recovery

Poems of Remembering After War

FROM AUGUST 2012 - For a couple years I worked with an organization leading weeklong wilderness based, trauma informed healing retreats for women combat veterans. These poems arose out of that time.

Take the scars,

The tired bodies

My tears.

The broken names

Of all the women

Unstoried by time and privilege,

Anger and betrayal.

Take the arms

Of the forgotten children

Maimed by our own desperate grief

And untold trauma.

Let the earth rock us to sweet sleep

In its spinning through space-

Let our voices cry out, sing out

Together in unison, in harmony,

In chaos and beauty

For the love of the unborn child,

The first light

A tender embrace.

Don’t talk of strangers at this hearth

It is the fire of our mutual longing

Our together call for freedom

The connection of true belonging.

In each others eyes

Under an ancient sky

Where all who breathe are sacred,

scared and trembling,

At the vulnerability of being.

Let us tell the story of love

To our children

And our children’s children.

How we came together

To care for each other and our home-

The earth.

This is a woman’s way,

To respect all life.

We know the true cost of things,

the value and curse of silence,

The necessity of friendship and kindness.

Call me friend

On this path

Where all our journeys end

In the great mystery.

And I will call you sister

As we walk toward

Our ancestors breath

And the destiny of our hearts

Written in the stars.

Recovery

 

Smite the steal,

The cold metal blade

In those soft hands.

Be gentle dear heart

And bury me home.

Wake me again

I am so frightened and forgetful

I swear to never return.

I call out my own name

To remember myself.

This is my life

I claim it again

For the third time…

There is no bargaining now

Only a mighty wind

Blowing the dust (of war) from my eyes

Blinded by memory

It has been days since I awoke smiling to the east

To greet the morning sun.

This day, today

I call back my heart

To itself.

I will wait here

Patient as cedar

Until you return.

This time

I surrender.