‘we are the daughters of the witches you did not burn’ the sons of slaves stolen and traded like cattle on cotton ships across the atlantic we are the illegitimate children of colonial bastards and the women who were stolen from their homes and lived we are the grandchildren of the potato farmers who did…
some mornings i find myself on my knees, seep wet to the night’s rain, attending the birth of a goat – the world for a moment still as first feet then nose push unmoving to the waiting world – an inanimate pause while the mother strains, then head and body slippery and warm struggling…
heron flies on slow wings – carries nesting sticks to the rising sun. sets them precarious in the roosting tree. dreams the coming season.
thursday morning steering wheel cold through gloves, last crescent moon waning in winter sky. deep clouds – days long-cold and blustery, reminding myself to breathe.
out at the goats fixing the fence by torchlight while they watch, chewing thoughtful – shaggy and heavy with lamb. between trees walking home the sky is black with stars. there is no need for lights our feet know the way, step carefully along the billowing clouds of the milkyway.
somewhere in the snow a woman beats a drum, lights a fire, crouches low to feed her gods – says a prayer for us. says you have to live first – be alive before you can give yourself to the world somewhere in the sea a girl speaks quiet on a boat atlantic rocked, holds…
the clouds hardly gathered the pinking horizon before the geese began to shout the sky – claiming what’s theirs and theirs and his and ours and i know on a red rock ledge above a cave in a deep water valley the female waits silent on careful nest listening for life in the warmth of…
everything we know of what we knew about the world was written in the inky secretions of dead octopus, on the pulp of forests we felled. how then can we know anything of the world at all if we thought all it had to say were our words written with its body and blood. …
it is not like raven summoned the fog from the sea, cloaked the morning dark with damp, held the sun like a fragile egg between cool mist fingers, but her black wing laughter loud in that low sky woke the birds to spring remembered, claimed day from the salty tide. …
i kept those holy – those mornings where our worlds collided and all about us drew thin insubstantial with essence in the quiet of our breath did we even matter there in that unwavering presence of the here, when the light of creation undid us and we sat untethered and obliterated on the edge of…