Jamieson Wolf
Number-one bestselling author
The Most Beautiful – A Poem
I always say
I love you.
But those words
don’t encompass everything
I feel, every
emotion that runs
through my body
every time you
look at me
or run your
fingers along my
jawline. Simply saying
I love you
doesn’t capture the
emotion that stimulates
my every thought
when I think
of you, so
strong that it
seeps into my
dreams. Just uttering
I love you
doesn’t capture the
fact that you
are the person
I’ve dreamed of
for so long,
but didn’t know
that it was
you that I
was dreaming of,
a dream made
real. Simply whispering
I love you
doesn’t encapsulate everything
you’ve given me
and how you’ve
re-written my life
completely. So I
will simply say
You are the
most beautiful gift
that life has
ever given me
and I will
always cherish you.
The Clouds of Forever – A Poem
When I came
out of the
closet, after finally
being truthful about
who I am
and what I
was, my mothers
reaction was better
than I could
have hoped for.
The only thing
she said that
worried her was:
“Now I will worry more over you. You can be hurt in a fall, in a crash, but now you can also be hurt because of your sexuality.”
I pushed that
aside, thinking she
was being silly.
Sure, I was
bullied, teased, ridiculed
but never physically
hurt. However, I
am hurting now.
I’ve been trying
to process what
happened, but I
can’t. I’ve been
trying to wrap
my brain around
what took place,
but it cannot.
My spirit has
been trying to
comprehend what occurred,
but it can
only hide itself
in shock. The
whole world is
grieving and I
along with it.
These were people
that I did
not know, people
that I had
never met, but
it’s as if
a piece of
me has been
lost along with
them. I feel
it inside of
me, struggling to
find light. So
I do the
only thing that
I can think
of doing. I
sit quietly, looking
at the pictures
of their faces,
at their smiles,
at the photos
from a moment
caught in time.
I say a
lament for all
of them, for
their lives cut
short, all for
being brave enough
to be their
true selves. As
I gaze at
the photos, the
light within me
grows brighter, from
a small spark
into a flame.
“I will remember you.”
I say. The
flame inside of
me grows even
brighter. Soon my
skin sparkles with
it, the internal
light becoming external.
“I will remember all of you. You will live on inside of each of us and you will shine on through us.”
I light a
candle and hope
that the light
can reach their
spirits, that it
can find them
amongst that clouds
of forever and
bring them solace.
The Secret of Orchard Cottage by Alex Brown – A Book Review
April Wilson has lost herself.
After her husband Graham passed away from Motor neurone disease, a disease that attacked his body from the inside out and took his zest for life from him, April is at wits end. She spent so long taking care of him that she forgot to take care of herself.
He died eighteen months ago and she is still grieving. She’s unable to move on with her life without Graham in it. Too often, she will curl up with one of Graham’s shirts, watching their wedding video.
It’s her step-daughter, twenty-two-year-old Nancy, that gives April the push she needs to live her life again. When April receives a birthday card from her great aunt Edie, Nancy tells April that she should go and visit her aunt in the picture perfect village of Tindledale and her home Orchard Cottage. April has fond memories of the orchard and Edie from her youth, so April encourages her to go and see her aunt.
When she arrives, it’s to find the cottage in disrepair and her aunt Edie keeps referring to her as Winnie. April soon learns that this is Edie’s sister. The gossip around Tindledale is that Winnie ran off during the Second World War and had a baby with a married man. She was an officer with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, or FANY.
April can’t help but think there is more to Winnie than the gossip around town. She turns to other villagers around Tindledale to help her dig through the mystery that is part of her history. One of those villagers happens to be Matt, a local farrier and single father. April can’t deny her growing attraction to Matt either.
With the help of the other villagers and her step-daughter Nancy and Matt, she hopes to put the final pieces of the puzzle together and solve the mystery of Orchard Cottage…
I flat out loved this book. If ever there was a book that you wanted to hug, this one was it. Alex Brown continues to surprise and impress me. This isn’t your normal chick lit. It deals with subjects that normally aren’t covered in the genre: death and disease, aging and Alzheimer’s, World War and the affects that it had on families during the time, step families, life after love and secrets brought to the grave. It goes beyond the genre of chick lit and instead becomes something else all its own.
For all of that, The Secret of Orchard Cottage succeeds because it has so much heart. Every subject the book touches on is done with grace and beauty and this comes through in the pages. This is helped along by the fact that the characters are so real, so lifelike, that hey live off the page and in our hearts.
After three books at Tindledale, it feels like home. Though it’s a postcard perfect town, there are always stories to be told. Alex Brown tells those stories so well, I feel like I know them. Sonny and Cher, Hettie, Sybs and Ben, Meg and Dan. Getting to read another Tindledale book is like going out to the pub with all my best mates.
April’s character really spoke to me. Reading her journey as she grew from this woman who could only mourn what she had had into a woman who chose to live her life and learn to love again was amazing and so emotional for me. This book held a lot of emotional triggers for me (living with a disease, finding love again, loving myself again). It shows the brilliance of Alex Brown’s writing that she was able to evoke all of that within me.
I can’t wait to read the next adventure and to go home to Tindledale once more!
The Light of Glass – A Poem
I’m waling in a landscape
filled with glass. It glitters
like diamonds on the ground,
the sparkle from it like wishes
given form. They are blinding,
but still I look. While I gaze
into the light, I see a land
that I know well, see
a terrain that I’ve travelled.
