[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.
[image description: light wood floor with a gray floor vent along a gray wall with a white baseboard. In the background, the baseboard is newly-painted and bright white, and in the foreground, the baseboard is dull and has multiple places where it is scuffed and the paint has been chipped away.]
I spent the past two weekends scrubbing baseboards and repainting after too many years of trying to ignore dings and scrapes and marks,
not to mention the damage caused those couple of winters years ago when we let the kids ride their big wheels in the house,
because big wheels were fun and a great way to burn off inexhaustible excess energy when it was too cold and gross outside
or I just didn’t have the energy to go through the exercise of requiring outdoor play and dealing with the resulting pile of wet winter clothes that would generate.
So there were days and evenings filled with the laughter of two boys riding big wheels around the kitchen table, racing, scratching up the floor, chipping baseboards.
Boys now more calm and mostly grown, no more racing about the house and I relish the quieter days and evenings, while glad we welcomed indoor racing and
kitchen sink bubble-making, and all the other shenanigans we allowed because messes can be cleared away and baseboards can be repainted, eventually.
[Image description: a plain, dark gray wall with a white electrical outlet near the floor, with a bright, rectangular, window-shaped outline of sunlight cast on it through a double-pane window, with tree branches making interesting shadows in the light]
The immensity of love, frustrations, crises, joy. The way such experiences can coexist within a lifetime, a person, a moment, is a wonder, a story, a lament.
Exhilaration, devastation, restoration, intertwine and sometimes you aren’t okay, sometimes you just breathe.
[image description: winter woods, devoid of leaves in the bright evening sunlight, sunburst captured between the fork of a tree, with brilliant blue sky in the background and large, gnarled tree roots in the foreground. ]
Far too many are deluded into thinking what ails society is other people’s bodies, abilities, questions, insights, ways of being, if those differ from the accepted reality they’ve acquired from
bad interpretations of their sacred texts, harmful narratives grounded in domination, manipulations of power-hungry pundits, pastors, politicians, public figures.
Walking around believing self-determination when what they have is simply compliance to conditions determined by others, falsehoods masquerading as freedom.
Convinced those simply moving to live authentically, share understanding, advocate for equity, impart hard-won knowledge, are pushing a destructive agenda
when they are the ones with an agenda to withhold access, to exclude, to silence, to control, to harm.
So sure that someone else existing as their true self, with needs met, with celebration, with support, threatens their existence that they want the other to stop existing.
Imaginations impoverished, unable to understand, it is their own prison into which they are wishing to confine the world.
Terrified seeing those living in the clear light of true freedom for all, threatened by radical reimagining, unable or unwilling to believe in compassion, in spaciousness, in love that could also be theirs if they freed themselves as well.
[Image description: close up of a dried beech leaf with several holes, against the backdrop of a gray sky and bare tree branches]
Some scars are visible at a glance, like the one that misshapes my right eyebrow, acquired playing tag as a kid too close to the side mirror of my dad’s parked Oldsmobile.
Many scars, perhaps even most, can only be seen by the reverberations of their aftermath, how they shape reactions and responses,
how they cause fight or flee or freeze or fawn, cause to believe one must choose between one self-betrayal or another.
Too many of us think we have to see, to understand the cause in order to accept, to accommodate what a person needs, to affirm validity of healing,
as though we must agree with someone’s navigation of their own experience before we deem them worthy.
When truth is there are experiences we will never understand because we do not bear those scars, inhabit that body, live that life.
Love says we don’t have to understand, to endure the same wounds to experience the same challenges, in order to believe someone’s truth, to welcome them as they are.
[Image description: a narrow woods with leafless trees silhouetted against the sky just as the sun is rising. Along the horizon behind the trees, the sky is starting to brighten golden and the sky above the trees is light blue. ]
We’re told there will be wars and rumors of wars and some people look forward to this possibility,
perhaps opportunistically, perhaps sadistically, perhaps from a sense of pride or heroism.
We’re told it’s naive to dream that causes of war, of destruction, could be addressed,
that power could be shared, that systems could be changed, that things don’t have to stay the way things have been made.
We’re told trying something different would be a disaster because some different things have gone wrong in the past,
as though the way things are now hasn’t been going wrong for a very long time.
We’re told this is how it must be, as though people didn’t lead us here on purpose
with domination, exploitation, division, greed.
Perhaps it’s time to question why we limit what we accept as possible to such a narrow range of options.
Perhaps it’s time to stop listening to what we’re told and start living into new possibilities together.
[Image description: cover of a gray book cover that features a picture of yellow flowers in a meadow and white text across that top that reads “Heresy and Other Prayers: Poems and Pictures]
No new poem this week, because I spent all my writing time this weekend working on finalizing the publishing of my book!
Heresy and Other Prayers: Poems and Pictures is now up on Blurb and will soon be available from other retailers. A huge thank you to all my friends and readers who have followed along on my writing journey, and to my family for understanding why I disappear for several hours a week to write.
Until now, I was never certain this book was actually going to happen. It took months to choose which poems and which pictures to include, and then even more time to find and hire a copy editor, wait for the editing, and format the edited copy. I wavered multiple times, wondering who I thought I was to self-publish a book and more than once found myself caught up in feelings of it not being a “real” book because there was no book deal or formal approval involved. And all of this while experiencing multiple life upheavals, including finding and starting a new job in a completely different industry.
But, here we are.
I’m grateful for all the writers, artists, musicians, and makers whose commitment to sharing their work helped me remember the importance of our creative pursuits and for everyone who encouraged me and expressed their enthusiasm for being able to read my work in book form.
Lastly, I will always be indebted to Audre Lorde. It was reading her essay “Poetry is Not a Luxury” that helped me embrace the power of poems and my desire to write and share them.
“But there are no new ideas still waiting in the wings to save us as women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves, along with the renewed courage to try them out. And we must constantly encourage ourselves and each other to attempt the heretical actions our dreams imply and some of our old ideas disparage. In the forefront of our move toward change, there is only our poetry to hint at possibility made real.” – Audre Lorde
[Image description: close up of dried leaves in a creek bed, with a delicate ice formation curling between them.]
Keep showing up for work, at school events and the supermarket. Keep acting like the world isn’t fraying around the edges, unraveling, coming apart in so many ways.
Make sure to put on a normal face, because that is the expectation.
Don’t let it show that pandemic waves and unsustainable practices and societal demands and personal crises might be getting to you, freezing your once-easy grins into worried eyes and forced half-smiles.
Unless.
Unless we stop pretending, stop letting status quo demands keep us frozen in place and admit that things need to change.
Unless we make it okay to say things like “We’re not okay” and “This is hard” and work together to find a different way forward.
The Forest and the Trees 