Part I: Trauma as Nexus

Trauma is not one thing; it is a mass of definitions overlaid on the experiences- some acute, some chronic, many both- of real people, whether as individuals, groups, communities, or cultures. In thinking through that list, there is an important subtext: we are all individuals who are part of multiple groups, communities, and cultures, and … Continue reading Part I: Trauma as Nexus →

A Meditation on Grief; an Invitation to Vigil

Photo taken by AN Gorniak, March 30th, 2020 I cannot, of course, speak for anyone other than me. We each have our own prism of self through which our inner and outer experiences refract to create a unique shape in the world. And like a suncatcher in the window or a bottle in the ocean, … Continue reading A Meditation on Grief; an Invitation to Vigil →

Hour Nine: The Oppressed

I give to you the gift of a seedThe seed a thoughtThe thought a seeingVision into, behind, beyondFrom depth of night through pearly dawnFrom noonlight's glare to the dusk of dreamI give you the gift of a heart a-wingA-wing it sees with raptor's eyesSustaining truths, rends what hidesRendered flesh to bone to ashFeeding soil that … Continue reading Hour Nine: The Oppressed →

Giving Freely

Lilies draw in oxygen down their long stems into the depths of the water through a network of plants that share space, moving oxygen from young new plants through to older, tattered lilies. This cycle of breath from one to the next, feeding all along the way, is perhaps one way to think of how … Continue reading Giving Freely →

Place

Noticing is it seemsThe truest of magicsWe look at things as they look backIn open wonder that we see them so constrictedlyHeld so carefully inside ourselves that we become parasiteSymbiosis rejected for submissionYet the hunger remains in us, gnawingOur bellies contract painfully at the voidAnd so they cry out to us, who will not hear … Continue reading Place →

On Being a Cog

Often we look at what is going on around us and we get overwhelmed at these huge systems that need so much fixing. We tend to take a stance in our language as though they are broken machines on a table in front of us needing to be fixed, or else these engulfing mechanisms in … Continue reading On Being a Cog →

A Ritual to Brighid

This ritual is written to celebrate Imbolc, ancient festival of mid-winter and the first stirrings of spring. In some places, the Earth is still covered in snow, pantries are getting thin as foodstuffs cannot be supplemented by garden or wildcrafting. Where I live in Coastal Texas, we often see the mightiest of our winter storms … Continue reading A Ritual to Brighid →

Across the Threshold

Skin-slipped snake-likeUnused as I am to allowing the simple grace of tenderness, of transition.Struggling against sensitivity,Callow, gawky without my sharp-edges,No longer a creature against which the world may break itself,I am instead broken open.With a finality like birth, like dying into myself,Strangely conscious of everySingleMoteGlistening diamonds in the web.Trailing fingers as across the lips of … Continue reading Across the Threshold →

Sap Rising

Choking wordsCold, claggy at the back of the throatCoating all with the would-be eloquence of the web-walled volubility evinced by madmen and poetsA magpie mind chattering half-recognized associations illuminated by dustAnd the half-eclipsed silvering of a howling moonHowling, head-shaking cries, syllable-veined and shatteringI long to illume life in the darkness of a hand clasp, a … Continue reading Sap Rising →

Wingless One

I have made myself small Hiding, cringing inward Still, I hear you Fingers of light teasing gently at the edges of the world I allowed myself Peaking out behind flinching eyes Enraptured in you, tendrils of wind ruffle the feathering of wings Launching, power in the joy that springs from my lips As storms rage, cleansing … Continue reading Wingless One →