Author: Rachel Elaine Forth

What if the Buddhist are Right? (a poem)

Pain will set you free
But have they felt my pain?
And I have never felt yours

Watching your pain
That is the pain that hurts the most
The pain I have no power over

What if the Buddhists are right?
What if we have to feel pain
To truly know happiness?

Sometimes your happiness
Seems so very far away
Behind mountains I cannot move

I can hide my emotions
I can trick myself
I can pretend

But your pain
I am powerless
I am weak

But if the Buddhists are right
Then I have hope that one day
You’ll be the happiest man I’ve ever met

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World Crumbling (a poem)

World crumbling
Tears running down my face
When does the pain end?
How do we get to stable ground?

Six months of nonstop
Six months of ups and downs
Never did I think that death would come

Now we’re left here
Dealing with the mess he made
Financial ruin, our lives in ruin?

He is gone and you might be too
How do I handle losing both my pillars?
Do I go on faith and drown?
Do I let you go and sink even faster?

Each path is dark
And each path has different poisons
This is my pit of despair

Machine (a poem)

Sometimes I think you see me as a machine
I can handle everything
Nothing bothers me

Other times I think you don’t even notice me
Sadness and pain
I do feel those things

Sometimes I become a machine
It’s how I was raised to be
To never stop, to always keep going

But even while my blood turns to oil
And I keep going and pushing
Behind everything is sadness and pain

My Faith Today

I am the daughter of a heterosexual White Christian couple from Tennessee. I am the granddaughter of many generations of southern families. I am unclear if any of my family ever owned slaves, but I won’t rule it out. I was raised in the church, but in reflecting upon everything I learned as a child, it was not the church that taught me how to be a good person – it was my mother and my grandmothers.

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Sinkhole (a poem)

I’m the type of person who puts my entire heart into everything I do

Love pours out from me like a tipped over water glass

Drenching everything on the map in front of me

Lines get blurred, everything mixes together

All aspects of my life live in harmony

Until the day that a sinkhole appears

The water rushes away from all areas of the map

And vanishes into this black abyss

Leaving only my tears to water to the desert my life

(Photo by Eric Muhr on Unsplash)

The Black Mist (a poem)

The black mist rolled around me

And the vase shattered into a million pieces

The flower petals it once held

Orange, red and yellow, they were all scattered around

The pieces are now jagged and sharp

Piercing my skin deeply with every try to collect them

Maybe I’ll make a mosaic of them one day

And hopefully that image is as lovely as the vase used to be

(Photo by Fabien TWB on Unsplash)

The Old Family Farm (Happy Earth Day)

Today I wanted to bring you a photo of my family’s old farm. These 250 acres of the family farm land in Pelham, TN, is where I spent a lot of my time growing up and where I learned a lot about food. My Mutsi had a tiny vineyard where we could pick the grapes to make jam. My Papa had a little garden out front where we could collect veggies for our salads and other side dishes.

Continue reading “The Old Family Farm (Happy Earth Day)” →