[Image Description: Photo of a collage showing four magazine clippings. Top right: A tree with a large, sprawling canopy silhouetted against a dark blue, clear night sky the the full moon filling the left side of the frame behind it. Bottom Right: a different large tree with a taller canopy silhouetted against a blue night sky with dark purple clouds and a sliver of crescent moon in the sky to the right of the tree. Bottom left: Close-up of a water bird with a long bill and black, white, and gray feathers bathed in blue evening light. Top Left: a poem by Gaby Comprés about time and change.]
Life already tilting, then sideways, questions revealed through new perspective.
Too much time viewing everything– myself– through the dark glass.
Standing still after nightfall in attempt to regain footing, yet moon shadows walk ahead through sense made of hindsight.
Lenses, narratives, paradigms fall away, spent petals, seeing clearly now through projections.
Giving myself permission to unfurl hidden wings, be who I become through waxing/waning phases.
No one else can say who I am now– they’re always naming through the past.
But I know who I always am: night sky and moonlight, steady, yet changing through the seasons.
[Photo of pavement taken while moving the camera so that it appears as a gray canvas with varying shades of gray and black lines.]
What kind of system produces those who behold other people and see only what can be imposed, controlled, taken?
Autonomy disregarded. Humanity undermined.
The beautiful unwieldiness of another callously reduced to anatomy, role, function, capital, the fulfillment of demands from those hellbent to uphold constructed binaries, hierarchies, supremacies.
Infuriated by anyone unwilling to accept oppression.
Outraged by those willing to call harm what it is.
Doubling down on cognitive-dissonance to maintain the opposite of co-creation:
Extraction as a way of life.
Telling us to continue consuming, controlling, hoarding as much as possible while wildfires rage, floods overwhelm, water runs out, wars are waged, cities swelter, children go hungry, rights are stripped away.
Killing the planet, the future, each other, so greed and power always rule.
Expected to carry on feigning independence, working to exhaustion, making appointments, reading fine print, paying bills, acting like there is no other way things could be.
But systems can be undermined.
Hearts straining against bone, grief fueling resistance to this destruction, anger preventing our deferral, connection reminding we can burn with love as well as rage.
[Image description: Dark blue clouds surround an opening through which a lighter-shade of sky is visible. In the center of the opening, framed by the dark clouds, is the thin, crescent moon.]
Late evening walk while clouds hide-and-seek moon,
months passed walking or gardening or thinking while wondering if poetry is lost to me,
if now I’m whatever is the opposite of a poet because now I can’t write the words.
But the moon and my footsteps know it’s not that I can’t—
[Image Description: the poet’s hand, covered in soil from gardening, holds a maple tree seedling with several small, green leaves growing from a block of potting soil with roots visible.]
Change occurs, requiring adaptation.
Some refuse, heels dug in,
only their view only their way.
Some flow, untethered
to place or to values.
Some evaluate, ponder,
may stay, may move,
knowing there is always
more to discover, more to realize,
wisdom for when to stand, when to flow,
when to cultivate the shift that ushers transformation.
[Image description: one corner of my garden, pallet fence on the left and wire fencing on the right, with trees behind. In the foreground are calendula seedlings growing from the soil next to some stepping stones, with a large patch of black-eyed susan, coneflower, and goldenrod plants growing behind them, yet to bloom.]
In the garden, work complete for the day but not ready to leave, sitting on the kneeling pad, bare feet in the dirt, pondering control and lack of control.
The bodily autonomy of women and the marginalized, our children’s safety, our mother planet, existing so precariously at the whim of those who want total control as they deem it.
We know there are other ways, alternatives to this cycle of dominance and power we are born into, inhale with our first breath, the beginning of our indoctrination.
Some have left us wisdom, stories, even shown us by example other possibilities.
I like to think of other possibilities, how to subvert control.
Some days, that feels impossible and I sit despondent, weight crushing.
But sometimes I remember resistance, words of collective liberation.
Looking out at clover growing abundant in the part of our yard we’re letting go to meadow, I think of how lovely it can be to let go.
I remember years I’ve spent unraveling my own indoctrination.
And now I breathe deep and look around at the volunteer Black-eyed Susans I couldn’t bear to clear, the goldenrod and late boneset I left growing among the coneflowers, even though this gives my garden a wild, unkempt flair.
I eye the morning glory seedling I did not plant that recently appeared between the rows of straw flowers and decide to leave her alone.
The act of planting what I have is enough control for this space, not everything needs my intervention.
And maybe, somehow, these decisions unravel one more thread of control in the universe.
[image description: In the foreground, a stone statue of Mary holding baby Jesus, situated in a flower bed that has greenery and a single, yellow tulip fully open. Behind Mary in the flower bed is the statue of a male-presenting monk with his back turned, and in the distance are several tree branches, a brick building, and a gray, cloudy sky.]
“Once a weapon is built, there’s no way of ensuring it will only be used on the enemies for whom it was first intended” — Andre Henry
Scripture tells us that God even gave Mary the choice of whether or not to become the mother of God incarnate, yet men and women under the influence of patriarchy who claim to speak for God believe they know choice better than someone seeking medical care, someone who is pregnant, a couple struggling with a difficult decision– even God Godself.
