August 16, 2022 by The Tao of Grief

Cumulonimbus

I need to find the smallest of words, seek them out and hold them close. I must be careful though, holding them means I must lift my arms and that seems too hard. So I’ll just think about them instead.

I’ll think about stillness and sleep, that’s all. The rain came back today and with its soaking, it washed away part of me, took my feathers and my frills, drenched my ribbons and wet my bows and I’m bedraggled. If I looked up I’d see them, sodden, lying around me but I won’t open my eyes. I still think about them of course, crave them, remember how it felt to move and jingle and shimmer and shine, but not now.

The rain came back today, it saturated me. There’s almost a breeze but not quite. I’ll just sit still for a while and if I breathe soft and slow, if I look down, no-one will know that I am here.

August 9, 2019 by The Tao of Grief

The Art of Navigation

And suddenly I’m back as though I never went away, as though the trees have been upholding me. And I stand here, now, in the roar and thunder of leaves, in the gentle kiss of rain onto my hands and weather soothes.

Tiny pin pricks of water dance across my fingers and I feel. How could I have been so far? How could I have moved from that perfect day? But I hadn’t. Not at all.

It’s in these moments that I see the mystery of time, that I reverberate with it deep inside my core. It seems a joke, a convenience that we tell ourselves, that we are here or there, then or now but I know that we are both.

And in these heightened places I have no form, just a sense of energy, of feelings. In my garden, on the fringes of this storm I am far away. I am in the car park at the Inn and that skirt swishes around my ankles and we leave.

Tiny bells blown by the winds that blow me now and I can feel it, years and miles from here. The cord around my waistband, jingles and in our car park, on the edge of our world, the moments line up ahead.

I am here.

In my young body, I am old, my vacant womb is waiting and somehow as we drove away, I rippled, ancient. I eased out into myself. This self, olden me, wiser me, slipping between the girl and the woman with you always on my shoulder, just like then.

A robin emerged from the bamboo, he appeared in my peripheral vision, as if to wink or raise its eyes. It sat watching me, watching it and all sense of movement dropped away, till we were locked, bird and women, woman and bird, neither one of us moving but both of us remembering the fledglings that we were.

I shimmered, called to him and head in the air, he hopped just close enough for food and then away. I know he watches me from the bushes, I feel him close.

The sky is swollen now, beating puddles at my feet but I am under the robin’s wing where I belong and there, protected by his feathers, I wear my black and white skirt, my crinkled white blouse is crisp against the summer sun and we are young.

Meals come and go, car wheels spin until home and to covers that hold us like these wings. Time means nothing to me today.
I am this heavy rain, this breeze against my cheeks and I am still.
The sun wants to come out, to dry out the robin’s wings. But we both shelter. Somewhere a rainbow will be forming, I can feel it in the lightening of the sky. Somewhere I wear that skirt, always and under these wings, we’re still young.

I know this moment well. It’s for keeps.

October 23, 2015 by The Tao of Grief

Deconstruction

What if I walked and walked and kept on walking.

Could I move so far that my skin would leave my form, that it would crumble from this shape into the soil? Would that be possible do you imagine? It would be so helpful if it did. If the Earth, this molten ball I stand on, would take my feet from under me with a steady grating rub, so hard that the gnawing pressure would eat up my legs to my knees. And I would scrub along the ground, like a broken toy. The birds would call out to me, the sky would lighten but I would shrink. And from my stumps I’d shuffle forwards not because there was forward momentum of any sort but because it served a purpose, it erased the mass I lived in and from my hips I would waddle.
I would look a strange sight tilting to and fro, unsteady in the morning, pivoting on synovial joints with the light peeping over my shoulders as I rocked along the ground.

And further on, the corners of my ribcage would chip and break but I’d keep moving as the morning sun climbed in the sky. Heat would arrive for the others and people would fling wide their windows, breathe deep and fill their lungs with the chemicals from the fields. They would throw on their lightest rhinestone clothes and guzzle their freshly squeezed orange juice, succulent bits making their way around their pallet and down their throats. These people, lifted by the day I can’t take part in. And as they smile at strangers glinting in the rays I would have worn down my ribs to my armpits. And now with an approaching balm I’d be reduced to arms and a head shoving myself down the lane. My shoulders heaving the weight of my brain, its mind seeping into the soil.

I see it all now from my lowered point of view, the dust and the bugs in my eyes. I see roots of grasses, tiny creatures crawling, foraging for food and the breeze cuts through my hair. My neck rubs along the ground as my arms wear away and the sun, so warm, shining amber lights into distant windows, bounces off the keratin in my hair. It casts a softening glow to my cheeks as my head spins to a stop, to look up at the rainless painless sky;

I roll, at last, to nothing.