Beach”

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The focus of "The BeZine," a publication of The Bardo Group Beguines, is on sacred space (common ground) as it is expressed through the arts. Our work covers a range of topics: spirituality, life, death, personal experience, culture, current events, history, art, and photography and film. We share work here that is representative of universal human values however differently they might be expressed in our varied religions and cultures. We feel that our art and our Internet-facilitated social connection offer a means to see one another in our simple humanity, as brothers and sisters, and not as “other.” This is a space where we hope you’ll delight in learning how much you have in common with “other” peoples. We hope that your visits here will help you to love (respect) not fear. For more see our Info/Mission Statement Page.

21 thoughts on “NO-BALONEY SANDWICHES”

  2. I really like this too, Jamie. One of life’s important lessons is to come to see, appreciate, and love the person it turns out we discover we are. For some of us that proceess of discovery is harder than for others. But we keep at it be best we can.

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    1. I’m glad you liked it, Genie. I must say – since you’ve turned the setting off for comments on your blog – that I appreciate the lovely photographs and dear poems on your site. My favorite recently was: she just wasn’t that into him. Nice! 😉 Many blessings on this beautiful Sunday.

      Jamie

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      1. Thanks, Jamie, for letting me know your apeciation of my work and I love hearing that you liked “she just wasn’t that into him”. I had a lot of fun writing that one.
        The reason that I have comments turned off is that I am not around computers much in the summer, I love the outdoors and being in it, nature is my great joy and summers are so short that I cherish them so much and I do that by immersing myself in the wonders of the outdoors.

        I don’t have a cell phone nor do I want one to take with me when I am outside, so it makes for a problematic comments situation, therefore, I decided to turn off comments for the summer.

        Many blessings to you as well, dear Jamie.
        Genie

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  6. Oh boy, Jamie, this says so much! I know exactly who I am going to send your link…my gorgeous friend Susan whose gregarious persona others tried to repress. Glad they failed!

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  8. When they elder they arrive back at the beginning
    knowing who are they are
    . . . and why.

    This answers a question I asked myself as a comment on my Ray Bradbury blog: why do I constantly want to make contact with people from my long ago past? I’m eldering (tolerably gracefully, I hope) but I have a need to revisit the past to check on it – it’s the ‘why’ that matters. I imagine I know the ‘who’… I imagine! 🙂

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      1. Occasionally the past certainly can seem more real than the present, I think – maybe when I’m not centred enough, when something throws me off-balance or when I identify too strongly with something I valued in the past. But mostly I think the need to revisit my past (the need to know whether my students are still affected by my reading ‘The Murderer’, for example) has to do with something like the validation (maybe) of all the bits of me that have led to my NOW-state. Like I said I imagine I know the ‘who’ – it’s the ‘how I got here’ that I feel driven to explore – not to establish myself as anything other than what I possibly am but just to collect it all together so it makes a kind of at least provisional sense. If that makes sense! I can feel a Blog coming on!

        I take the view that there are trillions of ‘I’s back there (the Enneagram on my reading is a tool for sorting them) – my virtual question would be: What would they all look like stood in a very long row!

        Thanks Jamie!

        Colin

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Kindly phrased comments welcome here.

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