Do you remember the time when our lovelust

was so strong we lost

sleep and sense

to be together as god and goddess?

When I was the most

Erudite

Beautful

Sensual 

goddess that you had ever known?

I was that-

The goddess was roaring in my bones and my skin

Shimmering 

Golden and gorgeous

I was

You were 

something 

Other

Now, 

the grey hair on us both

glistens in the Spring sun

and the lines

and softness

speak of years of care:

children

pain

money

miles

The lost sleep 

is because the child wants cuddles

or the middlest 

needs reassurances that no

goddess or Mother 

can think a way through

Now

We are covered with sawdust and grass blades

and we smell of

springtime bloom,

not sex and joyous love

but jam sandwiches and

uneaten dinners

Love me

And I love you

We are still here

The goddess has not let me go

She roars in my bones and shimmers on my skin

Look into my eyes and see

Her

I see him in You

What a beautiful morning. I am abundantly aware of how special this land is and how exceptional it is to be able to have this space to come to on my allocated exercise.

• 

I awoke early this morning after a powerful Kabbalist meditation last night, which led to special dreams. I wanted to go outside and be alone. The sun was calling me.

I took my drum and went slowly along the riverside, taking photos of many, many magical plants. The light played on the dewy grasses and the lush wild garlic. Moss made stone and tree soft and hairy in the bright light. Dappled light played on the river’s surface and made the air warp and weave yellow and golden.

• 

I drummed for healing, for love, for protection, for the blessings of the sun to touch those who need it now.

I walked a little further on. Just at the last point where I needed to turn back, I spied this stack of rocks. Huge, it towered high over the scatter on the riverbank. I stood and marvelled at its precision; each stones’ belief in gravity to both hold it up and weigh it perfectly upon the rock below and how each stone was both itself and part of the whole in its perfection.

I hope you all have a day that holds you safe.

We’re turning to mush.

Gone are the old, reliable labels

Piece by piece we are

Doing as was foretold

For this virus crisis was long expected

By climate crisis scientists

Made worse by our many-decade long race to the bottom

 

 

 

Where am I in all this?

How do I be?

To be?

What does that mean,

when the cycles of seeding, growing, fruition and fallow mean nothing?

This cyclical principle has guided me for many years,

and now, oh now,

it has deserted me,

in all the ways that seem tangible.

 

 

Remember:

It is about being

What is yours to be,

when all the labels have fallen away.

I am Mummy,

an occasional poet,

a dog walker,

forager,

grief-holder,

empty vessel,

lost,

found human.

 

 

 

I feel this, deep in my bones;

the pinnacle of security,

the Western Way,

is to sit in a hammock and read a soothing book,

while the Old World Order collapses,

human being by human being,

far out of sight.

Just wait until it gets into Rohingya refugee camp,

I keep thinking.

 

 

 

I tell you a secret: I am falling apart,

label by label,

piece by piece,

into something Else.

What, I do not know.

Nowhere to go, when once I saw so clearly the path ahead.

No one to speak to, learn from, because all Guides are as lost as me.

I am INSIDE the Circle.

 

 

 

 

Who is here with me?

I think we all are,

in some form or another.

Some days I barely know I am in here.

Some, like today,

it is abundantly clear that within the Circle is where we step to become dissolved.

Never too young to see the birds

Through binoculars,

To learn their names

And learn how to track the sound

Of their call

 

 

Here! A blackbird has seen you

How do you know?

Can’t you hear it scolding?

The Robin, see, he’s sitting

High in the pine tree

Surveying his realm

 

 

Look! Look properly,

Patiently

With eyes and ears and soul and that part of you,

Akin to intuition,

That muscle needs flexing

It need unfurling

Like a frond of bracken

In the bright Spring air

 

 

Take up the task of learning who else shares this village

With you

Me and

The other Humans who we do not see

 

 

The jackdaws

Pigeons

The Tawny owl

Whose terrible jet-lag makes us laugh

The deer

Whose prints we find in the soft morning mud

 

 

The hares

And the shrews

Badger scrapes the lawn

 

 

Go

Now you’re big and trustworthy

The world is not so scary

And the world is

Liminal

 

 

 

• 

I keep dreaming of hairdressers

Turn back the clock!

At least,

Look at what you are doing

Or not doing

A year now

I have chosen to

Accept

Greys

Another dream

Said “your age is trying to speak to you

How can you hear if you keep hiding it?”

My tattoo

My 40th birthday present

Sits now on slowly wrinking wrist

Some days

I have hands just like

Grandmother’s

Wisdom is speaking

To me,

Not anyone else

My body

My timeline

My story

I haven’t read a story this good

For many

Many

Years

And I am learning to listen

• 

I walk with the girls this time

We leave the boys behind

Safe in the house

And we go once again

Just us

Like it was a long time ago

Springtime memories of the first

Tentative

Beginnings of single motherhood

He left at Christmas

By when the first buds began to open

We were a coven

My little Coven of women

Ready to step out

Into the bright

Bare

Bold 

Beautiful 

World

And see what was out there

Nearly two years

Two cycles of the Sun

Around our sacred Earth

We played and learned

And sang and ran

Me and my girls

And my dog

Now the abundant wild garlic 

Empowers us 

I remember

Perhaps they do not

They were very young

Innocent and unknowing

Its scent and sharpness

takes me back to the glade

Lost between fields

Where we grew up in safety

Me and my girls

We had an Ash

Whose trunk was a saddle

The Oak

Whose body was Grandfather

The meandering

Raging beck

Whose bed was rarely the same from one month

To the next

Over the railway track

And into the dappled Grove

We ran

And Sang

And picked wild garlic

And waited for Summer

• 

Slump

It’s ok to want to sit

Sofa-ridden and soft

Cups of tea

Gentle thoughts

A book to read

Moving outside I sit

On the old hard chair

In the sun

The sun!

Bursting through clouds

Beams land on my upturned face

Today is a soft day

Of peace

The growing is happening

Outside of me

A bird egg

Hatched

Lies discarded on the ground

Softly

I allow the day to pass

Exercising dogs for government-approved hour today
From my home
On open public footpath
Dogs on lead and under control
Not a soul around
Pick-up truck
Slows
Stops on road and watches me as I walk towards it
Staring man

My mind goes nuts
Have I done something wrong?
Am I breaking some rule?

I keep going
And going
Fear grabs and will not let me breathe

He slowly drives away

Intimidating me
Pretending to be in control of me
Making me doubt myself
Making me hide

Fear
Is
Not
Going
To
Win

“Play what you wrote, mummy!”

I start to play

Falter to a stop by chord eight

Phrases like ghosts

At the edge of memory

 

Who are you to tell me what to do

It’s my life

It’s my life

 

Teenage angst still there,

Sparked by music

Taken back in time to the days when

I was stuck inside my burgeoning body

Nowhere to put those emotions

But into the music

 

Kindly let me grow up wanting

My own thing

 

Middlest child sits

Finally

At the keys and learns with a concentration

She rarely shows

 

 

Let the music lessons begin

And let her be held by it

Forever

We walk to a ruined corn mill on the river

Mole hills everywhere and I resist the urge to look

Children chattering

Sunlight warming my face

The water roaring through a squeeze in the limestone

Time offers us the gifts of Spring

 

 

A small white flash catches my eye

It is a piece of pottery

Sticking out of the dirt.

Not one for anything so new

I nearly disregard it

But then

A bridge

A cloud and a roof top

Appear as I rub the mud away

 

Step into this

 

 

Hermits and Taoist monks

Palaces of gold and red

Bridges, ornate and magical

Cold, crisp mountain air

For this is above that cloud

High, high into mountains

 

 

I hear the mountain birds and somewhere somehow my mind confuses this

With Aslan’s Country

Flashes of blues and streaming tail feathers

And sparkling streams

So high, there in the Utter East that

Nothing should be growing

Except Enlightenment

 

 

 

 

It is a small picture on the edge of a tea cup

Delicate and once,

Perhaps, for the wealthy and educated

To sip their tea as they oversaw

The miller at his work

 

 

The river roars,

Squeezed through the limestone gap

While the walls crumble and

The tea cup has shattered

And Time has moved on

Yet the bridge remains