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.