lying in my bed listening for the sunrise my feet stretch north warming my toes on the equator. right ear to the morning, left to the setting sun, my hair drifts southwards – tidal swirlings on an infinite sea.
arms spreading east and west form the coastal belt outeniqua tstitsikama langeberg kouga mountainous names that follow curves peak in breasts with armpit valleys and soft catchments where elbows have folded in on themselves for years.
these are long arms that cling white knuckled to the edge of africa, strong arms that embrace.
this is warm earth, fertile plains and the bones that sing my history. from hand to hand an arc of sky and the path of sun and moon flooding me with light.
written june 2015
revised september 2022
For Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: A MAP OF HISTORY’S MYSTERIES.
there is a cottage at the edge of the woods in it lives a woman a woman a woman, more. it lives in women the cottage at the edge of the woods.
the herbs that hang from the rafters bunches of mpephu and nettle and tulsi, the roses that grow a blood thorned tangle swoon sweet and spread on october cloths to dry, the bottled elder turned by the light of the moon. it lives lives in women
in the sun amongst the trees held in the crescent arms of forest is a garden – a sun bowl facing north. in that garden we grow the food mulch the soil, say the prayers. in that garden we grow the food in soil dark like the night – the greens soft and fire and crunch to nourish, picked bowlsful and fresh in the evening – the plums full heavy with the turning of years.
and of course we have danced here (like really here – see this circle where these four paths meet?) barefeet slapping silk-mud while she rose and rose in the sky
and of course we have wept here salt tears for a thirsty earth the empty rooms, the quiet deaths. hit hard spades at a sun-scorched earth learned again and again that there is no unsaying these prayers no holding onto anything when you give yourself to it completely
and of course we have laughed here table slapping guffaws clanging amongst the cutlery with the light and the light streaming in.
and of course we have planted trees here. for our dead, for our living for our food, for our prayers their roots now entangling with what was what was. their branches singing songs of the sacred to the sky.
and of course we know we are borrowed earth that this body too will fade like those before and those before that we only become whole by healing that by remembering the forest as holy holy we remember ourselves wholly.
there is a cottage at the edge of the woods in it lives a woman a woman a woman, more. it lives in women the cottage at the edge of the woods.
shall we start with the river – everything always starts with the river and ends with the sea except life itself and jellyfish and our mother the ocean
and whales .
i said
egrets this morning flying low/near invisible along the estuary taking form from the water wing tips almost touching the slate and grey and cold of river lifting silent now above the trees carrying the day on their lightness of wings
i said he said
when he went there the birds did not sing did not – have not did they ever sing? that the land there speaks now only in human forms speaks carved stone and castle and road and perhaps being there is a forgetting to listen but perhaps the land there is silenced its pebble tongue carved useless to the glory of men.
but who will wake us call arise arise to meet the world anew who will wake us if the birds no longer sing
i said
now that spring has come and sunbirds sit on patient nests, the men arrive to cut back roadside trees, make way for scrapers and diggers and trucks too close too close for comfort or for nesting birds and new dropped bushbuck hiding silent in tangled undergrowth.
and of course i know the clearing is needed and i know that not yet not yet can the forest reclaim these roads cover the criss cross scar story of our living reckless and beyond reason, punch drunk on our god given dominion
but oh lord and god help us my animal skin crawls, aches with the falling of trees, looks to hide in the cool shadows – away from the deathspeak of chainsaws on a bright spring day.
i said
beyond the dappling tree light fish eagle speaks the sky whole – earthbound mudcreature craning my neck to the sun – knowing that vastness could never would never be mine (birdbrained sky chicken – my deafness renders you mute.) i said
its curious now that our first letter our first written record of the shape and gesture of the human mouth aleph alef alif alap
it is curious that our first ever letter – aleph in mordern arabic means tamed or familiar. like the head of an ox known and owned. tamed. that our written words no longer taste of longing and belonging – of gutteral clawed animal speak that shaped words out of mud and bird and bone – and in the taming of our language we are tamed. in the denying of our wildness we deny the wild world, become deaf to all language but our own speak abstracts and contracts until the undoing of the world.
i said
so here i am ocean’s edge (where i said things should end) white woman shaking fragile fists to the sky fluttering tongue against the palate like a bird against the glass – throwing words like stones against the waves “damn you ocean if you think you can rise against us – god’s image i was made in god’s own image – (or my husband was but that is another story) godly – we were given dominion, ocean. how dare you rise against us?”
and then the sobbing anger for what am i if i am not the ocean
if i am alone
and the ocean pools in the belly of my being and the tides of my living rise and fall – and if way back i flowed amniotic in the ocean of my beginning then why, oh why do i rise against me.
between closing the gate on new planted beds late evening – winter cold, and heading inside to close up the house, snap kindling, light a fire.
between tree silhouettes and golding sky the way opens into forest –
and who knew who knows the paths taken the limbs touched skin to bark- who knows the trunks leaned on in the quiet. who but the bird watched shadows among shadows among trees.
until here, paused – sitting boulder still on granite forest bones growing roots and moss – claimed and owned by fallen leaves, we breathe for centuries as one.
(and sometimes surfacing from silence i wished i came her more often – came on gentler feet not garden boots caked with mud here to the temple door –
but dust is dust and the temple floor waits for our feet – soft with longing and prayer and in that aching stillness i slip into silence once more)
and who knew who knows the paths taken the limbs touched skin to bark- who knows the trunks leaned on in the quiet. who but the bird watched shadows among shadows among trees. and who knew who knows what it is to be here alone.
perhaps it is the cold that calls to form – air tinged with night bracing deep breaths – finding shape from boulder and root, shedding leaf and scale and feather until unfolding limbs hold us human once more.
hands deep in pockets following the path up through thinning trees – foot stamping dirt on the wooden step i head inside. light the fire – hold cold hands to the warmth of flame, watch the sky fade through the windows. late evening still.
For Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: WILD STILLNESS
so long so long since i have been here dipping into this icy lake
uncoloured morning slippered and blanket wrapped for the cold cold that sits at the base of the spine
where the donkey was nail beat years ago on a red dust road in the sun make-shift harnessed to a scrap cart going nowhere
same low curve back where the needles were inserted three times epidural to numb to numb the cutting births with their spilling and stitching three girls three girls and joy
wrap wrap in blankets shorn from the goats long locks falling warm from the slow breathing flanks new hair bright white in the shade. washed and combed fibres aligned ready to spin fine and steady by winter fires
dyed in skeins with baths of leaves moonflower and henna and fragrant persicaria until greens and golds double dipped in indigo it dries in the sun while goats sleep and dream their green season babies.
until quiet quiet on long journeys keeping an eye on slow mountains the mohair is stitched square by square into this blanket that years later
wraps, warms the cold of my back while the sun fills the sky on still mornings approaching the solstice.
early rain has sprouted green along the path and buds drink swell wait to burst drunkenly into bloom
human calcaneous and soft ball joints find footing on jutting mountain bones – sandstone knees and elbows – scapular, like a blade, like a contour, like a cliff, granite sternum and ribs to protect the heart beating still –
hips that curve and curve around walking us home on old paths of bone.
For Sherry at earthweal’s weekly challenge: DREAMING IN GREEN
Photo by Tamarisk-Ray Glogauer – Wilderness, South Africa.
there is futility in this bearing witness to no one, bearing witness for who but ourselves bearing witness for who might come after when clearly our doomsday prayers sing the end the end – no who in sight no after.
there is an inevitability in this thin rhetoric, a confidence in our march through the end of time a stark martyrdom – for the greater good we say of a planet, our planet will be better off without us.
(“earth my body, rivers my blood” tell my heart that i live on a planet space rock – third from the sun, that my body is a temple when the temple is my body when all the earth is wholly holy holy)
and some of us have been building boats for sure waiting for the waters to rise waiting for our promised 40 days – stocking up on canned beans and coconut oil. learning to spark the flint, cradle the kindling, blow breathe blow, nurture enough fire to live by (because the end of course is not for everybody)
but the ark – the ark itself gives me sleepless nights pacing the cubits, bare feet on new wood – what beauty is worthy of salvation here – who gets to come on board two by two – not all not all lest our salvation become our sinking ship. there are too many of us any way. not you and me – just us – humans you know.
(“earth my body, water my blood” air my breath, fire my spirit” how we have burned and burned looking for the fire when the fire burns within – sacred fire in the holy temple holy holy holy)
carrot seeds and heirloom peppers are a no brainer for sure – but what of the useless, the frivolous the pretty do we store zinnia and lobelia, and cosmos on the ark – do we need them and which beasts will come two by two the spotted and striped feathered and clawed the edible and what of sperm whales and sperm counts falling like trees in the forest what if our ark is barren– what if it never rains what if our end is drought. what if the end is fire what if we do not know the end how do we, the righteous prepare, build a fireproof flotilla to navigate unknowable oceans. some nature in the hold, along with the beans and our petty fears and comforts enough to end a world with – bearing witness until, last bean in the can hot fried by an over zealous sun, we can no more.
(“earth, my body, water, my blood, air, my breath fire, my spirit” we live we die we live holy holy holy)
what if we don’t know how it ends. or if. how do we live if it doesn’t.
For Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: WITNESS TO MAGNITUDE
i slept here once in the contour folds of forest curved among the trees – the sideways sleep of long days silence.
i dreamed here too dreamed their voices like rasp grass in autumn wind pushing up through the valley. i dreamed her here – grass crowned like a bird like a queen like tuft grass that golds in late light. and the voices were wind and river and sky and water falling rock to pebble-bed, voices like long arched seed heads that gather autumn dew – singing gravel voices rippling along my skin.
i woke here once from the forest deep sleep from the forgetting and remembering and forgetting – was called from sleep by name in the forest – again and again until like slow return to surface in summer’s river a slow rise to where the silver bubbles break i rose from that sleep without moving at all –
i woke in this forest to a low-branched kingfisher almost head height on the down slope calling and calling me awake.
for Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge SPIRITS OF PLACE
still now, with mornings speaking in dragon breath and prophetic tongues of shortening days and the cold that comes that comes – still now the birds proclaim the day, call clear blue horizon to horizon while singing autumn songs, gorging themselves on fruit full ripe and sweet with sunlight gathered and grown to seed.
“take back, like the night, that which is shared,” like the cool become cold under a scattering of wild stars. like our breath , held against the now that explodes on our screens stealing light from our days and stars from our night until no more – say no more no more throw open our windows our doors – step outside allow the night cool to pry breath like a sigh, like a howl like a bird from our lips – watch it take flight mist swirl breaths in the night swimming among the stars becoming air becoming ours becoming shared.
“take back, like the night, that which is shared,” like a thirst, like a longing, like the river. like soft lips touching water reflecting fur and eyes and hooves and quiver flesh hide – still. more still than we have names for like a sip, like a thirst like a longing – like the tree whose branches flow river catchment from the sky, like our bodies holy water wholly shared
“take back, like the night, that which is shared,” like soil in our palm holding seedling green tendril like a gift, soft like a home built slowly like a tree being both shelter and sheltered like the earth that grows our bones that become the earth shared.
Quotation from Gary Snyder in The Practice of the Wild.
In response to Brendan at earthweal’s and weekly challenge: THE COMMONS.
fresh poetry 