Trails of Light: A Journey from the Everyday to the Mystical

By Kathleen Panettieri

Come on a journey with me through the autobiographical trails of my life, written as poetry. Discover that the similarities in our lives are greater than the differences. Though our circumstances may seem to be poles apart, I invite you to look closely with me at our shared humanity and recognise that the themes underlying our many stories are vastly similar. Life is a carnival, and we are the mask wearers. From the everyday to the ethereal, from the mundane to the mystical, you will find yourself, somewhere, in this collection of poetry. I have been using poetry as a personal means of self-expression. For many years, it has helped me through dark moments of depression and through periods of deep questioning in my life. It has allowed me to access deeper and deeper levels of myself and connect with the inspiration that has been the driving force behind much of my poetry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: May 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543408348

Kathleen Panettieri

Born June 1940 in Melbourne Victoria. Lives in Chelsea Victoria. Attended school at St. Anthonys, Glenhuntly and Star of the Sea, Gardenvale. Worked in the banking industry and as a school secretary amongst other things. Married with three children and four grandchildren. Hobbies include reading and writing. Has been writing poetry for over thirty years. Some published poems and some placed in literary competitions. I have been a student of A Course in Miracles since the late 1970s and it has been highly instrumental in guiding me on my spiritual quest and led me into deep insights and experiences that have helped awaken me to my connection to the Universal Self of Life, of which we are all extensions, that lives in the heart of each and every one of us and all its creations. Along the way books by people like Gerald G Jampolsky and Marianne Williamson have been added signposts for me. Now that I find myself on a personal journey with cancer in my own life, it is my faith in my connection with the heart of life that is the anchor that helps me walk through the fear.

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 by Kathleen Panettieri.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 05/16/2018

Xlibris

1-800-455-039

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Contents

Dreamcatcher

The Face of Illusion

Wings of the Dove

Ebbtide

Jigsaw

The Unreal Woman

Suburban Streets

Let’s Drink a Toast

Nowhere

What is Poetry

Wars and Recessions Come and Go But Melbourne Still has its Trams

Freedom

Decline of a Face

A Mother’s Hymn

Memory Box

The Smell of War

Visiting the Graves at Necropolis

A Man to Remember

The Book of Answers

This Perfect Life

Prisoners of the Dance

Effigy

We Didn’t Know, Did We

On Via Palermo

My Mother’s Arms

Innocence

Snap-Shots

Snap-Shots (2)

Day Will Break

The Night Train

My Mother’s Slippers

Nightspell

Trails of Light

The Olive Branch

Silence

Night Music

The Dark Horse

Once More, Into the Dance

Identity

The Lighthouse

Being

Blackberry Picking

Coming of Age

The City Slicker

Smoke-Trails

The City Slicker………..The Sequel

This Scarred Landscape

The Mating Game

Tricks of the Camera

Just A Room

The Measure of Things

Today

Those Hands Sublime

Marriage of Shadows

See-Saw

The Brotherhood

Beyond the Crossroads

The Tiger

Candles

Dreamscape

On the Way to Somewhere

The Lost Sheep

A Mystery

The Domestic Animal (i) Making the Bed

The Domestic Animal (ii) Dusting

The Domestic Animal (iii) Cooking

The Domestic Animal (iv) End of Day

I Am Here

From the Ashes

Postcards from Stromboli

Paper Trails

Fire

Winners and Losers

La Casa Paterna (The Family home, Stromboli Italy)

Old Age is a Bitch

The Great South Land (A Bicentennial Dedication)

Written on the Wind

Shadow Dancer (Listening to Leonard Cohen in concert)

