Writer/poet person who takes too many photographs, is annoyingly well read, and the tiniest bit opinionated. An American married to a Brit and living on the Sussex Coast of England. I talk to birds, run with dogs, chase waves at the seaside, and get lost in forests.
I’m passionate about trauma recovery and survivors of psychological abuse.
I have recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. Transformation works in mysterious ways.
she lay
curled in upon herself
more spiral
than fetal
more sudden stillness
than feral beauty
the forest floor
was damp
with decomposing
birth and death
may-shine slipped
through young
summer leaves
danced across her
naked form
adding light
and shadow
to the streaks of dirt
and blood
painted on her skin
as though
she were nothing
more than a canvass
this is a couple of years old but it’s one of my favourite “Mothering” stories
I married a bass player when I was seventeen.
He had such confidence. His presence filled a room. His laugh was beyond contagious. It cast a spell over you and you couldn’t help but laugh with him. He was sexy and funny and loved by everyone. I adored him. And I loved him long after we parted ways because we both left pieces of our hearts behind.
He was also one of the most talented musicians, singers and songwriters I have ever met and he gave me my little boy.
But this one isn’t about him really. It’s about me again.
One hot Oklahoma summer, a guy with a banjo and a guitar and a guy learning to play guitar and two hippie chicks, with long hair that would catch in the breeze and float like feminine banners to the Goddess, decided they needed a weekend in the country. We drove to Madill, Oklahoma. On a few acres of land was a dilapidated two room farmhouse belonging to the guitar player’s grandfather. We wandered the hills during the day, making grand plans of communal living with music and art and organic farming and ovens baking manna from heaven.
However, that night the two boys played guitar by the light of the moon and a few kerosene lamps while the chicks sang along. One of the songs they played was this one. They always played this one. The guitar player was a perfectionist. I suppose most good musicians are. The hippie chick with the long dark hair had a tendency to go a bit flat or run out of breath. It frustrated him.
So she learned how to stand perfectly still in the moonlight in a pair of low slung bell bottom jeans that dragged the ground, a thin magenta halter top that exposed her belly, her baby boy in nothing but a diaper perched on her hip with one hand reaching for her long dangling earring while the other pulled on her soft, straight Cherokee hair, and sing softly to the one being who possessed the most amazing ability to love her unconditionally.
And in that moment in a deserted piece of countryside under a moon filled, starlit night, with her baby in her arms, a shy mother sang to her little boy and the world could not have been more perfect.
