Ode to the belated arrival of my blood
What a joy to find you in my pants.
Red and pale and shy
You are making yourself known
And with that a relief
(whispers) Relax
welcome the mess
The smell
The cravings for the carbs
The tired limbs and bones
And the barren womb.
At 45
I do not wish for another child.
I have no longing for the smell of newborn skin
Or the weight of a baby on my chest
Or the tiny hand grasping mine
My days of longing to and striving to procreate
Are gone:
I am at the cusp of another tone
Soon the moon will pass me by
My pool diminished
As my daughters step into theirs.
Soon the pads I buy will be
for them and them alone
My trousers will be clean
My pants unstained
My skin dry
And my hair crisp
And my body
Moving
From woman to crone
My bones already bending twigs in the wind
I move
My heart flutters
A sharp intake of breath
This cramp sends through me.
She arrives,
Pale red smears,
A pain pulling my insides,
Holding liquid in my tissue,
Dreams of pools,
Sticky and dark.
She messes up our house,
She splatters in red
(who would have thought
So little blood
Makes such a mess)
A Moon cup full
Enough to give visions
of childbirth
Or abortion
Or murder.
She drips into
Beds and baths.
Onto feet or floors.
She catches me out
And makes me hunt in panic
For
Sanitary pads
And public loos,
Disables me for days
Curls me up
On and in blankets,
Clutching a hot water bottles
While watching mind numbing TV
and howling
into
my ice cream bucket.
Fiercely I love her.
She frees me from that other:
The mindless nausea,
The bone draining effort of making another
The possibility of being
A birthing machine.
My body is still
Sending sex hormone.
On my fertile days,
Letting the world know
We can still do it.
We still make eggs
And look at that strength to carry them.
My body has its agenda,
Yet I am settled in my skin.
My heart and soul and mind
(aren’t we the authority ?)
Are celebrating
our planned children
the freedom to pursue our path
our joy and our desire to be this kind of parent
and that kind of partner
To step lightly on the Earth
To listen to our own desires
And give room for the creative spark
To find expression elsewhere.
And so I celebrate
The blood that tells me
I am not pregnant.
The blood that depletes me and defeats me
With pains and lumps and stains and gains
The blood that gives me
My freedom to pursue
That gives me
Room to define
As other then mother
I celebrate My Red River.
It is my mothers.
It is my mothers mothers.
Each month I let go of another egg
Made by my mother
For me.
I let it go
And cry for it in the stillness
of the stretched and contracting fibers of my womb,
Because some of our dreams
Were never meant to come true
And some of our ancient bodies wisdom
Saw days when
we made many
to see the few survive.
I cry because
I love what is.
I HAVE A CHOICE.
I defend it
even
from what might be.
The weight of death
The weight of death,
A price to pay
So strange and sudden:
Here -
The body changed.
It turns to gold,
Cold and heavy,
The symbol
Of all the love we shared,
Of all the laughter flowing
From your madness or mine,
Your joy
Or
The sun leaving patterns
On the rug.
The weight of death,
A stiffness in the flesh -
No longer flesh inviting
To be held,
To be felt,
To be knelt at in deep wonder.
The weight of death,
A load not to be shrugged off,
But shared
In hushed whispers,
Hands pressing lightly,
Eyes silently falling
Into the well of love.
All Human
I am the silence filler,
I am the babbling brook,
The secret spiller,
The inquisitive look.
I am the enthusiast,
The creative,
The expressive,
The welcomer,
The accepter.
I am the talker
The lecturer
The hair splitter
The detail giver
The attention seeker.
I am the argument Fiddler,
The manipulator.
I am the pleaser,
And feeler,
The barometer.
I am the ignorer,
The overwhelmer.
The underwhelmer.
The delusional.
And the selfish egomaniac.
I am the lover and the cheat.
I am the flirt and the friend.
I am the loyal and the charming,
The one in service and in peace.
I am the sensitive and the vulnerable.
The exhausted and the ill.
I am the depleted.
The crippled.
I am the healer of my wounds.
I am the healer of this body.
I am the speaker of some truths,
The finder of the problem,
The seer of solutions.
I am the facilitator of this journey
And that conflict.
I am the hidder and the hidden.
I am the seeker and the sought.
I am the singer and the song
And the ear that has to listen,
Wants to listen,
Wants silence.
I am the pebble and the pond,
I am the wave, the froth, the ocean.
I am the carrot and the stick
And I am quick, a proper brick.
I am the beauty and the beast
And the endless sleep of death.
I am the courage and the fear
Of rejection, of acceptance,
Of my own greatness,
Of what it means to step up
And into
All that I could
And can
And would
And will.
I am the grass
And the foot walking on it.
I am the stone in your shoe
And the stick in your hand.
I am the mirror in the lake
That will embrace you with cold silk.
I am my mother, your mother, the mother
And the best dad in the world.
I am the star
And all that empty space.
I am the hater and the hated,
I am the slag, the slut, the cunt
And also the cock, the dick,
The fuck.
I am the abuser and the abused,
The victim and the perpetrator,
The hurter and the wound
That festers and pusses,
or heals beautifully with or without
Leaving
A scar.
I am the memory
And the one who remembers.
I am the history and the historian.
I am the changer of the path,
The buck that stops here,
The fork in the road,
The dead end.
I am the stubborn and the lazy,
The gentle and the fierce.
I am the loving and the angry,
The controller and the controlled.
I am the power, known and unknown,
Desired and detested,
Needed and rejected.
I am the judge and the jury
And the quivering accused.
I am the defender of the ones
Who need defending
And of the ones who don’t,
As well.
I am the picker of the nits,
The rectifier of wrongs,
The analyser of symptoms,
The speaker up,
The blurter out,
The reluctant leader.
The meek,
The kind,
The daring,
The forgiving,
The open,
The exuberant,
The understanding,
The Devine.
The one who just wants to be loved.
I am the battle of the mind
About the importance of this and that,
Truth versus connection,
What is right versus other people’s feelings
Of rejection,
Pain versus freedom,
Risk versus exposure.
I am the taker of this bull by its horns,
The stroker of its head,
The self pity wallower
All curled up in bed.
I am the depressed and depressing,
I am uplifting and uplifted,
Fun and games,
And ready to steal horses.
I am the ignorer of my needs,
The meeter of my needs,
The calm, the breeze, the storm.
I come from love,
I seek love,
I fall in love a lot.
I am all human, a melting pot.
I give it my best shot.
Or not.
Blog & Poetry
Welcome to my blog
What do I need?
I need to show up.
I need to share my story.
I need to be counted on.
So here is the place for this to happen.
Welcome.
