u/immortellesPoet37

Machine

Go ahead, admit,
the yellow fields overgrown by
goldenrods bobbing along with the breeze,
a few cardinals perched
on their stems, whistling, exposing crimson-tanned hearts,
and the swallows circling the
skies above—
a picture quite common,
not satisfactory enough,
sung ad nauseam by so many—on nature and nostalgia in age-old sonnets.

Modern mind requires fast
delivery, linear logic, straight-
forwardness—
on a loud motorcycle circuit, to zoom along
the route enjoying pungent
smell of gas, immediate
assault of speed;
mind fed by machines,
point B reached after passing A,
no sideways or circumventing…

How the quiet brings un-
easiness in you,
brooding melancholy:
You stand overlooking the
gorge, five lakes the color of
Adriatic-cyan-blue,
reflecting clouds, pure;
air scented by pines
and firs and the sun,
the tiny hamlets clambering
up the hills, houses
dispersed
on meadows, sheep and cows
with bells encircling their
necks singing modest,
lasting homilies to
nature.
It makes one contemplate,
makes one
sad or awed.

Nature sways one’s perception; lightly, playfully,
it saturates the eye
unlike any man-made
techno-construct—
the metal roar fading under
chimes and herds lowing.

© 2026 Tamar Shengelia. All rights reserved.

I love strolling in the forest,
lungs push the ether in, then out,
hips move legs in rhythm, soles meeting the ground with every step propelling the body, shoulders, crown grow higher, stretching up to thin diluted indigo.

Yellow, russet, brown melting, sliding down, rustling onto the ground,
the few goldfinches, thrushes still busy flying from bush to tree,
helping themselves to wild berries, to honeysuckle.

The sky is limitless, pure blue, kiln-burnt brittle pottery;
the Sun shines, giving enough love to keep the spirits lit up, light.

Squirrels busying, running up and down the trunks to pick and store hickory nuts for winter provisions, burying them, so one can decidedly rely on the reserves so wisely and diligently procured.
Deer rustle in towering goldenrods, then suddenly stop look with their soft worried eyes, still set to run on very first clue. The young buck’s horns sticking out of fluffy blooms of flowing in breeze the lemony yellow on blue and green of surround hues. Bees and butterflies buzz collecting nectar, scented bitter - sweet drifting cross the field.

The breeze whispers from somewhere, sometime,
fetching the silly recollections or regrets or moody thoughts
which could so utterly entice, overwhelm
only in the months before
the white obscurity of coming snow.

© 2026 Tamar Shengelia. All rights reserved.

Photos mine too.

Arrival.
Sur un Quai.

Night was cold; morning flows almost into mid-day.
A woman in a pink raincoat floats atop a platform, bright as a flag. Amid a shuffling, hurrying gray throng, it shouts: "Look, look — a vivid vision! Pink coat, long black scarf, and bright pink lipstick!" All of you, stop and look, it insists, stubborn.
I look too, grin, and say: "Admit it, admit it — you summon looks!"
My darling says shyly: "I savor all that focus, and a bit of human drama."
Laughing, both of us hug as that train which brought my girl rolls off, tooting and puffing.

© 2026 Tamar Shengelia. All rights reserved.

27. What's In The Names?
Hibiscus - Rose Mallow Pink,
Lilac Crush Hibiscus,
fresh airy, frilly flowers,
Rose of Sharon in bright,
wide skirts,
Tahiti Rose,
stretching necks of Purple Pillar Rose,
swaying in the dreamy haze,
Hibiscus Syriacus - the tender blooms of oriental lore,
all dancing flamenco with the breeze
on homegrown lawns.
Gatherings of pink, layered, frilly bottoms,
or crimson layers flying in the air,
bright and shiny in the sun.
Commonly called - Swamp roses -
their lace so large, bright, mellow
They arch their backs, heads held high-
The jolly smiles of garden beauties,
Prancing, bringing ease and comeliness
to our eyes.

