QuietVerse Digest – Issue #2

QuietVerse Digest

🧭 Core Poetic & Reflective

✍️ A Quiet Line

“Some flowers bloom by accident... But you— you are the blossom we chose.”

— from “Chosen” in Leaning Toward Light

🌱 From the Garden

“Spring is not a parade. It is a slow forgiveness of the dark.” —from title poem in Leaning Toward Light

The thaw arrives without fanfare. Beneath the frost, moss greens quietly. The bulbs do not rush. The wind still carries chill.

Something in the soil knows: this is the time to root deeper, not louder.

This season teaches us not to bloom faster— but to trust that every day forward is growth.

📖 The Verse

The Last Frost

In the dim prelude of a late spring eve, An old gardener walks her fields with a grieving heart. Her eyes, like winter skies, gaze with dread upon tender buds in their cold garden beds.

The crisp air holds unwelcome and chilled, as silver frost wills its twist and turn among the shoots daring to challenge their frost roots too soon, after the fledgling sun's under a waning moon's chase.

Her gnarled hands, like the roots she tends, race as each fragile life in a guardian's quest, she defends with straw spread wide, blanketing her pride. She battles through the breaking dawn, bent hope aside.

“Hold fast, hold fast,” she mutters to the breeze, to the peeping buds, to her resolve. Her breath dances in a misty cloud, speaking of years of resilience and of fate's chance.

She has witnessed this game of dice between the green and winter’s last, reluctant grasp. Each year rolling that she bests the odds in her favour.

The pale orb climbs above the trees, Its light a slow, encroaching border, warming the earth, coaxing relief to growing stems thawing her grief.

The woman walks her garden's rows, With a quiet smile only nature knows.

not yet promised back.

💌 What I’m Carrying

I’ve been carrying hesitation lately. The ache of "almost," the fear of emerging too soon.

There’s a softness in me that wants to stay hidden— but spring is patient.

In the poem Self Care, I wrote:

“I did not fix myself. I forgave the needing. I named the pain without flinching.”

That line has been whispering back to me. I’m learning maybe softness isn’t weakness. Maybe it’s just the courage to keep showing up, even before you feel fully ready.

📚 Rooted Reading

The Quiet Pilgrimage

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes... Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage To Caunterbury with ful devout corage. — Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

Each spring, something stirs— not just in the soil, but in the soul.

Chaucer’s pilgrims rose not with fanfare, but with longing. A quiet ache to complete what had once begun.

Their courage wasn’t loud. It was steady. A soft yes to the road ahead.

If you’ve left something unfinished, a dream half-planted— perhaps now is the season to begin.

Even a soft beginning is a sacred step forward.

🕊️ A Gentle Prompt

The Incomplete

Sometimes, I carry a chill that doesn’t match the season— an old fear, a half-healed wound, a silence I’ve gotten used to.

What if I wrote to that frost?

after the frosts of spring take a toll, with harmony’s abrupt stop—

it’s not the cold that gnaws the most— it’s the pause, the unfinished lines, the draft I never wrote.

What would I say to the thing that still feels cold in me— the hesitation, the grief, the voice that tells me to wait, to hide?

how shall I face it— patience? challenge? gratitude for the shoots too tender to expose— is it even their time?

I give it a voice and listen. It tells me the direction.

but even now, a warmth begins in the small of me— not bold, not sudden— but steady.

Prompt: Where in your life is the frost reluctant to leave? Write to it.

Let your words be warmth. Let your thaw begin on the page.

and maybe that’s enough— not to erase the frost, but to soften the soil so my leaves can feel the sun.

You don’t have to force it to vanish. Just sit beside it. Speak softly. Give it something warmer to hold.

Take the step—begin the thaw.

🔗 What We Sow

“We kneel in soft earth, not warriors, but witnesses… What we sow, may not be ours to reap— but it will carry our care into light we will never see.” — from Poems of Quiet Renewal

Sometimes, I’m asked to take a step— to leap from a proverbial cliff, even when I’m the one doing the asking.

And still, I hesitate. The adrenaline rises. My body prepares for flight. My voice shakes. I might pass the moment by.

Is this life a dilemma for you— Wanting to trust, But unable to because you perceive misjustice from past deeds?

—From Trust in Freedom:

But spring returns, again and again, not with answers— but with invitation.

This is the season to plant something— literally or metaphorically— without needing to see it bloom.

Take the step. And trust the legacy of quiet hands.

🪞 Echoes from You

“Some roots deepen without anyone watching.”

That line found its way into a reader’s hands—and stayed there.

