Golden
Liquid light kissing white walls
Dancing on branches like floating flame.
Honeyed hues bathe trembling leaves
Which, visit after visit, begin to mimic
The golden soft rays of autumn sun.
It is said we become those things which we love.
Then let me be like the honey-cleansed leaves
The flame-touched branches
The light-blessed walls.
Let me be soft and kind and warm.
Let me be graced by gold.
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Danielle Bancroft
Strings
You did not say
When you gave me this gift
That it wasn’t given freely.
That it came with strings
That would, by your tongue,
Unwind themselves and bind me,
Staking claim to something I thought was my own.
Strings that crept and climbed
Like hungry vines,
Taking my best moments
As nourishment for their starved stalks,
Finding an arm or a leg to cling to
Each time I tried to rise.
And so I learned to dance.
To weave in and out
So your strings became fat knots.
I learned to change my shape
So your strings found empty air.
I learned to leap beyond your reach.
Now I hold your gift with gloved hands.
I keep it in a box, bound tight
With strings of my own design.
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Danielle Bancroft
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Sabotoge
It’s a funny thing, the human mind.
How it contrives.
That it picks and chooses,
Against our own benefit,
How it will define.
Are we so insecure of our place
To taint our view with hate?
So starved in heart
That into others we must carve
To feed our need for grace?
Equally chosen, equally made
We race to win
That which was never ours to take.
Grace is not a prize to be held tight.
It shows no pride.
It shines outward, instead,
Binding each one to the next
In mirrored divine.
Can we bypass the patterns of time
To see our wrongs made right?
Make a new plan
That guides us forward, hand in hand,
Our joint salvation to find?
Equally battered, equally blind
We fight against
The sabotage of our own minds.
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Danielle Bancroft
Pieces
I make myself with pieces of those before me…
Like my father who documented love.
His photography exposing what his voice could not,
As his words were few and cautious.
Realizations come with the setting sun
That my mother, to stay her loneliness,
Tenaciously grasps and compels herself into tasks,
Hoping to find her belonging.
With a backward gaze, I can name what we share:
A kind eye and the need to filter feelings.
The hope to secure some stability in the storm.
My life will shape others also.
The subtle grace of passage shapes us all,
The longer we’re tied together.
Though it hurts to admit we’re all so damn connected,
We can’t be anything but that.
And the pieces weave in and out and I wonder
What will the final masterpiece be,
What will the glorious mess of it all look like?
Together we are beautiful.
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Danielle Bancroft
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