Tamar Shengelia Oct. 5, 2025

Just because it rains, does not mean bloom won’t open.
Any განგების ბაყაყები🪼🩴🗣️

The structure:
The unfinished sentences - stanzas end with a sentence that someone else must finish, the unfinished sentence should change meaning as the poem progresses. The final sentence must remain unfinished.

He said "If I were you, I wouldn't aim so high, the ambition is...
I thought - to aspire is not to be ambitious, rather...
He added - "The lesson I learned then was to be humble and…”
I thought and argued with myself - Specificity is a gift of a concentrated mind, relentlessly…
He said- "One might think self worthy yet be the sharpest button on a fabric…”
I added to myself - Delusional…Universe or providence knows our plight—labors, goals, effort. One can calculate and judge...
He said - "Don't ask me questions, who am I to render the opinions. I stopped…”
And I thought - How unkindly he talks of others, pretending self to be...
He proclaimed - “Knowing makes one humbled too…”
I nodded: finally, something we could agree on, yet the sermon did not …

Meditation on Brahman

Not ear or eye or mouth, but hearing, sight, taste, discernment, learning, the generation of thought itself; all that is invisible behind the seen, all that remains hidden within lived experience; the birth of recognition, the reading of patterns, the innermost awareness preceding a perception, all-around reality and abstraction, knowledge, feeling and sensation wed, intertwined, borne to soul.

Say:

Ohmmm

Again:

Ohmmm

And once more:

Ohmmm

Inhale to merge with the world, with the One ever present.

With each exhalation,
repeat the name
of the One,
who shines through every living thing,
who manifests the One
in endless multiplicity,
yet never ceases
to be One—

the hearer within every hearing,
the seer within every seeing,
the knower within all knowing,
the source from which all arises,
the stillness to which all returns.

© July, 2026 Lausanne, Tamar Shengelia

Come, visit quiet pond reflecting skies, the world, and us within its wet, unmeasured depth—sit still,
dazed by beauty, tranquility,
perchance in dream.
No chirp or buzz:
the whole world hushed,
is waiting
for a resolution, and a revelation;
the gradual unfolding of
the truth and knowledge.
Yet calm and ground self—to notice the lucidity of air, the breeze of fleeting hour.
There floats a symbol amid the teals, earthly smells, undertones of browns and yellows:
A single bud, trembling on the pond—serene pink-rimmed purity
with heart of gold,
concealed by skirted petals on the mirrored surface—
the lotus.

Absorb her harmony and perfect form— To observe and reach,
to discern your path and purpose,
and bow in awe to the divine in every soul.

poem by Tamar Shengelia.
Powell, Aug 29, 2025

Come, visit quiet pond reflecting skies, the world, and us within its wet, unmeasured depth—sit still,
dazed by beauty, tranquility,
perchance in dream.
No chirp or buzz:
the whole world hushed,
is waiting
for a resolution, and a revelation;
the gradual unfolding of
the truth and knowledge.
Yet calm and ground self—to notice the lucidity of air, the breeze of fleeting hour.
There floats a symbol amid the teals, earthly smells, undertones of browns and yellows:
A single bud, trembling on the pond—serene pink-rimmed purity
with heart of gold,
concealed by skirted petals on the mirrored surface—
the lotus.

Absorb her harmony and perfect form— To observe and reach,
to discern your path and purpose,
and bow in awe to the divine in every soul.

poem by Tamar Shengelia.
Powell, Aug 29, 2025

Tea ceremony
In the faint porcelain cups the brew
evaporates in a heated mist of
grassy bitter scent.
He cuts his tea with milk to soften terse mahogany,
I keep mine black, the subject calls for.
A silver demitasse spoon rings bells,
arresting minute towards the finish.
Discussion is over, the conversation drifts
as clouds above the terrace.
Somewhere in the shrubs thrushes argue over the progress of the day.
In the backdrop - the hum of cicadas trails
the fountains deliberating on our quiet stupor in hushed songs, deliberate.
What carries in-between our measured sips
is an unwillingness to venture
further towards the beat, that
tastes like zero sugar,
a yellow pack of sucrose
in the brew that is supposed
to feel tangy-catechin-unsweet.

© 2026. Tamar Shengelia. All rights reserved.