These patriarchal people are taught to believe the only choices available to anyone should be what they choose for them, because patriarchy is built on control.
Decades of rhetoric have worked to train the reach of their compassion to extend only to certain groups and they have been convinced that there is no place for complexity, no space to hold the fact that multiple things can be true at the same time, no possibility that what they believe best for themselves might be trauma for someone else.
They seem unwilling or unable to see the truth that choice is more than just one thing and what they offer as easy alternatives are, in fact, rarely simple.
Violation is a terrible reality in our world, homes, churches. Medical peril is real. Poverty is trauma. Pregnancy is dangerous. Adoption is a labyrinth. Birth can be death. Sometimes all available options are devastating.
This is not to say there aren’t real moral questions to address regarding choice.
This is not to say there aren’t those who have sincere personal conviction regarding when life begins or what happens in the womb.
Yet too many have allowed the beliefs they chose to be used to secure the power of those who wield their conviction as the means to strip away from the marginalized meger, hard-won rights of autonomy because they have been told it is only the rights of those who agree with them that matter.
Convinced their own rights are absolute even if they infringe on the rights of others, convinced they are the ones persecuted and denied rights because they can’t always impose their choices on others, unable to recognize that with justice further undermined, it could be their choices, their rights, stripped away next.
Even as this seems the inevitable outcome of our current state, I admit I want to hold out hope we can find a way to other possibilities.
[Image Description: photo resting on a wooden desk of a collage made from magazine photos, showing clockwise from the top left: a blue and yellow passenger train blurred in motion, an artistic juxtaposition of the coronavirus with a green fern and water droplets, a war-zone photo taken from inside a building with a large hole blown in the wall with debris covering the floor, and finally an older, dark-haired woman sitting on a bed wearing a blue skirt and white shirt under a mosquito net featuring an intricate floral and spiral design.]
In lockdown I wrote thoughts until they became a poem and then another and another and then I remembered I’ve always thought in poetry.
It was Spring and the woods smelled of decaying leaves and honeysuckle blossoms, as if to remind me that a cycle of fading and blooming is the truth of this life and that perhaps it was possible the catastrophic failure of our current systems would bring about the letting go and renewal this world desperately needed.
But time passed and the ship has yet to right itself.
We have lost so many and many communities are worse off now than when pandamonium started and it’s become impossible to ignore that we are in a face-off between those who want a better world and those whose gods are profit and power and the only way anything is going to change for the better is if those of us who can imagine, envision, insist on a way of life together that is not perpetual harm— find each other, work together, and cultivate it.
Those of us who are people of incarnation and resurrection, of compassion and justice, of collective healing and liberation, of knowing there is more to life than chasing accumulation, exploitation, unfair gain.
Even as we’re told to go back to normal and ramp up productivity and pretend we didn’t see behind the curtain, I will keep facing hard truths, questioning narratives, dismantling conditioning, and writing poems.
[Image Description: close-up of dew drops on lawn grass in the foreground, in the background the sunrise is a brilliant orange behind a grove of trees.]
What is it that scares us so much about questions?
Not asking a question does not make the answer less true.
If something is failing, crumbling, deteriorating, becoming obsolete, an inquiry does nothing to prevent.
What is it that makes us think we can control by suppressing curiosity?
Curiosity not expressed does not disappear.
Rather it closes down potential for connection for open exploration for mutual understanding.
Instead of silencing questions, invite them, welcome them, sit with them, hold space for them,
and let them show you spaciousness and wonder and truth that control could never find.
[image description: photo of a stone fireplace and hearth with a wooden mantle that has a canvas painting of the Grand Canyon resting on it. Morning sunlight is streaming through nearby windows making a golden outline across the top of the painting.]
The morning sun is painting shadows on the living room wall, and I know I need to get up from the couch and start my day, but the house is still and the dogs are quiet, one cozy at my side, and I feel calm.
I know as soon as I stand up I’ll break the morning-light spell and the next time I notice, the sun will be overhead and there will be no mystical, golden-tinged outlines above the fireplace.
Then the furnace kicks on and the other dog begins whining to go outside and it’s time to begin the workday, but my soul is longing for a place with different, slower, unhurried, uninterrupted time.
[image description: a forest floor covered in brown, dried leaves in brilliant morning sunlight. In the foreground is a May Apple plant with its bright green leaves still pointing down and partially wrapped around the stem]
Enduring such a slow, cold Spring you forget the existence
of May Apples and Ramps, it’s been so damn long
since you’ve seen them. Everything stripped so bare
you forget tree canopies and jewelweed seedlings,
that it hasn’t always been only gray lines and dried leaves.
Persisting so long half-frozen you forget the reality
of seasons and renewal, it’s been so damn long
you’ve tried to hold them at bay. Everything static while
you parsed your bearings, finally exhaled, surprised
to discover new understandings and May Apples do exist.
The Forest and the Trees 