Come through the whitethorn

But stay awhile and look

Look at the petals and

Look at the thorns

Look closer at the spindly branches

For there is a story tangled up in there

 

 

 

 

 

 

I bloom before the leaves are ready

To catch the first Spring’s sunlight gift

From our Sun god star

Before anyone else

I am ready

 

 

 

 

 

Look closer

See the blackthorn grows enmeshed in me

To step between the white and black thorns

Is to step into the Otherworld

Peopled with faeries and elves and goblins and trolls

And spirit animals and ancestors and the blueprint of ourselves

Each journey begins with a single step

So make it a beginning of worth

Humble and sacred

Beautiful and fearful

See what the pathway brings to you

As you journey through the black and white

Thorn and blossom, both

 

 

 

 

 

 

Returning from someplace is a great mystery

We have stepped into the Otherworld

Collectively

We want to come home

But the Initiate knows there is no home

Once the black and white thorns have been passed through

We look instead for belonging

To know when the journey has turned full circle

 

 

Eldest cries to me

I can’t stand this lockdown, mum

When can I go out?

 

 

 

Getting twitchy now

No work left; why do jobs on

Someone else’s house?

 

 

I think I just picked

Up someone else’s dog shit

By some gross mistake

 

 

 

When the toddler

Is just about to kick off:

Tractors on YouTube

 

 

When the grown ups who

Should know better get shirty:

Guitar, drum, garden

 

 

Tears and truth needed

Talk it through and get it out

The sun is shining

 

 

 

Like a Christmas tree

Decorated by a tiny child

Who can only reach so far

The cherry tree begins it blossoming

In her lowest branches

And slowly grows like a growing child

Up the levels

Branch to branch

Like slow moving

Joyous fire spreading

Branch by branch

I watch the blossom

Open up and show the world

The softest pink flush of petal and bloom

Its neighbours the Apple trees

When they open,

Their red blooms are like lips

Inviting bees to delve in

All the way into their bodies

And lose themselves in the sexiness

But my cherry tree

Blooms with an innocent that catches my breath

In wonder and true love

We have been friends,

Cherry and me

Spring to Spring

She has shown me brilliant reds and brown of autumn

Stark, still winter emptiness

And the fullness of summer fruits

I thought I had lost her friendship

For a few lonely seasons

Until I realised she was waiting for me

To remember how to listen

Her blossom is spreading

Each day it grows higher

And the child decorating the tree grows taller

Cherry speaks quickly now

As she knows I am leaving her soon

She puts her mind into my heart

With her colour and shape and movement and voice

And she says to me

I

Will

Miss

You

 

 

I breathe a sigh of relief

I dreamt that the powers of money

Would force open my front door and

Rip me from my husband’s embrace

And my children’s souls as they grow

 

 

The apple tree has put out leaves

The plum and the cherry

So still and so alive

Are blooming

Every day I witness the cervix of Nature

Expand

Tiny motion by tiny motion

 

How grateful for this time

What blessing

And joy in stillness

 

What learning is there in these times?

Oh, so much and so deep

It has cut parts of me away that I never even knew were canker

To reveal the soft

Pink truth of me

Hidden away once

Now exposed to the air

Raw and beautiful and

Completely vulnerable

 

 

Another three weeks’ lockdown

And I am glad

Because my skin is so fresh

Like the cervix

I have been stretched and tenderised

Cut so that anyone can see

The unfurling of the leaves

And the blooming of petals

 

Everything is sacred;

In stillness is found

The only truth worth knowing

Dried out

Long dead

Slug has

Lain under

The sink

In the

Bathroom

For two

Long weeks

 

 

 

Blossom

Has bloomed

On the

Cherry

As the

Birds feed

Constant

Harvest

Of busy

Beings

 

 

I sit

And watch

And smile

At how

Industrious

And urgent

Is their

Feeding

And nesting

While the

Human realm

Goes through

What it

Must

 

 

 

Skin turns

Pink and

Tight in

The blessed

Sunshine

 

 

 

 

 

It has suddenly dawned on me

That what I have mistaken for chaotic thoughts

Are in fact parts of a whole-making of me

Moving house into the van and onto the road,

That no longer is

Yet

My destiny

And we remain

Cocooned and safe

In our Moon Cottage

My breathing,

So constricted and light

Let out a sigh of gratitude and

So began the Lockdown

Niggles niggled

I should be doing something

Surely!

I should be helping more than I am

I cannot bear this privilege

My mind begins to warp and weave into patterns of madness

The journey would have

Could have

Should have

Taken all my creativity

Yet we are here

All the answers come from within

Not out there

Turn off the computer and turn off the news

Stop for a moment and

Breathe

For you are not lost in comfort given by a house no longer really yours

But from that place of safety

Perhaps then something can be done

Last night it dawned on me:

I am not going anywhere any time soon

So perhaps there is some use I can be?

Is that not what I have always craved?

I dreamt last night of a kingly lover

Who I could not find

A cooler world today

Muted colours and barely any air moving

There is a contentment

That comes when children’s happiness

Is freed from relentless northern winds

For a moment I got to swing

In the hammock

And felt bliss

And quietude

The pup is in her first season

Vicious

Thoughtless

She is anxious and wary

And takes no shit from nobody

Yelling

Running

I look outside to see a sea of chicken feathers.

The panic grabs at my heart

I find her

Hunkered by the garish pink bucket

Barely alive

I hold her upside down and ask if I

Can see her wounds

Sobs come so easily nowadays

Mine and my children’s

The toddler gabbles the whole sorry story

We put her in the outside toilet

Where all our new girls have gone

To acclimatise after the horrors of the factory

And we wait

Feathers strewn all over the garden and

I think I’ll rake them up in the morning

Pup gets yelled at and we know we’re not doing it right

Terrible dreams of them lifting this lockdown before

It’s the right time and the virus

Takes us one feather at a time

Leaving us torn and naked

Frost dawns

And the feathers are being picked up for nesting beds

By dunnocks and tits and chaffinches

I leave them for their babies

She is still alive so

Today I will try some antibiotics and

Rescue remedy

NB: Although these are in threes, WordPress seems unable to show you that when you read them. For this I apologise and I’m working on it,

• 

Blossom on the plum

Move into asana poses

As the petals fall

 

 

As I run home

Legs tight and without motion

I slow, to know peace

 

 

A big part of me

Wants to watch Lord of the Rings,

get away from here

 

 

 

Easter Sunday dawns

There isn’t any choc’late

Lockdown brings deeper meaning

 

There is a world under the water

Where the tree grows strong and straight

The sun shines

How soft the breeze blows the ivy leaves

Light bounces and caresses each bough

Stone shines translucent with magic

Clouds above

– or is it below?-

Envelope space,

How they invite us deeper

Further

Blue promises and golden

Mystery up there

If only we can reach it

If we dive in

Down down deep

Away from this world

Through the portal pool

Where would we emerge?

Crying is the new normal

Weeping

Sobbing

So lost in the depths of grief

No words express

Thousands upon thousands of lives

Not a single one

Could be saved,

For all valiant attempts

Cannot hold a human here

If they are wanted elsewhere

There was a time

When the darkness

Was so complete that I nearly

Forgot how to breathe.

There is a time for everything,

Over and over perhaps the time plays,

Until the everythings we once knew

Are no longer there and

We no longer have need nor recollection

Naked, I stop the tears from falling

Held in my lover’s arms

Gently he helps me begin to heal

Slowly

Softly

He calls me back to where he is

Be

Here

Now,

He calls the cluttered grieving wounded cells of me

And I return

Begin again

Over and over the everythings we know play out