oh, summer morning storm
spontaneous moment of healing
lightning, thunder, rain, on me
electrify and awaken me
enliven and thrill me
hydrate me
rinse me in sky tears
color me in sunlight
in the afterglow i am here.
Author: Anemone
I strive for quality and deep meaning. I am a listener and a creative interpreter. It is in my nature to transform what I experience and observe into some form of art or action. I offer my writing through this blog, Everbearing. My voice has been longing for a receptive audience for years--for the opportunity to be read, to be heard, to perhaps reach someone in a relevant moment. I am done allowing my inner voices of doubt and fear to silence me. I am dissolving the walls that hold me in, one dense stone at a time.
still learning
learning to say i love you, anew,
as if studying a foreign language,
cautious and humble.
words begin, not as words,
as sensation in my body
warm, soft, rushing flushes,
when you are near,
magnetic desire
to be close
to touch
to absorb
to immerse.
the words, still not words,
a glowing pulse
rising up from the earth between us
into my roots
into my chest
into my throat.
the words, still not words,
too tender to speak
express instead
through my eyes
my lips
my non-verbal tongue
my hands
express in opening
to receive
and to listen
to know you
to share
to dance with you.
i am learning new definitions of love,
after all these years,
after abuse co-opted love’s meaning and purpose,
after i abandoned trust in myself and others.
i am learning now
how to allow love to grow
at love’s pace
emergent
slow
adaptive
wild
plural.
i am learning, also, patience,
compassion.
i am learning to consider all the ways
i already communicate my love.
do you hear it?
do you feel it?
do you see it?
do you smell and taste it?
i am learning to trust
when the moment is ripe
i will sing the poetry
of our love out loud.
This is not a poem
…this is a flow of thoughts, a rushing river through my mind, thoughts that are hard to hold onto, because like water they are on the move, constantly recycling. I had a particular teacher at age 19, an indigenous man who introduced me to indigenous authors and literature from North America/Turtle island. He was the first to introduce me to the concept that wherever two elements or entities exist, there is always a third, and the third is a portal, often unseen and unnamed by the western mind. Reality was altered by this perspective. It became part of an unraveling, an opening of new neural pathways, and even now, 26 years later I continue to strive to learn from this. It is a devotional practice, often lonely, as devotion in a nihilistic era can be, one of living into questions and tuning into my senses to feeling and seeing beneath the surface of things. As I confront whiteness–the unearned privilege and power, the ease, the silent complicity in violence against and oppression of others, the intersections with marginalized othered parts of me– I encounter a wound at the core–it feels like a dark abyss, a gaping void, a severance of my ancestral roots. A series of displacements resulting in amnesia. A loss of a people, language, land, culture and spirit. Colonization and subjugation manifesting disease and addiction. The grief is so acute, I buckle and I weep. I cannot hold it, alone. I do not know where to begin or who to turn to, and yet I do begin, again, every day.
The words she speaks
they reach a place in your heart
deep and timeless
where your laughter bursts into tears
where you ache and wonder and dream
the words she speaks
they make you want to shed layers
of artificial skin
assigned to you at birth
and every year since
by dominant culture
the words she speaks are poetic
they entice you to move from your belly center
to writhe and rise in a new dance
gleaming and transcendent
colors vividly reflecting those woven
by your ancestors in cold winters
the patterns of those worn on the earth by their feet
as they migrated north and west and further west
until they reached volcanic lands
edged by the Pacific
veined in rivers
colonized by white peoples
her poetry makes you want
to remember what has been buried inside
forgotten through generations of assimilation
her poetry makes you want
to reclaim the lost ways
of your great great great great grandmothers
her poetry makes you want
to return what has been stolen
another love letter
the bodies of water in the sky are dancing in the wind
making shapes akin to those our ancestor’s ancestors gazed upon
and here we lay
naked in the evening dusk
in a foreign homeland
listening to the first rain of the season
remembering
our first river-swim
our first kiss
bodies magnetized
intellects entwined
that day in September
it’s always a day in September isn’t it
love like ours takes root as summer wanes
amidst the harvest and stirring of desire
we trace our curves and slopes with our left, artisan hands,
we draw each other into presence
outline ourselves in pleasure
we find each other
again
and again
and again
in the margins of a dying paradigm
we love each other and others in a tender freedom
I do not belong to you
and you do not belong to me
yet together we belong
repatterning our relational field
expanding into complex depths
we become bodies of water merging
making infinite shapes and incantations
as we dance into the unknown.
