late evening on the last day of the year i went to the garden to clear the path of dead wood and bramble, ready the beds for planting. and though it might be this decade ends tonight and my hands are splintered and worn, it is still a growing moon that rises in the sky…
vivid the light moves jewel bright – like a green snake in the canopy. vivid the snake moves jewel bright – like light in the green canopy.
i wait with the night, face to the sky and rain that drifts like mist, for the call of the owl clear across the valley – and the answer that comes tree close and vivid with stars.
if the river god spoke my name would she speak this light on water, this unquenchable thirst, this longing to be submerged – hair river-weed to the tide, the call of the ocean stretching my lungs, pulsing my ears, calling us home water, sand bone and blood. would she take this laughter that rises silver…
water bearer knows the value of her vessel is not the clay, river gathered and coiled slip-hand smooth, burnished and fired with hieroglyphs to the river gods – but in the shape of its emptiness waiting to be filled, meniscus the forest sky, with holy water.
at the heart of this moment is the space that sighs between leaf and light and air that hangs motionless before the wind turns towards us heavy with rain.
by the time we woke half-light christmas morning, baby Rain had been lost to the night. drag marks from where she slept to where we found her, swift neck kill and part eaten speak of caracal – big enough to steal a half grown goat too small to lift her dead-weight over fences. and our…
beyond reach of chainsaws and the noise of our insatiable devouring truth still lives in light through leaves dappling my feet fresh won from the busying world.
let it have me this mist that comes light spilled from the sea. let it take me like it takes the trees, enfolding them birdsong and branch in its salt breath sigh, until frogskin to the morning i am claimed by this breath in the song of all that is holy.
breaking the surface for breath in water dark as night sky our ripples form galaxies and star systems of light. deep underwater the riverbed pulses warm as blood, radiant with remembered sun, after the heat of the day has passed.