Comments welcome.

Rain

Comes unannounced
On tiptoes, gathers flow
Sings, wetting grounds
Until spouts swell, brooks rush
And you and me, drenched,
hurry running home.

© 2026 Tamar Shengelia. All rights reserved.

This poem was born a year ago on a plane to Georgia 🇬***🇪, when day, night, and morning were all compressed into space and movement. Then it stayed for a long time, forgotten***…

Lady Macbeth

Nero burned Rome when moment and necessity pressed—
yet my lawful lord equivocates
over burning only a couple of bridges.

Those dreadful, ugly witches,
those daughters of the blackest night,
world-bending,
promising such perturbations
that we mortals can neither see nor fathom—

Instead of sending letters,
act, Lord Macbeth,
act—damn it all!

What is power
if not seized?
What is destiny
if not embraced,
met with matching
blood and will? Yet he writes,
to inform his good wife—
nay, methinks not.
He searches for support,
for a shoulder to lean on.

Why, my good man—
know you not the size of my desires,
my plans?
Why dost thou need an arm?
You must know better—
I can wield the knife.
You learned my bitter, restless heart…
even an ample breast—
not for caress,
(for man has that elsewhere),
but for fire,
for thirst insatiable
to propel thee
where we belong, my lord.

Beginning—
Sees he not a play at hand,
a gamble already cast?
Always steering himself on the lower side,
weighing winds,
counting harbours.

There is only one outcome:
to climb to the top and soar,
ruling over all others.
No sides.
Only the tip of the hill—
and the crown,
set firm upon the head.

He mentions Macduff;
he hesitates to sacrifice him
and mumbles:
“Friendship.”

I say, my lord,
that’s for sheep,
not for wolves.
Friendship, ties, mercy—
not for us.
We use the dagger,
tearing flesh for kingship
and the crown.

My palm—prickly thistle, blooming,
dripping
purple violets on my hands
too early—
Not crowned;
my vision lies, my eyes tripped,
not yet, not tonight.

© Tamar Shengelia, 2025

Illustrations:
1.
A print of Lady Macbeth from Mrs. Anna Jameson's 1832 analysis of Shakespeare's Heroines, Characteristics of Women.
Date
1832
Source
Folger Shakespeare Library Digital Image Collection

2.
Character: Appears to be Lady Macbeth from William Shakespeare's play Macbeth.
Artist: Credited to the illustrator Artus Scheiner (1863–1938).
Scene: Depicts the famous sleepwalking moment where she moves through the dark, troubled by her hidden guilt.

Beautification.

On someone’s car drive, cracked,
Every fissure of concrete grows green in belief:
sky beckons, sun calls, warming
and carries upward every cell—growth spontaneous.

Yet maybe later an owner, annoyed with
stubbornness of weeds—gross—
will spray the poison to make them wilt.

Don’t worry!
Soon enough,
In a week or two the beautification cycle starts again…

© Tamar Shengelia, August 29, 2026

To Detractors

Aug 27, 2026

The prurient experts will

argue on beauty, laws of

composition & live words —

mine—

pulsing with the ache,

some degree of knowing,

joy, silliness, style or manner;

and claim I am not

composing them myself?

Who else? Who?!

What? Machine?

Some intelligence or algorithm?

Oh, yah AI! Get real!

What if I don’t think at

all, — writing as they flow

and I refuse to put

the doubts & poison

of rumination on true

green crop of words, they grow,

beneath  my flesh and skin

without the fertilizer.

I don’t do outsourcing

my hand jotting words

as if

I knew what would spill

from my pen…

This beauty is born on Her own

whim and accord,

despite all the impasses and odds…

How often She is disparaged,

pinched till bruised, put on

craggy, bony knees of those—

wordy- worldly - “glibe”

—to poke & probe, sullied by

suspicions of uneasy minds?

For one to play a judge or

a God supreme…

My answer is a smile — wide,

a smile! And a wave!

For the universe is stretching

boundaries — the very

same smile — that shows the

myriads of sparking stars

as brightest, shiny

sharpest teeth to mince

everything, everyone,

every drop of cobalt blue,

each

single speck of idea put down in ink,

a thought, or an uttering

to equalize it all.

