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epigraph
there is a cottage
at the edge
of the woods
in it lives a woman
a woman a woman,
more.
it lives in women
the cottage
at the edge
of the woods.the herbs that hang from the rafters
bunches of mpephu and nettle
and tulsi, the roses that grow
a blood thorned tangle
swoon sweet and
spread on october cloths to dry,
the bottled elder turned
by the light of the moon.
it lives
lives in womenin the sun amongst the trees
held in the crescent arms of forest
is a garden – a sun bowl facing north.
in that garden we grow the food
mulch the soil, say the prayers.
in that garden we grow the food
in soil dark like the night –
the greens soft and fire
and crunch to nourish,
picked bowlsful and
fresh in the evening –
the plums full heavy
with the turning of years.and of course we have danced here
(like really here – see this circle
where these four paths meet?)
barefeet slapping silk-mud
while she rose and rose in the skyand of course we have wept here
salt tears for a thirsty earth
the empty rooms, the quiet deaths.
hit hard spades at a sun-scorched earth
learned again and again
that there is no unsaying these prayers
no holding onto anything
when you give yourself to it
completelyand of course we have laughed here
table slapping guffaws
clanging amongst the cutlery
with the light
and the light streaming in.and of course we have planted trees here.
for our dead, for our living
for our food, for our prayers
their roots now entangling
with what was
what was.
their branches singing
songs of the sacred to the sky.and of course we know
we are borrowed earth
that this body too will fade
like those before and those before
that we only become whole by healing
that by remembering the forest
as holy holy
we remember ourselves
wholly.there is a cottage
at the edge
of the woods
in it lives a woman
a woman a woman,
more.
it lives in women
the cottage
at the edge
of the woods.
For Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: A MAP OF HISTORY’S MYSTERIES. Read his wonderful essay here. https://earthweal.com/2022/09/19/earthweal-weekly-challenge-historys-mysteries/
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temple
between closing the gate
on new planted beds
late evening – winter cold,
and heading inside
to close up the house,
snap kindling, light a fire.between tree silhouettes
and golding sky
the way opens
into forest –and who knew who knows
the paths taken the limbs touched
skin to bark- who knows the trunks
leaned on in the quiet.
who but the bird watched
shadows among shadows
among trees.until here,
paused – sitting boulder still
on granite forest bones growing roots and moss –
claimed and owned by fallen leaves,
we breathe for centuries as one.(and sometimes surfacing from silence
i wished i came her more often –
came on gentler feet
not garden boots caked with mud
here to the temple door –but dust is dust and the temple floor
waits for our feet – soft with longing and prayer
and in that aching stillness
i slip into silence once more)and who knew who knows
the paths taken the limbs touched
skin to bark- who knows the trunks
leaned on in the quiet.
who but the bird watched
shadows among shadows
among trees.
and who knew who knows
what it is to be here
alone.perhaps it is the cold that calls to form –
air tinged with night bracing deep breaths –
finding shape from boulder and root,
shedding leaf and scale and feather
until unfolding limbs
hold us human once more.hands deep in pockets
following the path up through thinning trees –
foot stamping dirt on the wooden step
i head inside. light the fire –
hold cold hands to the warmth of flame,
watch the sky fade through the windows.
late evening still.
For Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: WILD STILLNESS
https://earthweal.com/2022/07/04/earthweal-weekly-challenge-wild-stillness/
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small comfort
so long so long
since i have been here
dipping into this icy lakeuncoloured morning
slippered and blanket wrapped
for the cold cold
that sits at the base of the spinewhere the donkey was nail beat years ago
on a red dust road in the sun
make-shift harnessed to a scrap cart
going nowheresame low curve back where the needles
were inserted three times epidural
to numb to numb the cutting births
with their spilling and stitching
three girls three girls and joywrap wrap in blankets
shorn from the goats long locks
falling warm from the slow breathing flanks
new hair bright white in the shade.
washed and combed fibres aligned
ready to spin fine and steady
by winter firesdyed in skeins with baths of leaves
moonflower and henna
and fragrant persicaria
until greens and golds
double dipped in indigo
it dries in the sun while goats sleep
and dream their green season babies.until quiet quiet on long journeys
keeping an eye on slow mountains
the mohair is stitched
square by square
into this blanket that years laterwraps, warms the cold of my back
while the sun fills the sky on
still mornings approaching the solstice.
