Lee Jane Taylor’s writing explores the experience of illness and wellness, domesticity and nature, imagination and memory, with a view of the sky.
Check out new poem “Time-Lapse Portrait” in the coming 2025 edition of “Aotearoa Poetry Yearbook”. Anthology book to be released and in bookshops from August!
Find Lee’s poems “Personal Pronoun in Greyscale” and “She is Being Not Enough” in “Tarot Poetry”, online journal, June Edition out now!
Lee is keeping busy working towards a Masters in Creative Writing.
The Sky House is a place and a state of mind. Protection and escape. Somewhere to Be and not Do. What is the house of your imagination? Your own sky house shelters you, protecting your inner calm from the cold of isolation and the storms of loss. It is somewhere we must each build for ourselves, from the inside out.
What does the sky house of your dreams look like? Is it a version of your current home? Or a former home? Is it a tree top pole house? A log cabin? A bach by the sea? A rustic villa? An apartment looking over a Venice canal or a city park? An igloo?
What are the sights and sounds that inspire you? What are the scents that delight you? What are the textures that comfort you? In your mind’s eye, bring these into your house and spend some time detailing these talismans.
Does your sky house home pets? Perhaps these are actual pets, current or former. Maybe in your sky house they can talk, sing or bring you a cup of tea. What animals do you admire? Challenge your imagination to include the furry, wild and wonderful in your ideal place. Fish might swim in the clouds outside your window. Honey bees and forest wasps may be gathering the latest gossip for you.
Scan your memory, search images, look through books of nature, architecture, art, gather details for your own ideal imagination house. Take a few moments each day or every week to focus on and develop your vision.
Imagination grows like a garden, needing only your attention to water, space and light to flourish. You will be amazed how rich a place your sky house can become with a little practice.
Whatever your own sky house looks like, spend time there. It will always be there for you.
Take care x
Image is by C. Dustin from Unsplash
The sculpted shape my life makes, its carved impression into what surrounds, is small
while the details divide and multiply on close inspection, more
complication, more busy function
–
my shape fits snug into the around, much as a ring on my finger, the worm or lion in their notch
of food chain, a stubborn outcrop of rock
holds against an unseeing whole
–
of ocean, watch – it licks us away slow, each mundane gesture of survival here is an overcoming
forebeared, the ocean tastes us with all the time of a world
everything swallowed returns, our forms
–
forged in connection, rejection, bleating its strangely affecting feline chords the sea
returns our forms to the wordless, from where
we, scraped and molded, emerge.
Original poem and image by Lee Jane Taylor
(Photo by Duskfall Crew on Unsplash)
Underground tunnelled land new home, notes of asphalt and smoke, weary eyes light votives to unknown gods; Rūamoko smiles sees she
steps in the habit of boats human destinies float in her shoes respire through her skin, thin amphibian inhalations of sleep excretes salty wishes creeks
run with tadpoles dream the shock of legs muscular long but her will is not so strong as her cup, soon succumbs to whim;
Swimming thoughts become devilled eggs blanche her in watery depths moves cold doesn’t see herself coming doesn’t know herself as she goes.
Rise must make surface gasps with eyes closed stows each heartbeat now a stranger, tamps in her chest suggests a chill new blowing in
gulp the thrill savour the gusting pong it is fathomless autumn, and everything everyone is kneeling to the mustard flow already she allows its
golden mouth upon her soul dragging licks along her sagging throat it will swallow us whole, moths clocks the orbs of dynasties all swoon in
its amber wake, we fall and the fallen only breathe to leave strands of protein wipe the future from the corner of her eye sign her name
where only patterns remain beyond the shrill rush of waterways the still of ponds this god won’t play any game of muses is always mute caprice is
ruthless beauty laughing in the face of moons and suns, she takes six seeds she tastes the rite of queens on her tongue, she eats them one by one.
Rūamoko meanwhile he smiles youngest son husband of death chief executive of quakes and volcanic change, replenishes her plate, with kūmara
petals purple and white proud blooms of stress the earth well washed from her roots mind rinsed in gloom, we sit together in knowledge of seasons
her meal is freedom her food is doom in colours of fire and riches is replete, this harvest is inevitable tides of dominance, tender and complete.
Yesterday an echo of Persephone walks our coasts, victim complicit alone Demeter’s name never breaching these shores parental grief too vast
for ocean passage, she returns below summer done gleaming patapata in hand gleaned from koru frond Papa’s tears Rūamoko nods in kinship
their origins so far wide their stars collide and settle in the underbelly of life, both knowing the strife a child lives in void of a mother’s forgotten natural power.
“Papa” or “Papatūānuku” in NZ Māori tikanga is the spiritual mother and embodiment of the land. “Demeter” in Greek myth, when her daughter is bonded to the underworld, her grief causes the first winter.
I love the family rituals and togetherness of the holidays. However, it can also be a time when we feel absence most keenly. Sometimes the hardest time is once others return to work and school and we struggle with finding a “new normal”. If you are living with grief right now, I wish you peace and comfort. I wrote this poem for a family member, and myself, during a period of loss.
Tribute (For Poppa)
I don’t know what you believe about lives and the long
long after, when our moment is done we join the ones
we lost perhaps in some next place or become part
of the “everything-in-one”.
Wherever minds go – somewhere, nowhere –
we leave behind bones and neurones, and the sadness
of cellular silence. No more busy replicating the pattern
in them unique to her, slowly unravelling.
A sacred code repeated in the gesture of a sister’s hand
in the twinkling of a brother’s eye a pattern memorised
safely held in your heart as you go on. I don’t know
if there is memory in a soul but the atomic travels of us
we can imagine. Parts of her rejoin the earth a joyous
homecoming to quench the thirst of trees that feed
the Tui, the Chamois and the Tahr.
Where is she now? Particles of her rise to fill clouds
elements of her penetrate the gates of atmospheres
populate other worlds, warm under other suns,
older and newer to be spun through black holes
matter collapsing and exploding again, again
as radiant supernovas burning bright in the night
skies of a thousand galaxies.
Perhaps the quarks of her small enough slip
through weaves in fabrics of time and parts
of her play in past, present, future all at once
and she is already in the buds, the sepals and hips
of generous perfumed blooms of summer and their
fountains of colour she is in the velvet garden faces
of the cool months in their yellow violet petals five
she is alive as the Sunny Boy and the Moon Moth
Where is she now my lost love? we ask, the tensions
of bodily form come undone, parts of her in the leaves
and the snow, echoes in the deeds of those who hold
her close as she joins with her own elders, ancestors,
molecules unpinned from boundaries of time – she is
in every moment all at once.
Hold your hand open to the air
feel the aliveness, she dances there
she is the trees she is the rain she is the stars
she is
and she is safe –
in the repeating patterns, of our saddened hearts.
Cloud, storms, rain, hail flurries and
forks of lightning, star blaze and a waning
moon, comet flare and meteor streak, eclipses
occasional rainbow miracles
poetry resides in skies in vividity of light wild
rides backs of water drops sculpting
stratus scapes colour draped by sunrise
flows through eyes mild
and murkied, quiet mind, busy finger tips
dip grace in words lightly ink brink
of endless expansiveness, sense
records in finite edits this
evanescence of wilderness and minds
poetry is not mine, poetry resides in skies.
Minds live wide lives from the ways
of wild waters to slow mountains lumber
unimpeded, North and South grow
with each shock rumbling kick Papa’s
final progeny reaches out to arms of sky
stretching prominence into dominance
alps are spines of memory lumbar peaks
instinctive, ancestral, personal, habitual
volcanic rock of memory, all masterful
ever clumping to higher ranges craggy
scar marks of time loom taller with years
yet an ocean always surrounds in vastness
blues deeply scattered with eyes of cuttlefish
distant whales kiss breaching fountainous
under touch of sun and melting stars that
ripple drip reform in salty breaths I can run
eyes along the sky skim an alpine spine and I
can turn back anytime to the coastline
dip feet in the cool fresh of sea its endless
possibilities, where dream creatures bloom
luminescent – the sea, is moved by tides
under watchful glow of weeping satellite
but in the deep, ocean currents flow free.
Photo by Amy Humphries on Unsplash
The sky is indifferent, the sky is kind
always reaching in, uninvited
with long white
cloudy fingers prising
open planks of sternum, one by one
chest rivets pop and sigh –
taste the silver and the blue
tints run, inking through time
eyes feather soft and wide
to gulls glide, natures guards
mount impartial in this space –
the sacred in between
stratosphere and ground
where
cumulus and stratus oversee proud
and free
as druids once served.
Poetry and Calm
Poetry is (and should be!) so many things – abstract art, sociopolitical critique, a voice of the marginalised, humour, satire, a call to arms. A gem to wear under your skin. A vessel for dreams and dark magics.
My aim is to publish some of my poems here that support reflective thinking and calm. I will also be posting some reading recommendations, as well as relevant self-care tips*. In particular, around the use of mindful reading and writing to promote calm and wellness “steps to the front door of your own sky-house”.
Like any writer my poems will walk where they are want to go. Many germinate in the dark corners and dusty margins of life, in tunnels underground. I nurture them towards the light – because we all need more hope in our lives. Of course, hope is not pretending everything is well. Hope is staring head-on into the centre of darkness, finding a faint star, and holding focus on that promise of light.
while illness contains me, poetry sustains me
Poetry can be used effectively as a stimulus for a more mindful approach in our thinking and communicating. This is more than a psychological band-aid. This is a kind of replenishing self-care we all require in some form, in order to persevere with whatever battles we join – environmental, satirical or otherwise.
Reading recommendations and other feedback are warmly welcomed.
* These are informed by my psychology training and years of clinical experience as a therapist, as well as by my own experience of chronic illness.
Sky House Poetry 