Solitary

Solitary

Tomorrow will be Beltane night. 

This time I’ll arrange to be out

when little Aussie trick-or-treaters

trailed by their mums and dads 

pour onto the streets,

colourful costumes bizarre

in the strong daylight

of a warm Spring evening.

They don’t know

it isn’t really Halloween here.

They think that’s a calendar date

not a season. And they never heard

of old, cold Samhain, when the dead

may return as the veil grows thin....

(Who turned it into Halloween?

Oh yes, of course – churches.)

On Beltane night, tomorrow,

I’ll get back after dark

when the baby ghosts and monsters

are safely home in bed. 

I’ll bathe. I’ll cast a circle.

There will be water, salt,

candles, a special crystal,

and rose oil, the perfume of love.

Bodily lovers being past or dead,

I’ll gaze at my own 

face in the mirror 

and speak to myself the words

of a ritual blessing, bringing in

love for me, then love for my friends,

love for the Goddess and the God, 

love for all creation, love of Life.

Beautiful world, I will not forget you,

even when the work gets hard

and the nights grow cold. 

Spinning the Wheel of the Year

alone at my tiny altar, the love I summon 

is for you, your regeneration; 

the love I call into being is for all of us.

The love I am is that which I seek. 

Candle image by Maliz Ong. Released into Public Domain, License CCOC0


Sharing with Poets United's Pantry of Poetry and Prose, 2ain

Old pine (tanka)

Public domain. Japanese Two-Panel Screen, Old Pine and Moon（artist unknown.）Late 17th-Early 18th Century.　

old pine 

leans on the wind

hill slants away

they cup the full moon

gold light spills past them

Moving Through This Change [Prose]

Moving Through This Change

‘How are you?’ people ask in tender concern. I say I’m in a weird space. Some, who don’t know me well, ask further.

‘Was she a confidante?’ I nod. ‘Is there someone else in your circle of acquaintances you could make a friend of?’ 

I stare. She repeats the question. I tell her I have good friends. 

Or, ‘What will you do with yourself now?’ I laugh, and list my weekly schedule. 

The ones who know me better just hug. 

After the memorial service, some of us went back to her house. I never have to do this again, I thought, as we navigated the long, stony driveway, the landlord’s barking dogs running at our wheels. But I took several photos of her elderflower tree, in full new bloom. 

The little butcher bird didn’t come knocking at her window, not once. I was glad to know he’d got my message and wouldn’t be desperately searching. 

I collected the box the family were told must come to me: magical pieces she’d crafted – some incomplete, but all usable. I found written descriptions for most, not all. 

Our jeweller friend handed me a ring she’d commissioned (supplying the crystals and her own design). ‘You should have it.’

Some items I can give to special people. Others? 

‘An ancestor shrine,’ someone suggests. (She was younger in earthly years, this-lifetime years, but truly far more ancient.) 

I begin to set it up. Strangely, this is a pleasure. 

The big, glittery printed board of her business name: Esoteric Pure Magic by Letitia Lee. Two wands lacking written details. A rose quartz heart and rose quartz angel she gave me. A labradorite heart someone gave her, which she decorated. A single clap stick representing all the elements (where’s its partner?). Her personal copy of her own oracle cards. A cat statuette magicked as a familiar. I’ll add the ring, and her photo. 

The last photo I took of her? (Enjoying our outing, smiling.) Or from earlier in our long friendship? I start remembering the healthy woman she was. The vigour, vitality, joy.  

That last morning, despite exhaustion and pain, she told me everything I must do for my own wellbeing. 

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I will.’

 

Linked to Poets United's Interactive Moonlight Musings on The Positive Side of Change: 369 words without title.

Getting Through It

Getting Through It

Adam and I shop for lunch.

I told him I could make us an omelette

but he said, ‘No no, don’t use your food.’

(My sons like to spoil me

when they come as guests to my house.)

We bring the shopping back home 

and he makes us sandwiches

of sourdough bread, tomatoes,

roast beef, avocado and curly lettuce.

They are fresh and good.

Then we get up and go

on the long drive to Nimbin,

to Letitia’s memorial service –

our not daughter, not sister

by blood or marriage, but who was.

