Magic of the Seasons…

I dreamed that I was a butterfly, floating with the pale gold sequins spilled by the Locust tree, from my cocoon the dream set me free. I woke to a cool autumn morning the season where all things change, many of Mother Nature’s children drop their cloaks returning to the earth from which they came.

The nearby brook reveals a frozen sparkling bank as ice crystals form at its edge, the pure water will always run free, of winter it has no dread. Dreams floating within a liquid eye, relives the wonders of spring that brings the lovely butterfly.

Alas, we must wake to these frosty days; wait for the early darkness, the harvest moon shining down upon mounds of freshly mowed hay. Masters of cadence the landscape transforms, winds leap and the maple trees weep, soon Mother Nature will put her children to sleep.

The language of Mother Nature is never old and never new, as she speaks to the world under a sky of blue. Then spring will once again arrive, and the earth will warm, the chicory plants will bloom; with it, the butterfly released from its magic cocoon.

 

©2013.annjohnsonmurphree

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_11?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ann%20johnson-murphree&sprefix=ann+johnson%2Caps%2C292

Advertisement

Memories…

I have enough memories from the past

to last me for the rest of my life. My

benevolent memory will not bury them

from which they were born.

A small country church, a chorus of

crows; the splashing sounds of the

brook running through the Birch trees.

The wind caressing the colossal row

of Oaks in the field.

Death road away from the weathered

house of worship, followed by black

feathered angels. No longer will the

water beneath the Birch cool, nor will

the wind surrounding the Oaks embrace

The rocker on the porch is stilled, no hand

waves goodbye. In a cobwebbed corner of

the room, tattered sun struck curtains dance

in the nearby mirror. Childhood is dead.

 

©2013®annjohnsonmurphree.echoingimagesfromthesoul

 

http://www.amazon.com/Echoing-Images-Soul-Journey-into/dp/1500366811/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406735446&sr=1-5&keywords=ann+johnson-murphree

Pseudo Heavens…

The bitterness, the misery of life, questions for God.

Was it his goodness that took my child, I can believe

in an avenging god if he would tell me what I have done.

 

I have been imprisoned in a chrysalis, beaten, withered,

dust covers my soul. There is no one to find me, no one

to free me from pain and heartache.

 

Hate is a strong word, yet it dwells within my mind, in the

shadowy corners. It hides, waits like a rain cloud that

threatens to spoil the rays of a sunny day.

 

I use to stand staring at the sky, praying, questioning, it may

as well have been a black void. A pseudo path to the Heavens

outside my windows.

 

 

©2014.annjohnsonmurphree

Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_7?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=ann%20johnson-murphree&sprefix=ann+joh%2Caps%2C289

 

Rebecca’s Story…

Thank you Elouise

http://tellingthetruth1993.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/where-is-my-mother-part-1/

for this comment which touched the heart of the story…”Southern culture. The look, the smell, the ungodly expectations and the heaviness of tightly guarded secrets. You’ve captured it so well.”   ajm

 

 

The story below was the inspiration for the book of poetry called “A Sachet of Poetry – Adoration, Anger, Asylum and Aspiration”. The poems with thoughts of adoration come from the possibility of love. The anger poems come from thoughts of being placed in a position of abuse. Asylum poetry is derived from the position she was placed in by her mother and the man she was forced to marry when only an innocent girl. Apparition became the final voice for Rebecca, her desires, her wishes, her thoughts on her life and how her innocence was lost behind the walls of an asylum in the mid-1950. Her goal, her most needed aspiration was her death, her death meant freedom.

Rebecca’s story is one of a developing collection and this is an excerpt from her story… 

Rebecca watched her father walked through the double door without looking back. Her mother and husband was telling the family doctor how she had been upset with her marriage and threated to kill herself. When she looked at her arm, the rubber tubing, the syringe was freighting then her mind froze in time. Her vision blurred and the fleur-de-lis wallpaper in her parent’s living room became waves of beige and gold swaying in an invisible breeze. The reason she was there dissolved into an ocean of oblivion.

Still dazed, she woke lying on an examining table in the Shelby County Medical Clinic, beside her was the doctor who had given her a shot and a nurse she knew. Standing in the corner of the room were her mother, husband and two sheriff deputies. She did not protest when the doctor gave her another shot of his magic that sent her to a place where she no longer cared. The wheelchair bumped over each crack in the sidewalk, each time giving her the feeling as if she was falling into a dark black hole. The doctor and nurse put her in the back of an ambulance as her mother began to tell Rebecca’s husband that his wife would never leave him. She steps into the ambulance, and in her own heartless way said in a low malicious voice…

“You see what happens when you try to disgrace me, putting you away for being insane will be more acceptable than have you leave your husband. You’re a southerner, southerners don’t leave their husbands”

Quivering beneath the threadbare blanket she fought violently against the straps confining her to a bed as her mind battled with drugged hallucinations. When she slept they became chaotic dreams. Mostly, she lay quietly watching other unwanted souls shuffle back and forth in a dimly lit hallway or being carted off to where the black box was kept.   She knew that she had been admitted to Challis Manor located at the edge of the Appalachian foothills it provided medical treatments for the mentally ill.   A place where wealthy Tennesseans paid to have members of their families placed to avoid embarrassment; Rebecca was not there because she had a mental or physical problem, she was there because she tried to leave her husband.

http://www.amazon.com/Sachet-Poetry-Adoration-Aspirations-Asylums/dp/1500483354/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406060183&sr=1-3&keywords=ann+johnson-Murphree

 

Echoing Images from the Soul…

 

“Reflection on conception, an unwanted

Soul cast away because of greed. An

Image of the future, lost in time, starvation,

Did not kill the seed.”