The unravelers
upon waking from nightly prayers
my involute heart opens
to receive morning’s light
as sun rises in the east
and waning moon sets in the west
my mind reviews dreamscapes
where the priestess beckoned
and I followed
flying over forests and mountains
laying down in a glacial fed stream
where my body seethed for days
releasing toxic shame
and my mind traveled through time
on the wings of an owl
in search of other worlds
where all bodies are sacred
I saw us from a distance
we the unraveled
we the unravelers
tasked with learning discernment
which thread to hold onto
which to drop
as we dance into the flames
which seeds to plant
as we rise from the burning grounds
A love letter
Winter has settled
into our bones
laying bare
the shapes of us
our hearts
revealing knots and gnarls
beneath the shine of summer
and here we are
still
intimately intertwined
in pleasures
immersed in a conversation
outside of time
in the wordless love language
of bodies, divine
What Mama’s do
While I attend my body
and clean the house
commute to work and home again
walk the dog and pet the cat and feed the hen
plant the garlic and rake the leaves
dance through the night and lie with lovers and walk with friends
I wonder why the world does not stop?
in the presence of so much suffering
I wonder how I can go on with life?
while you exist in crisis
My Mama-self has declared a state of emergency
she does not go on with the routine
she does not eat nor sleep
she holds constant vigil
bowing and praying, praying and bowing
casting spells of protection
making offerings to the spirits
beseeching our ancestors to stand behind you
I seek counsel as you struggle
to find your meaning
your why for coming to earth
I sense you
wandering too far afar
into the shadows
where hungry ghosts, chaotic consumption, and lurking predators
pull and tug at you
I do not know how this came to be
though I have theories
I scan my memory
searching for the moment missed
when I did not love you well enough
or I said the wrong thing
I search for the moment we slipped off the map
the one I drew in my dreams while you were forming in my womb
cracks and ruptures and losses come to mind
the countless mistakes I have made
I believed, once, it was all up to me
I was so arrogant
I believed I could rule our little world
keep you safe from harm
provide the tools for survival
the inspiration for thrival
the skills to observe and question
a code to live by
the freedom to become and belong
I believed I could create a whole new paradigm
a current just beneath the surface for us to swim
perhaps I still do, believe
only I can not do it alone
and not on chronos time
I am scouring the earth for the medicine
if only I knew what you needed
if only it were up to me
if it were up to me
you would know your worth
you would spark your own fire
remember the bright star you fell from
you would transform your pain into medicine
sharing with others
I trust you will do all of these, and more
centering and manifesting
on your time, in your way
I am no good at sitting still
and yet this is my task
so I will wait
I will live my life
and I will wait,
I will hold constant vigil
and I will be here,
imperfectly, at the ready
A mother’s love
when I open books
on grief
on living beyond loss*
on the wild edge of sorrow*
I find parts of me in every chapter
living with losses
perforated with wild edges
I can call some by name now
traumatic loss
sudden loss
anticipatory loss
ambiguous loss
unacknowledged and stigmatized loss
unspeakable loss
the invisible loss of absence
each one
a chasm
in my heart
where does the immensity
of a mother’s love go
when children are estranged?
does it surround her aura,
a throbbing, aching hum?
does her love multiply,
devouring her from the inside?
does it radiate off of her,
a searing heat?
how does a mother channel her infinite love in times of disconnection?
sing it to the moon?
keen, weep, and shed it each night?
bury it under every cedar tree?
rub it into her lovers’ skin?
light it on fire to signal a rising?
store its nectar away for their return?
apply it to her own heart, making medicine of the pain?
*I make reference to the following two books on loss and grief:
Living Beyond Loss, Edited by Froma Walsh & Monica McGoldrick
The Wild Edge, of Sorrow by Frances Weller
**If you are viewing this on a smartphone, line breaks may not be accurate and this may impact your reading experience.
to find my voice in song
there have been countless moments
like this one
an autumn evening
in the kitchen
roasting tomatoes
blending pesto
when I think of Mother
of her life
her laugh
the softness of her fingertips
her voice calling my name home
the pleasure on her face while dancing
there are countless moments
like this one
when I think of death
in an abundant season of harvest
death
in an abundant season of dying
oh, Mother
38 years and 65 days after
birthing me forth in love
your death taught me
to find my voice
in song
Everbearing 