you’re a woman of a certain stage
rediscovering yourself after years of
people-raising or projects
once immersed in the intensity of
tending others
you sense a new season approaching …
life writing
Some Kind Of Holy (after Mary Oliver’s, ‘Wild Geese’)
You do not have to be good, Mary says. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
And what does this soft animal body love?
Why We Tell Stories (after Lisel Mueller)
Because when we were small cells multiplying in the dark salt cave, we could hear muffled voices through the pounds of flesh and muscle (though we didn’t know what hearing was). Because we start life in the dark …
Resurfacing (after David Whyte’s ‘Sweet Darkness’)
I don’t want to go there—to the dark. I’ve crossed a threshold—remember the whole-body woosh of energy as it left. But I know it. Notebooks full of rushed wild writing. Words I couldn’t say to anyone because …
How to write a poem (after Cathy Colman’s ‘How to’)
the secret is to
the secret is to draw yourself a steaming hot bath
so hot it prickles your skin
add in the Epsom salts and the pink Himalayan …
A Recipe For Change
The food scraps are out of the freezer. Potato peelings. Giblets. Onion skins. Dug-out pumpkin pips and flesh, the ghosts of hollowed-out Halloween lanterns …