© Tamar Shengelia, 2026
Photos by Tamar Shengelia

In memoriam, Yayoi Kusama (1929–2026)

— artist, visionary, soul among souls.

This :

I loved your walls of polka dots,

ovals, color yellow,

pumpkins — so large, so orange

they hinged and hugged the room

and draw the eye,

keeping us watching a tale

unfold, as if

Alice is falling into the rabbit hole again.

The strangeness asked

to share hours with joy,

short hours -- ours to observe,

to paint,

to play,

the mushrooms growing

on the grounds

of museums worldwide,

the psychedelic playground

you shared with us.

One needs just to look at them

to feel high, lines parallel merge

somewhere in the cosmos,

so lightheartedly they run and intercept the light.

Bubbles colorful fly in droves

unburdened as balloons rise up.

World dressed in hues,

skies with umbrellas

smiling at the clouds,

greeting rain

in happy tears.

Flowers, ovals, rhombuses,

dots without an end, continuation of the sentences and laughter,

colors multiplying

into infinity.

Years pass

and disappear,

bodies too,

but one indivisible,

for the sharing:

That joy you gave away

peculiar, childish, young,

staying.

© Tamar Shengelia

Schloss Nymphenburg.

Laughter bounced as sunbeams
from the curtains
Climbed as the kittens scale the walls
playing with the sunspots on the ceilings
painted in cherubs, nymphs and gods,
serene and smiling, or doleful.
And breeze rushed in
ringing tiny bells on portico
in the gardens roses swayed sunkissed, caressed till surrender by the heat,
opening their eyes wide
to greet the day and bees.
Beauties clad in lightest silk and muslin
gazed from walls.
Fountains startled
erupting over oval lakes &
spraying foam from the heads of
maenads and dolphins,
so mischievous.
Swans prim and haughty over ducks
cleaned feathers
gliding black and white as on chessboards of the perfect channels.
Nymphenburg castle greeted
tourists on a scorching summer day

© 2026 Tamar Shengelia. All rights reserved. Photos by Tamar Shengelia

KIRIE.

Yesterday
looking
better
than
Tomorrow.
How
survive
the paradox
of
Time
running
circles
around
us —
Death
wishes
to
Salvage
and
Life
wants
to
Kill:
A lamb
And
A feast
Both
Theoi
Part of
One,
single
Universal—
As
this
Voice—
Aummm
a Lolling Song
Of
Divinity,
KIRIE
sounding
on
smiling
lips
of
Joy!

© 2026 Tamar Shengelia. All rights reserved.
Photos mine, except the Photograph of Virginia Woolf.

