For The Quiet Ones

(Updated June 18, 2023)

Shy Ones Grow Up Too

                            B. Marie Jarreau

When she was a very young girl

She said ‘nothing’

To everyone she met.

She chose to save her precious words

For older wiser days

When her thoughts were

Stronger yet.

Some laughed and mocked a girl so small,

Called her ‘dumb’ and pulled her hair

And said,

“She has no tongue at all.”

She kept quite silent

Through her youthful years.

Then like a spirit awake

Words and images began to flow from her heart

As water from a stream to a lake.

As she grew, she had listened

To people, to birds, to owls and Earth

And she’d learned many things,

Yet saved her own thoughts

Till she knew their own worth.

Like a bud as it opens to flower,

Her words fresh and vibrant

Like a nurturing summer shower.

Ideas and opinions and bright illustrations

From her hands and soul sprang forth.

Songs and soliloquies surged from her heart.

Pictures, words, melodies and more,

She would express her life through her art.

No longer silent,

No longer small.

A once shy little girl

Now shares her stories

With listeners around the world.

                                                       

Marie Jarreau ©11/2010

. . . 

Freedom On A Thread

(Updated June 18, 2023)

Kindred Spirits Hanging on a Thread

                                                                              by:  Marie Jarreau  11/6/10

Under the early morning spell of a November dawn, a tiny gray spider fell gracefully and slow from a branch’s edge.
Suspended by its shiny, single strand of web-thread it floated briefly against a wall of chilled morning fog. A pleasant sight. I watched - wrapped in a woven woolen shawl, sipping warmth from my cup of ginger tea.
The spider’s abject freedom brought a feeling of kinship to my soul. The little agile creature could descend, or climb, pause, spin or sway in the gentle breeze that fed the fog - as it chose - and it did.
At the same time, I could sit – sipping from the comfort of my window, breathe deeply of the morning air, stroll out into the foggy day, or go out and dance a solitary jig beneath the  apple blossoms  - as I chose - and so I did.
For a brief intimate moment in time; there we were – kindred spirits, the wispy little spider and I, hanging on the thread of fragile freedom.