Published in Kindle eBooks and paperback at Amazon.com:

Echoing Images from the Soul

Beyond the Voices

Reflections of Poetry

Sachets of Poetry on Adoration, Anger, Asylums and Aspirations

Honeysuckle Memories

My Journey into Art

 

http://www.amazon.com/Echoing-Images-Soul-Ann-Johnson-Murphree-ebook/dp/B00CCG2WVK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1405711072&sr=8-2&keywords=ann+johnson-Murphree

 

New in Paperback…

 

Published in Kindle eBooks and paperback at Amazon.com:

Echoing Images from the Soul

Beyond the Voices

Reflections of Poetry

Sachets of Poetry on Adoration, Anger, Asylums and Aspirations

Honeysuckle Memories

My Journey into Art

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_8/180-3788204-9515117?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ann%20johnson-murphree&sprefix=ann+john%2Caps%2C379

 

 

 

Wild Mountain Rose…

There is a legend upon Mossy Ridge children hear while listening to the old folks weaves their tales around their supper table at night

About…

Two gentle spirits walking the rutty mountain roads under the mystical Tennessee moonlight. These stories begin many years ago about an old Cherokee and a little girl he called his Wild Mountain Rose –

Folks …

First saw her drinking from a cool mountain stream all legs and dirty yellow hair, abandoned by her family, so the story goes, but no one is sure of that, if the truth were told. The first time the old Cherokee saw her she was sleeping under a bush folks call the Wild Mountain Rose –

Afterwards…

She was with him no matter where he would go. Folks would say that without old Willie Youngblood she would not have survived –

Willie…

Knew that without her, he himself would have died. The years went by quickly and they both grew old, time had touched their hair with gray –

And…

They could only dream about their younger days. One cool spring morning, Willie woke to find her gone from his side; he sat for hours head hung low as he cried –

Later…

He found her lying peacefully; she had died under a familiar bush on a soft bed of leaves, a mournful death chant was the only way the old Cherokee knew how to grieve.

Now if you know where to look, it is in the Tennessee Mountains where Willie Youngblood’s Wild Mountain Rose can be found –

Beneath…

The damp rotting forest floor in a shallow grave, up on Mossy Ridge near the entrance of Chicopee Cave. The following winter Old Willie died, and they buried him next to his Wild Mountain Rose –

Folks…

Say in the moonlight two ghostly spirits can be seen sitting on the banks of Chestnut Creek, or floating along the rutty mountain roads.

When the sun comes up, they disappear…

Or so the legend goes, but everyone on Mossy Ridge knows that it is Old Willie and that golden haired pup he found many years ago that he called his…

Wild Mountain Rose.

 

New In Paperback a Third Book Collection of Poetry Released at Amazon.com July 9

 

 

http://www.amazon.com/Echoing-Images-Soul-Journey-into/dp/1500366811/ref=sr_1_3_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404883588&sr=1-3&keywords=ann+johnson-murphree

 

Also at Amazon.com

Reflection of Poetry and Beyond the Voices

 

A Review from new release…Honeysuckle Memories…

 

http://www.amazon.com/Honeysuckle-Memories-Ann-Johnson-murphree/dp/150029070X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1404590070&sr=8-2&keywords=ann+johnson-Murphree

Thank you Dr. Moriarty for this review.  ajm

Dr. Karen Moriarty

This review is from: Honeysuckle Memories

“As a former teacher of English and creative writing, I approached the reading of Ann Johnson-Murphree’s “Honeysuckle Memories” with real enthusiasm. Poetry is not a wildly popular genre in this day and age. However, I have always enjoyed it, partly because it can be consumed in bits and pieces and at any time of day or night. This book did not disappoint. I consider poems the poet’s personal journey of heart-soul-and-mind. This collection of poems is about Southern living, tragedy, death, and memories. The poet-author’s background as a child who grew up in northern Alabama, a sharecropper’s daughter who farmed for his living, colors much of her work. I enjoyed the flow of her writing, her style of combining prose and poetry, and her reflecting the imagery from her earlier memories in vivid terms.”

I recommend that you buy and read this book. It is priced well — to entice the potential reader to venture into the realm of poetry. Ms. Johnson-Murphree enjoys, above all else, sharing her love of writing with others who will enjoy it, understand her better, and share her personal journey.

Karen Moriarty, Author of “Defending A King ~ His Life & Legacy” [about the incomparable Michael Jackson]

Lost Little Girl…

 

 

I do not know if you are alive or dead.

I see your face your voice never

 

The sun does not rise in the morning, nor

fade into the west without a thought of you.

I mourn, nights are sleepless and morning

eyes fill with fire.

 

No one more cherished, more loved, my

heart bears scars of torture. Where are you

my lost little girl?

 

©2014.annjohnsonmurphree