LIMERENCE

Why am I feeling all this great emotion?

Perhaps I am thinking of poor Mary,

Moving away after so long living

In a quietly familiar and convenient place.

Mary, audibly rocking and rocking in the

Same chair above me as she aged into invisibility…

And soon I too will leave this same place.

For how long did I live with illusions,

Locking away all transitory possibilities

And realities and choosing instead to

Dwell inside mercurial fantasies and

Interior delusions and then grounding a still life?

Now the fading obstacles hardly matter.

The grey heavy details carved and set in stones

Have been kicked away by newer shades

Of sharp pastels that do not even belong

To me in my particular smallness.

Fog is moving in from the Hudson River,

Passing over yesterday and all the

Layered stories and everything

That came… before.

© Marjorie J. Levine 2020

THE BEND IN THE HIGHWAY

On this morning, she gazes into the mirror

And sees a stranger...

Within everything that came before,

This image should speak of danger.

The idea of walking within this new picture

Speaks of alarm

But she embraces the view with no hint

Of any disarm.

In the light of this new sunrise, with time

Chasing her to passage

She decides to not carry around what

Could be considered baggage.

And after so long a time, there surfaced

Something new... something sweet,

So although the exterior is a perspective that

Could spell defeat…

She sees the fresh watercolors in her painting

And feels the wind so strong

She moves forward and turns a corner

And puts on new shoes and hurries along.

© Marjorie J. levine 2020

THE DISTANT LEFTOVER

You with your constant smell of indifference 

And I so hungry for even a sweet side glance. 

But it was not to happen.
Maybe it was fate on the snowy evening 

I sailed 

Away from you:
The last night 

I entered that ferry
The same ferry that always took me back to you 

Because I was seduced by silly things
That never mattered. 

I must have looked so crumbled, so forlorn, 

That a nun stopped reading the Bible and moved 

To sit closer to me, to give me comfort
And solace... and she did. 

As I drifted the waters to reach my home
You disappeared and grew smaller in every way 

Possible, so in many of my later years you 

Became a blurred washed memory. 

And after a great time, when my forgotten passion 

Surfaced and took hold of me,
When the longing that once lived inside of me
Cornered my thoughts and turned you into a rumination, 

I tried to find you. 

But you were gone.
Really gone.
And there was a heavy stillness in my place. 

On cold nights, I remembered the ferry and 

All I could hear was the nun,
The nun who so many years ago told me: “You will still be here
In the morning.” 

© Marjorie J. Levine 2020

CODA

This life,

Lived like a dream through stained glass

In a hazy deciduous forest alone among strangers.

I am the most strange, I am the different outsider:

Feeling like a vacuous soul on an endless ride

On a forgotten Ferris wheel, high and low, low

And higher but waiting and left and dropped at the low.

The ride is always on endless bizarre looping roads

Upon which all unfamiliar sights become visible as

Mysterious grey sculptures in the rear view mirror.

My insides are weary from traveling through seasons like a

Naked Amnesiac: the past remembered and easily forgotten.

The ghosts of ancestors are speaking through dense fog,

Cutting through this bittersweet life through which I

Involuntarily passed without my written consent making

My passages all a crime, an extreme felony.

In time I sat perched all alone seeing possibilities but

Owning disappointments during touches by many who

Broke my damaged parts and stole my wail, my shouts

My distressed chiseled shadows and my pale scratched echoes.

This life is now mostly all behind me pushing me to the

Now where I stand on a precipice not sure which way to go:

To the detour or the curve in the road or a stop sign or

Drive to the dead end or move miles away and live the

Same way in the same life: this red lighted life.

And as frightening as the journey has been during

The vivid Technicolor scenes and after midnights in film noir

In all the pain and anguish and panic…

All I really want, all for which I long

Is to stay longer, to remain, and not leave this place.

© Marjorie J. Levine 2020

MOVING IMAGES haikus

Pottsville PA

A warm dim street lounge

A lady in pink and grey

Says goodbye to blues.

Rocky Ford CO

Cold snow is melting

As he crosses those weak tracks

Which fracture his soul.

El Reno OK

A little mailbox

With no visible address

Collects sad still dust.

Scottsbluff NE

No signs of autumn

Just an orange and brown tree

Seasons are frozen.

Riverton WY

A red bicycle

Parked under a small porch light

An empty train waits.

Pineville KY

A short ramp gives way

A small church is dwarfed by green

Green so tall he squints.

Goshen VA

A brick grocery

All boarded up and now closed

Soon a train passes.

Paducah TX

Why is there a gate

When there is not one thing there

Except a toy horse.

Clanton AL

Sweet succulent pie

Melting in her mouth like ice

And a house for sale.

Denton MT

Pink flowers in dirt

Next to two small green bunnies

And a short red chair.

Huntington TN

So many tree nests

A sewage pipe in a yard

Cats chase light blue frogs.

© 2025 Marjorie J. Levine

 

 

from THE ATTIC lost photos

 

photo courtesy of Frederick Piccarello

ROAD TRIPS poems

 

CODA

This life,

Lived like a dream through stained glass

In a hazy deciduous forest alone among strangers.

I am the most strange, I am the different outsider:

Feeling like a vacuous soul on an endless ride

On a forgotten Ferris wheel, high and low, low

And higher but waiting and left and dropped at the low.

The ride is always on endless bizarre looping roads

Upon which all unfamiliar sights become visible as

Mysterious grey sculptures in the rear view mirror.

My insides are weary from traveling through seasons like a

Naked Amnesiac: the past remembered and easily forgotten.

The ghosts of ancestors are speaking through dense fog,

Cutting through this bittersweet life through which I

Involuntarily passed without my written consent making

My passages all a crime, an extreme felony.

In time I sat perched all alone seeing possibilities but

Owning disappointments during touches by many who

Broke my damaged parts and stole my wail, my shouts

My distressed chiseled shadows and my pale scratched echoes.

This life is now mostly all behind me pushing me to the

Now where I stand on a precipice not sure which way to go:

To the detour or the curve in the road or a stop sign or

Drive to the dead end or move miles away and live the

Same way in the same life: this red lighted life.

And as frightening as the journey has been during

The vivid Technicolor scenes and after midnights in film noir

In all the pain and anguish and panic…

All I really want, all for which I long

Is to stay longer, to remain, and not leave this place.

© 2018 Marjorie J. Levine

WALKING SIDEWAYS ON A SPIRAL STAIRCASE activities for adults

a sample of some of the activities in the workbook: 

DRAW A CHILDHOOD PET

DRAW YOUR CHILDHOOD HOME

DRAW A PICTURE OF YOU SITTING BY A LAKE

SCRIBBLE A PICTURE OF YOUR FAVORITE TEACHER

SCRIBBLE A PICTURE OF HOW YOU FELT AFTER YOUR FIRST KISS

SCRIBBLE A PICTURE OF HOW YOU FELT WHEN YOU FELL IN LOVE

CREATE A PICTURE OF WHAT LOVE MEANS TO YOU NOW

SCRIBBLE A PICTURE OF HOW YOU FEEL 

ON A HOT SUMMER DAY AT THE BEACH

DESCRIBE A DAY IN A SNOWSTORM

SCRIBBLE A PICTURE OF HOW YOU FEEL WHEN YOU PLAY WITH YOUR PET

DRAW A PICTURE OF YOUR PET

DRAW PICTURES OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS

HOW DO YOU FEEL IN THE MORNING?

DESCRIBE YOUR DREAMS

TELL ME A SECRET

GIVE YOUR NINE YEAR OLD SELF SOME ADVICE