/for Virginia/

River, Woolf, and Moon
(for Virginia)
Today on my morning walk
I strolled, with plans
for a day drifting like clouds above,
until I reached the riverbank
and sat on a fat blackened stump
to watch the Olentangy.
Her name rolls idle-lazy, painted red, by the Lenape natives,
like her waters colored silt and clay carried from her banks.
She lapped and murmured at the dreamy shores,
still waters indiscernible in flow.
The black cormorants perched
on trunks of polished logs,
now bare-grays cleaned to the bones
by her weighted languid currents,
the dry branches outstretched,
thin fingers beckoning,
promising salvos,
perhaps transparent oysters, perhaps seedy river pearls,
who knows what surprises she
conceals in her ochre shifting heart.
I lingered
watching undercurrents,
sly fish darting past their own reflections
through the entangled roots of trees soaking in mahogany depths …
Then, out of sudden nowhere,
like a leap of a frog from a nearby boulder,
I recalled a book read years ago,
A Room of One’s Own,
and the woman, Virginia,
a towering moody loner who bent time and memory
into prose so sharp it echoed.
Yes, yes, Nicole Kidman played her in The Hours,
and won an Oscar for the lead role,
a win-win combination of the character and the depicted talent:
a woman, elongated aquiline nose,
unseeing eyes,
trained to see only what’s meaningful,
effort
concentrated on the fleeting,
zeroed on creation …
She wished she could run away from noise
and hide in the den under virgin forest brush, a lonely wolf,
free, unattached, untamed by food or affections.
For her, existence became
food for contemplation,
a beam of lamplight,
an overheard gossip of the help,
a belated note of apology from her husband …
Here in a cold tiny room, Virginia
wrapped in a plaid woolen shawl,
writes with tired freezing fingers,
clutching pen,
and eyes dulled from copying and editing the texts.
She listens to the silences
between reality, reflection, and recollection
and composes.
Her husband’s letters,
scarce, arriving late and later,
the delays in a game of unsaid words;
She smiles and asks the dark:
Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?
And answers promptly,
she herself.
/sorry, my reader, I introduced another line of thought, another movie, another story, one letter difference—still, it speaks!/
Back at home at vespers,
past all the chores, reading, writing, TV,
I look up at the blackened skies,
see the moon peeking through arched windows,
imperfect circle, 3/4 full,
always wanting more.
My husband walks in the kitchen
and asks jokingly,
What do you wish for, wife of mine?
I smile and reply,
This moon, so perfect in her imperfections!
Perhaps, a cup of tea? is his reply.
Oh, yes, I can agree to that, I say,
that would be great.
Thanks!
I answer back: No milk, just black and some lemon.
In my steaming cup
the almost round moon,
uneven citrine sour slice,
floats as in the liquid skies …
Again I think of her,
tall woman in her room alone
with herself.
A Room of One’s Own,
where she asks what a woman needs to write,
a space, some money,
a door that closes against the world,
while volumes of male judgment apply their weight,
the drafted, altered pages refuse to stay hidden
beneath the floorboards of history,
ink seeping through blotting paper …
When and why had she decided
to quit and merge with that river flow,
pockets full of pebbles like teabags soaked,
breaking the stagnant surface with no sweetness found …
in life disappearing
in concentric circles of last hopes,
or was it a stale glassy pond?
How did no one notice
a tall lonely figure of a woman
keeping herself on the verge, just barely afloat …
And why?
He could not manage,
just one train ride away,
how does it matter now?
—and never … will.
I drink this mahogany brew
and try to see her plight,
relive the false relief …
May the light she carried through
be not allowed to dim,
trapped on the bottom of that stream,
through which she waded,
forever carried by the flow …
© Tamar Shengelia, September 5, 2025

An Ascent
As kids we loved to climb trees in our summer orchard. First to choose one climbable, to know your stamina and strength: the trunks to go up, warmed by the sun, not too smooth, not too craggy.
Then the branching stems just high enough for stretching and bending, reaching to hold, hugging tightly, scraping arms and knees to climb, huffing-puffing, pushing up with firmly planted feet, toes crammed into unevenness of darkened wood. The sturdy branches spread out, thick and plenty, to sit on or sway, and rest, observing the world below:
The city melting in the lap of hills swam away in midday haze, reflecting sun in brilliance of random windowpanes, shooting beams as some magic code, midday Morse onoffon. There—our parents somewhere at work, some street, in some building there, too far away to see.
To sit watching grass and the road over fence with sweating seldom passersby scaling asphalt road gone soft, and obscured inside the curly crown munch on apples, plums, or walnuts not quite ripe to spit the pits or shells, competing who would spit them farther.
And feel on the top of world: sunlight playing hide & seek with emerald of leaves the ants all business, crawling up and down the stems, the scent of brooding rotten fruit on the ground, the angry buzz of iridescent flies and bees uniformed in khaki,
In that din, the tiny life perceived that special ‘silence’ that grew within, that overwhelming unity with a live garden.
How to explain an ascent? You had to be there next to a kid to feel such vertigo of lightness, joy, and fear, limbs strained, muscles tingling, hands holding tight onto skin of wood, listening to grasshoppers chatter, lost in my own world, resting in anticipation of the descent, or maybe a fall; that happened too.
Something ending, yet restlessly repeating, like that relentless hum of insects.
A climb upward, downward, inspired by the growth.
—
© Tamar Shengelia. August 17. All rights reserved.