Linking to Earthweal’s open link weekend #122
https://earthweal.com/2022/06/10/earthweal-open-link-weekend-122/
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the mountain
we walk amongst the bones here.
early rain has sprouted green
along the path and buds drink swell wait
to burst drunkenly into bloomhuman calcaneous and soft ball joints
find footing on jutting mountain bones –
sandstone knees and elbows –
scapular, like a blade,
like a contour, like a cliff,
granite sternum and ribs
to protect the heart
beating still –hips that curve and curve around
walking us home
on old paths
of bone.
For Sherry at earthweal’s weekly challenge: DREAMING IN GREEN
https://earthweal.com/2022/06/06/earthweal-weekly-challenge-dreaming-in-green/
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here
i slept here once
in the contour folds of forest
curved among the trees –
the sideways sleep
of long days silence.i dreamed here too
dreamed their voices
like rasp grass in autumn wind
pushing up through the valley.
i dreamed her here –
grass crowned like a bird
like a queen
like tuft grass that golds
in late light.
and the voices were wind
and river and sky
and water falling rock to pebble-bed,
voices like long arched seed heads
that gather autumn dew –
singing gravel voices rippling
along my skin.i woke here once
from the forest deep sleep
from the forgetting
and remembering and forgetting –
was called from sleep
by name in the forest –
again and again
until like slow return
to surface in summer’s river
a slow rise to where
the silver bubbles break
i rose from that sleep
without moving at all –i woke in this forest
to a low-branched kingfisher
almost head height
on the down slope
calling and calling me
awake.for Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge SPIRITS OF PLACE
https://earthweal.com/2022/05/02/earthweal-weekly-challenge-spirits-of-place-2/
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may song
still now,
with mornings
speaking in dragon breath
and prophetic tongues
of shortening days
and the cold that comes
that comes –
still now
the birds proclaim the day,
call clear blue
horizon to horizon
while singing autumn songs,
gorging themselves
on fruit full ripe and
sweet with sunlight gathered
and grown to seed.
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eubalaena australis – hope is in fellowship
1.
in shades of green and grey
the ocean spoke the coming storm
while breakers tossed ice-whisps
against the tide.double socked and
braced to the wind
we face that cloud stacked horizon
and give thanks for the rain
the rain
the rain that comes
and those who return
with the snap cold turn
of seasons.2.
by 1750 the north atlantic right whale
was as good as extinct for commercial purposes –
because they were the right whale to kill.
slow and placid, rich in oil
likely to float after death.
they were the right whales to kill
until they were gone and
whalers looked to the rich southern waters
where generations of mothers
had returned and returned to quiet bays.the southern right whales, it seems
were equally fit for purpose.
38 000 harpooned in the southern atlantic
39 000 in the south pacific
an incomplete record gathered
from far flung whaling stations
and the silence of the sea.too late too late for the north
harpooning of right whales
was banned in 1937
though illegal whaling continued
for few decades more.3.
i never saw a whale as a child
never felt their breath in
and out like the ocean beneath me
until i was older
adult and sitting half way down
the rock strewn cliff
among the erica and watsonia
watching mother and child
roll and roll in the swell
of the deep water bay – close
close enough to see eyes
and spray catching light
with that vast exhale sigh
that rumbles rock and bone
and all the watery spaces
of my being – slow
slower than any breath i could dream
or hope or imaginei never saw a whale as a child
because there were so few.
because they were the right whale.
because healing takes time.
because we did not know
how to hope
for their return.
what action hope needed
for their return4.
about 13000 southern right whales now
and counting. population growth steady
(we hope) at about 6% per year.this is the slow crawl back from the brink –
the precarious tiptoeing at the edge of existence.