“‘Some roots deepen without anyone watching’ stayed with me all week. I kept thinking of it as I weeded my tiny balcony garden— maybe what we tend isn’t always visible, but it matters.” — C.J., from Winnipeg

Not every act of care is public. Not every breakthrough arrives with thunder. Sometimes, the most important things we grow— healing, trust, creativity—are still beneath the soil.

This issue is full of unseen labor: in the thaw, in the unfinished, in the courage it takes to begin again, quietly.

C.J.’s words remind us: your tending matters. Even when no one sees. Even when the bloom hasn’t come yet. Even when you’re still pulling weeds.

🌲 Deep Forest A small book of rooted thoughts, shaded truths, and wild ideas.

We share more with trees than we realize— DNA, breath, stillness, time. In forests (or even under a single tree), something ancient stirs.

In Deep Forest, I’ve gathered the kind of thoughts that grow in quiet places: some profound, some playful, some not what they seem.

Let these musings be your invitation —to wander, to wonder, and perhaps to form your own.

🟢 Available now wherever quiet books grow

🌐 Social Media-Connected

🌤️ The Light Between Posts

What Happens Between Shares

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the space between posts—the time when nothing goes out, when drafts sit in notebooks, when the algorithm is silent.

Anxiety accompanies my quiet. It feels like I wasn’t doing enough. But you know, this in-between is not empty. It’s growing.

Between posts, roots deepen. Thoughts settle. Softness grows where the edge used to live.

And when I do share now—whether it’s a poem, a line, or a small moment—it comes not from pressure, but presence.

One recent post included the line: “Not everything unfinished is broken.”

The likes... the comments were quieter than usual.

Not applause. Not performance. Just resonance.

I offer this reminder—for myself and anyone else creating gently: What you do in between matters.

Your pause is not only a softness— something honest starts there.

📚 In-Depth & Editorial

📜 Notes from the Archive

Sea Glass: On Memory, Softness, and the Beauty of What Remains

April 2024 turned out to be a prolific month in my writing life—eighty-five poems written or revised. But one emerged differently.

I came across a photo on Instagram—someone holding a handful of sea glass gathered from the shores of Cape Breton. Meaghan at Sea Glass Serenity captured more than light in that image. She caught my memory. for inspiring photos.

I used to do the same thing when I was young—walking those very beaches, bending down to gather the ocean’s discards like treasure. Back then, I didn’t have the words for it. But I think I understood it anyway: that something broken could still become beautiful.

When I first sat down to write the poem, I just wanted to describe the experience—walking the tide line, scanning for color in the gravel. But the poem shifted.

As an adult, I wasn’t just thinking about sea glass. I was thinking about what time does to us— how it tumbles our edges, reshapes us without asking, and still leaves us luminous. That felt like something worth capturing.

Sea glass doesn’t begin again with boldness. It begins again by yielding— letting time and salt and stone do their slow, tireless work.

Looking back, I see now how Sea Glass aligns with this issue’s theme: the courage to begin softly. Because the quietest transformations are sometimes the most profound.

Maybe you’ve picked up sea glass before. Or maybe you’ve carried your own reshaped fragments in your pocket for years.

Either way, I hope this poem invites you to see what remains— not as broken, but as transformed.

Sea Glass

The quiet cadence of the sea— each wave rolls with whispered secrets, depositing treasures upon the sand. sea-glass, a myriad of frosted gems, tumbled and edge-softened by the ocean's creative embrace. mere fragments, simple broken things, but pieces of art crafted by the relentless artistry of water and time. Each shard shares a story, a history of what once was utility... a bottle, a vessel, a vase... carrying within its smooth frame, the echoes of its former life reshaped into beautiful possibility.

Where does each piece begin its journey? Perhaps from an ancient ship, wrecked off a stormy coast, or discarded by the hands of those who could not foresee the beauty within, or a message tossed to the ocean, only to be reborn and revealed by the tides— whispers of blue, green, amber, and clear, like tiny, opaque windows into mysteries.

the setting sun casts a golden glow over the beach, where the sea glass glimmers with the silicate shore, inviting those who comb the sands to pause and ponder its journey. In this moment of discovery, the creative gather these washed-up wonders and give them a new ornate life. each creates a celebration of… transformation, of enduring beauty coaxed from the rough embrace of the ocean.

🫂 Personal Life & Real-Time Threads

🧣 Threads from My Life

What the Weekend Holds

In From the Quiet Verse – Issue #5, I shared how inspiration nudged me to start compiling a new chapbook—a genealogy of springtime poems rooted in thaw, tenderness, and trust.