There, I drink lemon, lime and bitters.

Must stay sober to make my speech.

He has two beers only. He’s driving.

We hug a lot of people, blink back tears,

hardly touch the refreshments afterwards.

(Our girl was a foodie, and a chef.

She used to love to feed us up,

to cook unusual dishes, foreign cuisine.

Left to ourselves, Adam and I 

tend to like wholesome, simple food.)

Home again at last, that night,

we devour my home-made soup

with more of the sourdough

and later, just before bed, enjoy 

a taste of the special gelato I bought.

We also open the waiting bottles of wine 

as soon as we get in: white for him, red for me;

get through two large glasses each 

quite quickly; sigh; reminisce; even laugh …

yawn, go to bed early, sleep unusually late.

Linked to Poets United's Midweek Motif ~ The Food We Eat

Frustration

Frustration

I can’t recapture those moments,

but I was with you then.

I can’t bring back here

that same intensity of words,

immediacy of action,

rush of emotion or thought.

It won’t come back new

no matter how well I summon

over and over every detail, no matter 

how precisely I recall. It’s all

only play-acting, telling myself stories

about times that are lost, people

(ourselves) who are gone. But I was

with you then, we had those moments,

and when I was in them I was in them –

‘fully present’, as they say. You

didn’t allow for anything less.

I can be grateful for that. 

I can keep the knowledge 

of what you gave me in those moments 

of your own focused attention. 

But that’s all. There won’t be more.

That’s what being dead means –

and I’m still more than a little bit

cross with you, but you aren’t there to tell.

The many things, the many daily, 

everyday things I would have saved 

to tell you, go nowhere now: 

stillborn. So I have to move on.

Decided NOT to read this at her memorial service and bring everyone further down! However it was well received at the local 'Poets Out Loud' reading a couple of nights later, by people who knew me but not her.  Sharing also, now, at Poets United's Poetry Pantry #497. 

A Departure [Prose]

A Departure

October comes: mid-Spring (ironic!). My friend goes – unexpectedly. She constantly worked at self-healing. Although in great pain, given one year to live she lived seven.

There were dialysis and prescribed medications. Also she communicated closely with her body to know what foods were best at any time. When she Googled the food, it always turned out to have properties she needed right then. 

Her feet swelled, and for a long time were numb. She had her carers massage them, bending ankles and toes back, forward and in circles, gradually increasing the range of movement. Lately she was feeling her feet again, and feeling them connect with the floor as she moved around with her wheely-walker. 

She spent hours each day, herself, massaging thymus, coccyx, lymph glands. 

‘This is real,’ she said. ‘We’re bodies. We have to do the work.’

She also said, a week ago, ‘I’m at the end of my tether.’ So perhaps it shouldn’t have been a shock. 

It was, though.

She thought she was nearly finished the long process, finally expelling the last, worst poisons. She planned a holiday in Thailand next year with one of her carers. She bought equipment for the restaurant she meant to open when she was well.

Yesterday I was packing to spend the weekend with her, as I often did, when her daughter phoned. 

‘I’m sorry to tell you, Mum passed away this morning.’

‘What? No! How?’

‘In the transport on the way to hospital.’ (She always went for dialysis on Fridays.)

I phoned my stepson, who was close to her too. He texted later that he broke down sobbing after we hung up. Me, I did some screaming. 

Yet, along with other emotions, I find myself fervently thankful she didn’t die while I was with her – even more, that I didn’t turn up today to find her corpse in her bed. 

I’m surprised by huge relief that I need never again sleep in her spare room with the ill-fitting outside door. I feared Brown Snakes squeezing through that gap. A gekko came in, briefly, last weekend. 

But I’m grateful for much more, too. She taught me heightened awareness. She showed me how to be strong. 

                                    ~~~~~~~~

I could list many, many other positive things to be grateful to her for – but this is written as a piece of short prose, exactly 369 words without title, for Poets United's Pantry of Poetry and Prose: October Is Here.

                                              ~~~~~~~~                               

My stepson and adopted daughter (as she called herself, saying I was the mother she wished she'd had) – taken back in December 2010: