Exchanges With Self And Others

By Pauline Edwards

Thirty-eight poems by Victoria, B.C native Pauline Edwards. Subjects include dreams, spirituality, and landscape. This is the accompanying book to her 2009 debut musical album, 'There Comes A Time.' Also available in print.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pauline Edwards
• Release date: Jul 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9780993837418

Pauline Edwards

Pauline Edwards was raised on Vancouver Island, BC. She learned transcendental meditation as a child, and has been following a spiritual path, collecting crystals, and composing poems since before she could spell. Her poems deal with the themes of dreams, consciousness, and spirituality. Pauline received her B.Sc in Linguistics from the University of Victoria in 2007, and then worked closely with the Indigenous people of British Columbia on language revitalization efforts for many years. Pauline currently enjoys sipping her morning coffee in the beautiful coastal temperate rainforest of Vancouver, British Columbia - traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

Book preview

Author’s Note

We take from this world lessons in loving, lessons in forgiving and becoming. And what do we offer in return? We give ourselves: our identity. We trade regret for wisdom. In doing so, we give away old ideals. We surrender the illusions that defined us, trade them off to be recycled in the big karmic recycling plant in the sky. And we can continue this trade – heartache for forgiveness, fear for fearlessness – innumerable times. We are never only giving, never only receiving; it is always an exchange.

These poems were given to me in life, in dreams, visions, alternate realities and through the purely hypothetical. They were brought to me from these realms during various moments of exchange and in return I have given up many insecurities, a few litres of tears, long hours of impatience, and a few other things. They were given to me. Now I give them to you.

P.E.A.C.E

Exchanges in Consciousness

The River is Your Sacred Ground

In a dream there was a fox

with curly hair

who lived in the rocks

at the edge of a mystical sea.

The forest creatures obeyed his law

and in return he would guard

their spot and greet intruders

with authority, as he greeted me.

I dared not ask him for a cure

or any favour big or small,

though in his presence I was untroubled.

Big fox,