Well… the bulk of it is now complete.

And truthfully? I think it turned out pretty good.

As I write this on March 27, the postmark deadline for the chapbook contest is Monday. That gives me this weekend to polish it—re-read the poems, feel into the emotional arc, trim or tweak a few lines.

I’ve been thinking a lot about unfinished things lately—poems, intentions, even emotions that haven’t quite taken shape.

I used to fear that kind of incompleteness. Now I’m learning to see it differently. Sometimes the work is ready before know.

Sometimes the page is waiting for us to submit. Not because it’s perfect, but because it’s time. This weekend, I’ll polish—but not overthink.

I’ll submit it, softly.

And I’ll let the act of sharing be its own quiet bloom.

✨ Fiction & Mythic Storytelling

🌕 Once, in the QuietVerse

I. Windward (Lira’s Voice)

In the rust-bloom city of Verryn Hollow, I write to the wind like others pray. Each letter folded with thumb-scorched care, soot-inked on scavenged ledger-leaf. Each one carried upward, over gearspire and smoke-shawl, into a sky I still believe remembers breath.

Tyra watches me from the scaffold’s edge. Boots braced, arms crossed, eyes narrowed like screws that bite too tight.

“You’re going to get us noticed,” she says. “By who?” I whisper, releasing the bird-letter. “The ones who forgot how to forget.”

From 'Ash Letters' by Mythical Meter

🌀 In the Wake of Fiction

The Truth We Find in Story’s Shadow

“The bleak reality of fiction / reveals the blankness that fails.” — from bleak

Some stories begin not with certainty, but with ache. In fiction—as in life—we write to what’s unfinished, what’s unspoken.

Fiction is often born of longing.

Sometimes we write toward what we know won’t happen: the cow never jumped, the moon is still untouched— and yet we keep telling the story. Because stories aren’t promises. They’re places to rest when reality becomes too sharp.

“For what is a life without a taste of sweet cream?” — from Fantasy, Fact, and Fiction

Even in a world of limits, fiction makes space— a soft pocket for whimsy,a reprieve for dreamers, a gentle corner where “what if” still matters.

“Each voice can enchant, for within each poet, a unique world dwells.” — from Best Story

The best stories the ones that hold your hesitations, rock with your doubts,and still invite you to speak.

What makes a story yours is not that it’s tidy— but that you tell it anyway.

“Memories of moments / which may not survive the night…” — from A Chapter Closes

Some stories close before we’re ready. Some characters fade. Some scenes never get rewritten. But even unfinished stories leave echoes— and sometimes that’s enough.

“And so began the Easter story… / A tale of redemption and grace.” — from Easter Narrative

Every sacred story began with disbelief. With someone who dared to share what could not be proven, but still felt true.

So we write—not always to hold,but to reach. To imagine the cream, the cow, the moon. To listen to our own voice echo through the pages.

We write to what we’ll never hold. We love, even when it doesn’t return.

Even when stories don’t return our love, we still write. And that, too, is a soft form of courage.

🧭 The Wayfarer’s Map

Echothreads: The Frequencies of Longing

Quiet listening— tuning into one's inner frequencies before action. What do you hear, feel?

An echo?

There are longings I’ve never been able to name.

They arrive like a distant tone you can’t quite place—just beneath hearing, just above knowing, shimmering quietly, like light behind a closed door.

I call them “echothreads”—the inner callings that move through us like resonance—vibrating in the soft spaces where memory, emotion, and intuition braid together.

“Echothreads glow brighter when unfulfilled—why seekers often ache before they see.”

They are not demands. They are frequencies. Not to be chased, but tuned in.

And the more they go unanswered, the brighter they seem to hum.

Not because they are urgent— but because they are **true**.

The one who aches to create but doesn’t know what, who keeps dreaming of a face they’ve never seen, who feels a tug when the wind shifts, or the stars tilt just so.

These threads don’t flash like lightning. They glow like embers. They echo like whale song in the deep.

And if you’ve ever ached without knowing why—if you’ve ever felt that hollow light pulsing from within—you’ve felt them too.

Echothreads glow brighter when unfulfilled because it is in the ache that they make themselves known.

Sometimes we find what we seek. Other times, we learn to follow the tone— the shimmer— the quiet light that says: this is part of you, even if it never arrives.

If something inside you pulses without words—listen. If a longing glows just out of reach—stay near.

Not everything unfinished is broken. Some threads sing more clearly in the waiting. And I pick up my pen.