The Timeless

The Eternal

Cliff Climbing at Mornington

The Hidden Face

An Urban Myth

Pharoah’s Daughter

Transience

The Hounds of Time

Within these Walls

The Meaning of Meanings

Night Rain

The Cry in the Wilderness

The Waters Rise

Wisdom

The Cottonwood Glen At Lane Cove River National Park

Love Song

Learning to Dance Back-Step and Various Useless Postures

Edges

Beauty

This Living Moment

Who I Am

A Greek Wedding

Invisible Scars

I’m Scared

Dark Night

Going Back

The Edge of Dreams

Homecoming

The Tree of Life

The Snow Flower

Loser’s Game

The Gift

The Muse

Fragments

A Fable for Our Times

Black Tears

Early Dawn

Through a Glass Darkly

The Bridge

Running Blind

On Chelsea Beach

Light the Fire

Mosaic

Mirror

Morning

Colours

Enigma

The Turning Tide

Footprints

Skin of the Night

Stillness

Every Dream Unseen

Haiku Moments

Autumn

Out of the Womb

Carnival

Secrets on the Wind

This book of poetry is dedicated to my beautiful family.

Life is a Carnevale and we are the mask wearers. In my aspirations to create a better version of me, I have tried on many of the masks that define our humanity.

In these pages, I gave back to Life a small portion of all it has gifted to me.

Kathleen Panettieri

YOU

You are the sun

You are the universe

You are the one

Who will in time traverse

All place, all things

You will fly on golden wings

Across all eternity

And when all is done

You will still be

That which has just begun.

K.P.

Dreamcatcher

By lamplight

By street-light

By moon-light, they go.

Quivering and shivering,

Ghostly spectres

Go stalking the night.

Dripping with dreams

Seducing by star-light,

Will they go to the left

Or go to the right?

Theirs are the secrets

Held by the night,

Cowering nightmares,

Locked in its deep, black box.

Then the red eye of the clock

Is watching me, watching it.

Red-eyed and restless, woken

By nightmares I can’t remember.

Caught by the Dream-catcher

Who hides them from sight.

These ghastly spectres

Have been haunting the night.

And who will release them

Into the light of day?

Someone has taken the key

And thrown it away.

K. Panettieri 2017

The Face of Illusion

There is a hole in the night

And a crack in the day.

Carry me rider

As I search for my way.

The future is rushing

Towards the past,

Hold me tight now

As we ride along

The corridor of night.

Who was my mother?

I never knew her soul.

I saw the angry woman,

The frightened child,

The beautiful voice afraid to sing.

Who was she underneath

The pain. I hope I get

To meet her again.

The most peaceful I saw her

Was on her death bed.

Must we die,

To be born again?

My father, the gentle

And humble one,

Who worshipped life

And revered the sun.

I saw his gentleness

As weakness then.

Now, I know it was strength.

O, there are cracks

All over the place.

Even this mask

I call my face

Is slowly and relentlessly

Tearing itself apart.

Carry me rider,

Let our voices reach

To the rafters of the sky.

There the truth will find us

And we will never die.

This world breaks down

And renews itself

Every single day.

At sunrise it appears

Again, rising out of

The illusion of night.

There is a hole in the night

And a crack in the day.

The face of the world

Has always been that way.

K.P. 25 Sep 2017

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Wings of the Dove

I would tear down the walls

Of pain that surround you.

I would simply erase all

Things which confound you.

What your heart suffers, I suffer too,

We are all prisoners of love.

It moves in us like the homing dove

Beating its wings against our hearts.

Though we shut our doors

And place ice in our hearts,

The dove will never leave us alone

Until it brings us home.

(c) Kathleen Panettieri 2017

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Ebbtide

There are days

when the tide of my being

is at a low ebb,

and I am stranded

on my own shore.

My scars exposed

like shells cast on the sand

by the receding waves.

There are days

when sudden squalls race

across the landscape

of my soul,

messing up defined edges

of memories

leaving confusion

in their wake.

And I am bereft,

beached on my own

burning sands,

while the tide

rushes away from me.

And I wait, I wait

because I know

the tide will turn

and race back eagerly

towards me, once again.

(c)