The time will come when your body
let’s you know healing is happening,
even if it’s not fully showing up
on the outside yet. There’s no freeze-drop belly knot. No cold in the veins …
life writing
It Is All Here For You (after Barbara Crooker’s, ‘Praise Song’)
praise the blood-leaving days—
the long years of hide and cocoon
dissolve, shed, middle-aged spread …
Fig Says (after Ruth Awad’s, ‘Reason to Live’)
“and the fig tree will ache with sweetness for you … even when you can’t stand it …”
Wild Magic
I see wild magic in small things:
in the shine of an eye discovering
something new for itself;
in the yellow algae spreading over
the old stone wall …
Born of Darkness (after Marilyn McEntyre’s, ‘What to do in the Darkness’)
What to do in the darkness?
Remember you’re a native
of the dark—that all living
things are born of darkness …
It all comes down to this (after Stuart Kestenbaum’s, ‘Holding the Light’)
It all comes down to this: my life will never be what I want it to be unless I stitch myself back together. Gather up those loose, tangled threads and …