To follow an echothread is not to force a finish—but to trust the pulse of becoming

🎨 Art, Creative Process & Making

📓 The Maker’s Table

“The Ache Before the Bloom”—why I nearly didn’t share it.

My personality tends toward introvert. No secret there. After my mother passed away, I had a hard time to connect with people, even those I had known my entire life. This persisted for the entirety of my teen years.  As fortune would have it, I have no poems I wrote during that time. But I do remember (mostly). This past New Year's, I had reflected that I met Lynda 49 years previous. I had a vague intention to write some memoire poems.  The Ache Before the Bloom takes place sometime after our first meeting and really hanging out together. These feelings are deeply personal and I ask 'Do I want to open up?' The answer is like letters—Not always sent. Not always forgotten.

🎨 QuietWorks

Where Vulnerability Meets the Stream

The brook, a silv'ry serenade, Its whispered stories swift invade, A lady appears, a regal guest, A moment's grace, the scene—blessed.

With each step toward the unknown, a hesitant heart beats, In the rooms of quiet reflection, where vulnerability meets.

In this issue’s QuietWorks image(from chatGPT), a woman’s bare feet hover at the edge of a quiet stream. It’s a visual echo of this poem from Echoes of the Forest, where hesitation and grace exist together.

There’s power in that pause— before the plunge, the bloom, before the next sentence.

She does not rush, nor turn back. She feels her way forward.

This is what it means to begin softly: To meet the unknown with reverence. To let the brook speak first. To let your steps be guided by listening, not urgency.

If you find yourself hovering at the edge of something new, may this image and poem remind you:

The first step doesn't need to be bold. It only needs to be real.

🔧 Still in Draft

Last September, I participated in a event called Poetry Cove Chapbook Month (PoCoChapMo). I wrote a lot of poems in September (and burnt myself out), although not all specific to PoCoChapMo.

Still, in the interim, I've shaped them into a transformation-themed collection. Here's an excerpt from the first poem of the not-yet-titled collection. Beginning

In the hush of a salmon morn, before the digital dawn, lay the sphere of influence of the parchment and quill, sacred poetic thoughts born of the temple, the Muse.

An old typewriter rested, a steadfast, trusty steed, whose merry keys laid a fertile ground for seeds.

These early lines remind me: even beginnings have echoes, often the most resonant.

Would you want to read more on this project?

🌓 Atmospheric or Experimental Departments

🔮 The Whisper Ahead

Every threshold holds its own light.

Next time, we’ll meet in a space between. Between spring and summer. Between memory and becoming. Between who we’ve been… and who’s quietly arriving within us.

QuietVerse Digest Issue #3 – The Light Between Worlds arrives May 30, 2025.

We’ll follow a flickering lantern into mist, listen to the hush of what hovers just beyond sight, and remember that some truths come only when we stop demanding answers.

There will be poems from the threshold, reflections from the fog, and a featured verse that dares to ask: What if the light we’re looking for… is already inside the dark?

Let’s cross that threshold together.

🧵 Threaded Thoughts: Desire’s Unraveling

A meditation in fragments, gathered from my poems.

Desire threads its way through our lives—quiet, persistent, and often unfinished. These fragments reveal how it unraveled through time and verse.

I look through old poems for connections, or perhaps Echothreads.

there was a time when... but that was before I can't remember now— my heart was empty. (from “Desire and Passion”)

yes, I yearn for a small measure of the love (from “Yearn”)

my heart once held the dawn with April’s sweet song (from “Yearning for Youth”)

what words can I offer to rekindle desire (from “Tidbits of Life”)

the words have dried frozen by the winter— hope fades for spring’s germination of desire. (from “Spring”)

yearning for salvation, desperate for a lifeline to change. (from “Down and Out”)

prevent you from falling into the error of thinking that the supply of what you desire is limited (from “Tidbits of Gratitude”)

give my heart your tender touch to fill me again, I yearn— healing within by love’s power (from “Revival”)

what fantasies do they tell, whispered in your ear, in private— the deep dark desires of heat, unspoken until unlocked (from “Tidbits of Life”)

my desires are yours— raw, real, intense, aren’t they the fire ’neath your pretense? (from “Exceptions”)

I don’t think I have a right to expect in your choice, my desires to reflect. (from “Tidbits of Love’s Dark Side”)

others, with their light heads, dancing at the mere prospect of learning and the certainty of advancing away from the past months’ yearning. (from “School”)

with grace in my heart, I yearn to trust in you because trust moves wonders (from “Trust”)