It moves and shifts, the ground
never staying still for long,
the sky seeming to rush down
upon it like a turbulent sea.
“Don’t look too long upon that, now.”
A voice says. I look up and see a man,
his hair matted and dulled with soot,
smiling at me. He motions to the
glass upon the ground that holds
the familiar path, the one I know.
“It’s best not to dwell on where you’ve been. Only where you’re going.”
I look at him and try to
detect some sort of malice but
there is only kindness coming
from him. I motion towards the glass shards,
containing the ground that will not
remain in the same place.
It is a terrain that I know well.
“How do you know what is inside the light?”
He looks at me, his green eyes flashing
like two emeralds and holds his arms wide.
“I can tell from the way you are standing. You do not look like a happy man. Looking upon the light should fill you with joy, not despair.”
I walk closer to him and smell peppermint
and the scent of wild oranges.
“I’ve tried, I continue to try. But I trip, I fall, I get up again. I know the ground so well.”
“Ah!” He says. “But you get back up again.”
“Yes, so?”
He bends and picks up
a handful of the diamond sand.
“That is your own light shining through. Your will is strong. Leave this place now. It is for the lost. You belong somewhere else.”
I find myself nodding in agreement,
wondering how he could see
inside of me so deeply.
“Who are you?”
He let out a laugh that sounded
like joy released and smiled at me.
“Does it matter? Do not dwell on what has been and what was. You are not the man you were. Focus instead on your own light and moving forward.”
The light from the glass
began to increase so that
it was brighter than the sun.
“It’s so beautiful.”
He laughed again and motioned at me.
“That is not the light from the glass. That is the light coming from inside of you.”
I looked down at myself and saw
that there were several points
along my body that were
aflame with light. That light
poured out of me and shone
brighter than the sun.
I let the glass shards fall
with a tinkle and placed my hand
over the light coming form where
my heart was. It was warm and there
was a vibration coming from it
that was like its own music.
The light grew brighter still
until it was all I could see.
“Walk forward and keep walking. Shine bright and keep shining. That is all there is to it.”
Then there was only whiteness and
the gorgeous hum of light
that came from within me.
The Wild Word – A Poem
He was reading
one of my
poems, flipping casually
through the book.
“Do you ever write this out in linear form? Like a short story?”
I shook my
head at him.
“No. This wanted to come out as a poem.”
“Well then it certainly has a flow to it.”
“Yes, it does.”
He looked down
at the book
again, somewhat confused.
“I’ve never seen poetry with dialogue. Yours don’t even rhyme.”
“Nope. It’s how they want to come out.”
“You let the poem tell you how to write? You’re the writer. Aren’t you in control of your own words?”
I thought of
that statement. How
many times had
I sat down
in front of
my computer and
went to write
one thing, yet
something else came
out instead? How
many times have
I plotted a
story, only to
have the characters
do what they
wanted to do
anyways? I looked
back at him.
“Well, it’s kind of like this.”
I said softly.
“I want you to picture it with me.”
“Okay.”
He said. I
picked up another
copy of my
book and opened
it. Words began
to slide out
of the book,
flowing from the
page like water.
“Inside of every writer, there is a body of water. If you can swim in it, you’ll see the most amazing things…”
Water began to
rise around us,
but the water
was black like
the ink from
the page. He
watched, his eyes
full of shock.
Soon, we were
floating in it,
held by its
warm comforting embrace.
“You’ll see beasts of every kind of some defying description.”
Something flew overhead
and we could
see its shadow
slide along the
water. Other animals
materialized when a
bank of land
rose out of
the black water.
There were some
beasts that I
could name, others
had no name
of any kind
as they existed
only within me.
depths and there
There were people
on the bank
of land and
we watched as
trees began to
grow to offer
them shade from
a glaring sun
made of words.
“You’ll meet the most amazing characters, all of them so real, even more so as you come to know them.”
We watched the
people wave to
us as if
welcoming us home.
“You’ll witness all the ups and downs of these people.”
One of the
people that was
on the bank
of land fell
as if hurt,
a few of the
others ran to
help. Blood began
to drip from
the person, it
looked like a
man, and into
the cool water,
staining it red.
Another person, a
woman this time,
went to the
one that had
fallen and pressed
her hands to
the person’s chest.
We watched light
flow from one
to the other
until light and
stars changed the
blood that ran
through the water
into something beautiful.
“My job is to help them know what their story is. My job as a writer is to tell the story the way it wants to be told. It’s really that simple and that complex.”
When I closed
the book, the
water began to
slide back into
the ground, the
people began to
fade, letters in
the water began
to slip back
into my book.
“Every writer has access to their own well of water. If you fight the story, the well will dry up. All you have to do is have faith in yourself.”
I pointed down
at the ground.
A few letters
from my book
remained there. The
letters spelled only
one simple word:
BELIEVE.
He looked at
me with new
respect in his
eyes and said:
“How much for a copy of one of your books?”
Buy Little Yellow Magnet from Amazon and Kobo!
Jamieson Wolf has written a compelling story about navigating multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy. His story will touch your heart, make you cry, then laugh, and inspire you. A touching memoir with a bit of magic…and tarot! ~ Theresa Reed, author of The Tarot Coloring Book
Jamieson Wolf 