this is the quiet hope of winter
this is the prayer at the shore.that despite it all
the changes and the changing
that the mothers return
as their mothers before,
full pregnant and nourished
by bright antarctic waters.
that they calve here
safe near the shore –
that our daughters
and daughters know
the wide waters
the rocky bays
the salt ocean breath.
photo by tamarisk-ray glogauer
For Brendan at earthweal’s weekly challenge: RADICAL HOPE
https://earthweal.com/2022/04/04/earthweal-weekly-challenge-radical-hope/
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it is the cracks that let in the light
it is hard to see in the darkness
of these days, morning sun
bright shadowed on heather
and grass thick dewed.
it is hard to see.it is hard to remember
who spewed what hate
at which fractured piece
of humanity first – who threatened,
divided,
ate power made of discord.it is a dark shore
these morning waves
break on.
it is hard to seebut knee deep in the pushing tide
at the edge of our unknowing
we take this holy water
wash unseeing from our eyes
taste the ocean salt of our bodies
and turn again to face the shore
turn to see the horizon
cleave darkness from the sky,
become mountain and hill and home,
a murmuration of hope
alive in our bones.
A reworking of a 2017 poem for Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: A RADICAL HOPE.
https://earthweal.com/2022/04/04/earthweal-weekly-challenge-radical-hope/
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satiate
it is not like
we can wait,
burning as we do
with the long ache for
dissolution of self
among the choir of trees –
barefeet crunching
in late summer leavesit is not like
we can wait,
hem entangled
in snag breath lichen twigs
and thorn –
to part ferns, soft grown
knee high, to find
this slow undoing
where the longing of bones
meets rapturous
the long silence of trees.it is not like
the world
can wait
For Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: WILD MIND
https://earthweal.com/2022/02/07/earthweal-weekly-challenge-wild-mind/
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wilding prayer
lauds
and always and again
this light comes
distils into bird song
calls us from sleep
sings our awakeningprime
and perhaps
we never needed
to overthink this
being here –
perhaps all we ever know,
all we ever needed to know
is that we are here-now
women becoming
lichen becoming tree-light
bushbuck forest becoming morning
becoming womenterce
sunflowers
turn their bright sky faces
to look to the earth
to the rich dark soil
the unfathomable life of roots
and microbe
and wormsext
you have to give yourself to it
completely, until you are boneless
in the river – a body of water
lapping with the windblown wavesthe only way to stay afloat
is to give yourself to the river
completely, to be buoyed by
saturates and densities
and the lightness of your being.to tip your head back
hair sea-grass to the saltwater
close your eyes soft
until bright sun through blood
and flesh of eyelid
become that other sky
and we become the reed-bank river,
the mud crab and the grebe
flowing with the incoming tide.none
blood warm and smooth as silt
the honey spilled the spoon
drenching the afternoon
in long remembered sweetnessvespers
and when the rain came,
to break the heat that lay
heavy on the hills –
pushing our breath,
it came cool from the warm sky
and we who had been waiting
through the heat of days
held our hands and arms
like wilted leaves to the rain
listening to the soft splatter voice
speak our need fulfilled
until skin drenched and
stripped of our lethargy
we laughed with the sky.compline
between breath
and horizon
the sounding
of a slow sea
that shapes
the long shore
of our sleepbetween breath
and horizon
the quickening
of evening wings
the click of frog
the waking
of the nightnocturn
there was a time
when when her feet still
soft indented this dust
when the rain pooled her footprints
and the wild places grew
where she walked.
she dreamt the night erupting
in stars – and it did.did she know the feet that followed
never could trace the intricate back forward
turn of her dance – hair and arms alight with stars.
did she know we would try
fail, try again.
did she know the feet that followed?matins
in the long dark silence
of this night
we have only this breath
to find our way through
only our bodies
our light our longing
let it be enough
let us be enough
In response to Brendan’s beautiful essay at Earthweal’s weekly challenge GREEN FIRE (wild and sacred)
https://earthweal.com/2022/01/31/earthweal-weekly-challenge-green-fire-wild-and-sacred/
