October Reflections


I’ve spent hours walking through the woods between bough and bramble..I feed on oaks in the netted forest. The sun hushed sky lighting my way. I make up rhymes straight from my chaotic head. Finding reflections in nature’s movement on a gentle October day. 

I ghost dance with a song of myself. Bridging the unbridgeable.  My body haunted by the hum of yesteryears and
things left undone. Wishing I got over things as easy as some. Yet,  I’m obligated to feel every missteps and my wrong opinions of my battered soul. Always the first to stick myself with pins,
even though I’ve been blessed with unconditional love and acceptance. I’m still afraid of never being enough, of feeling
alone, of being forgotten. Scared of not being able to discern
genuine affection from inauthentic affected entanglement.  Why am I still so naïve?  Why do I trust too much? 

As I walk back toward home. I remember
that my foundation is strong. That each
path I’ve traversed has led me where I’m
suppose to be. Somehow fuller from grief
and faults start. The frame of myself feeling each chilly breeze, each twig broken. Never quite able to lay down the
dregs of my soul. There are so many ways to go wrong. I refuse to count them
anymore. I’m tired of being anxious on my behalf. I will always have a melancholy heart, but my spirit is formidable. 

Home now with a cup of hot chocolate and the warmth of kindreds, I offer up a toast to sorrows felt, those I’ve lost who have long moved on, and to the realities of self. Here’s to the story of stories left to be told, to long walks and ink saturated nights. Lines that shutter and get redefine, do overs, and the allure of fresh pine. Cheers to a woman child with a pocket full of thorns, and shooting stars in her eyes, a life of contusions, and cherry picked pages, the girl who lives for the scent of honeysuckles and always finds the will to go on.

-Tosha Michelle

This song is so beautiful. My heart!
https://youtu.be/-xO2-3r1dHE

Storybook Endings 

When I was a child
how I love to dress
my face in a book.
Entering worlds I’ve
never known.
I’d hide behind the cover.
discovering secret gardens,
children in boxcars, and
little women decked out
in petticoats.

On summer nights when
I could be coaxed out of
the books I loved.
My brother and I would
chase fireflies and play
Mother May I under
the backyard lights.

We were safe then under
the stars and constellations.
These were the years of
innocence and freedom

As a child you don’t notice
things like the moon losing
itself to the sky, or the cold
touch of the air.

As an adult you’re more apt
to notice the bee, the sting
the thorn, the horsewhip
Yet there’s still the beauty
of stories in a book and
nature’s sweet allure .

Sitting on a porch swing
the wind blowing hazily
Losing yourself in words
The call of distant shores,
The lure of courtships and
rosehip. In these times the
world brightens. The mind
alive with a gentle pitch
No need to rush or fuss
The sun refuses to faltered
Your soul becomes supernatural
Life’s frailties for a moment abated .

-Tosha Michelle


The ending of this video is perfection (as the music ends and the last chapter begins). 💕

Upon Being 


Let the sunshine caress you,
as if it were a lover.
Live today like it is everything
you have.
Don’t be afraid to let the wind
bend you.
Feel the tenderness of the garden.
Take in the color, scent,
and aliveness of the flowers blossoming.
Let the sky’s blue direct you.
between what’s your’s and what’s their’s Feel the richness of the grass
under your feet.
Let nature be the cure that relieves you. If only for a moment, be well

-Tosha Michelle

and another song by The Maine Yep, still om that music kick 🙂

The Harvest 


They gave each other the sweetness of apples,
immeasurable by hand.
An orchard assembled by 
loyalty and determination,
where two horizons met
bound by soul constellations
An intimacy that went beyond a
bed of grass and fleeting endorphin
laced cider.

But no matter how bountiful the gathering,
we sometimes become too accustomed
to the beauty of the return.

We forget to take time
to savor what we hold dear,
clinging too long to
memories of past harvesting
Or we become consumed with
the yields of new fruit.

No time to fight or even mourn
for bruised apples
left to oxidize in the
toxic air.

Neglect takes root, hurt unbridles
And careless words become an
apron full of briars.
A spider lodged in the hem.

The orchard once ablaze and alive sheds
it’s golden mass becoming nothing
more than a misbegotten shadow,
a crop of blue scars, an artifact
of loss.

-Tosha Michelle

Music For Sunday ❤️

“This is our life
These are our friends
This is our family that grows and bends.
This is our chance
This is our time
This is us making things to somehow leave behind
What  will we leave behind to show
That this is our life”

October In View

I could live for the sky today.
so bright and vast
Spread a blanket on the ground
Open a basket of hope

Feast on the taste of an illuminated
world, green fields
with no fences, the sun rising
over the meadow.

Devour the middle of the white
chocolate colored clouds
No one to take note of me

Serenity in the stillness
My skin alive with the melody
of the breeze slow
dancing with the golden leaves.

I sway along with the stray wind
My face dusted by
sunlight. My worries dissolving
into sweet pitch of
a heavenly October day.

-Tosha Michelle

https://youtu.be/qVy4w6vq8y8

The Next Big Thing

image

Big ideas are everywhere,
from religion to capitalism.
There’s always someone
trying to sell us something.
I’m burnt out on the peddling.
I just want to be left on the
side of the road while I still
have a little sanity.
Let nature stand for all I believe in.
As for faith, I’ll leave that to the sun.

We all die in the end,
the good, the bad,
the blissfully indifferent.
It doesn’t matter how well
you sing the hymn,
or if you know the slogan
by memory.

Life is freshly pressed and
the creases only hold for so long.
I’d like to believe in
the lottery, mail in rebates,
and a free trip to Hawaii.

In my crisis of faith,
I have moments where I wonder
if we all just fade to dust.
Our molecules scattered
in the wind.
Left with nothing but our
collective darkness,
where there are no charge
off or loopholes.

All I know for certain
is I know nothing.
Oh to have the wisdom of Solomon.
I look for assurance
in the clouds.
Punching the fog.
I fall back on my upbringing.
close my eyes and
pray for grace.

-Tosha Michelle