2021

My bones

I
(my bones)

grew

(deep)

in the soil

I am wild

and natural

& dangerous

& eternal

My blood is greeted

(runs in the rivers)

to the oceans.
My Queer body

exists between

times

It is a portal

to the underworld

It is my

connection to the

present

I am grown by

The Earth

I exist (at the edge of time &)

at the edge of

this world

with a foot in

the next

A walker between worlds

How does a society

treat it's messengers?

My Queer body is

a gift

out of this world

and into

the more-than-human.

It's a choice

It’s a choice

To go out

At 4:40pm on a midwinters eve

It’s a choice

To let your feet guide you when you cannot

see the path anymore

And to trust to let the darkness hold you and

that you won’t be seen by anyone and you

will be safe

And only dogs will bark at you because you

have become the wild wild night

The river

when I say that the river calls to me

I do not need to ask how

I do not need to know why

I just need to listen

over and over

and over again

and know that when she calls

you must listen

and you must say yes

My body and I

My body and I lie in the warm
autumn afternoon sun

The golden glow bathes my pale flesh

I let my body rest, knowing it will soon be

winter.

My tummy is round and soft like the

hedgerow fruits.

Juicy and ripe and prepared to carry me

through the winter.

Like a peach, my tummy is also fluffy.

‘A happy trail’ I heard it called, spider hairs

crossed softly under my belly button.

Covered, like a peach, in velvet I am.

Soft and hairy and smooth like a body.

My hair on my legs sparkles in the afternoon

sun - soft and delicate on my thighs, long

and fluffy over my knees, and a long soft

blonde on my calves and shins.

My feet are bald with a soft dusting on my

toes.

A squirrel just walked past me quietly.

Yesterday, I was deemed “too hairy“

Yesterday, someone – some man – decided

my soft ripe fruit, my soft beautiful body had

too much hair on for him to want to fuck.

But this body was an object for him to enjoy

but not to be lived in.

That a ‘woman’ should be bald from the

eyebrows down.

Jokes on him

Because I’m

Delicious.

Attention Deficit

Attention Deficit

I have not

For I have so much attention

for the leaves

on the trees

& rocks on the ground

& wild geese taking their autumn flights

High in the air above

me

their cries call me

away from whatever

I was doing

which was less important

Moths

I did not appreciate moths

Their dull little coats

they way they creep into my room when I was reading

in bed at night,

flapping in my face

The other evening,

I saw a moth visit a wild geranium

+ I thought - why do I treat moths any differently than any other insect?

What is it about moths that I do not care for?

They fly further than bees, & visit as many plants.

It was not the moth’s fault they confused my face with the moon.

I see you moths, I really do.

We are both drawn to her luna presence.

We are more alike than I cared to think.

Bats

standing weeping on the patio

two moths I freed into the night

2 or 3 bats out in the twilight

a blackbird in the garden

trusts me

does not shout

bats dance around my head

ancestral familial rememberings

as the Scottish Gaelic that just made me cry

for the memories and lost knowings

I am starting to find

which I always knew I had

The Crows

The crows

have taught

me that the

present moment

is precious &

the future is

not promised.

The birds

my precious

wild children

have taught

me the power

of communication

through

my presence.

Creator's Prayer

In this time of fiction

let me be fiction

In this time of unreal

let me be unreal

In this time of re-writing of reality

let me re-write reality

Let me create

what needs to be created.

I don't know how to say this

I don't know how to say this

any other way

the birds are my wild children

their joy is my joy

their pain is my pain

pesticides kill me as

they kill them.

as they kill insects,

which they feed

to

their babies.

To let go

In a time of ‘crisis’

that is affecting

each and every creature,

being,

thing I love

the hardest thing is to let go

the hardest thing is to

release the need, desire, force

to clutch

at straws and preserve and keep things

there at the edge of my fingertips

What if I’m here to watch all this fade away?

What if I’m here to witness, to care for, to sooth and comfort

as all that is beautiful and precious in this world dies?

Only through death can we have rebirth.

Blessed am I

Blessed am I to listen to the

Blackbird sing his afternoon song

Blessed am I to hear the chat of the

Stonechat

Blessed am I to be held by the roots

of these ancient giants, grown by

the side of this stream

Blessed am I to let my beating heart

be calmed by the closeness of the

soil

Blessed am I to be held

by this place

To Hold

To hold

the bottom of

the sea bed

you found at

the top of a

hill

in my hand

565 million years have passed

this rock

on my bed

shedding soil

ancient memory

preserved in stone.

Rocks

I’ve never really doubted why I’m drawn to rocks,

why they line my pockets,

stones and mud in every bag.

It makes so much sense

when you realise they were formed by volcanoes

or shaped by glaciers

and crushed into being by the ocean

Witness to hundreds and thousands of cycles of the moon

and the birth and death of stars

How you can carry that in your pocket.

I don’t know who needs to hear this

I don’t know who needs to hear this,

but rocks and the soil

are portals through linear time

you can carry in your pocket.

A sadness

I am filled with a sadness

With a sadness that lingers

Like a plastic wrapper

In the soil

A sadness that grows

With every thing that I learn

Of how greed

Consumers

And leaves

The Earth

Like a byproduct

A sadness of the birds

A sadness of the trees

A sadness of the plants and the

insects

Those that do not join me today

because they are not here

Because they are a ‘pest’, or

because they eat a ‘pest’

On my knees I meet with the soil

My salvation

The trees watch

Kind words

A frog is a friend.

I look up

The golden light of evening

Lightens my heart for a sweet

moment

I breathe in

The trees are still here

The birds

I have to use my other senses

when I’m in the garden,

to see

the birds

If I look at them

they fly away

if I ignore them, they

move around me

+ are quite curious

sometimes

Weaving

In my life

I weave together

that which is old

that which is new

& that which I cannot know

the ageless

These 3 strands represent the journey,

path & exploration my life takes.

Including the twists and turns,

the highs and lows,

and everything in between.

My life is not linear, it is cyclical,

it is spiralic-

it is blessed with the magic of my ancestors

and of my future lineage.

I am an ancestor to someone.

“just keep braiding the seeds”*

*Reference to enslaved African women braiding seeds into their hair when they were being kidnapped, taking seeds with them without knowing what the future may hold. See Apocalypse Survival Skill #4: Braiding Seeds - How to Survive the End of the World Podcast

Wild dog

Even though she sleeps inside the house

Even though she wears a pretty bow

round her neck

+ drinks water from a blue bowl

she’s still a wild dog.

her eyes still glint with the wild

under the clear sky

she’s my friend.

+ her nose knows another world.

grass blades from other garden plants.

she eats the grass for a reason known only to her.

because she is still a wild girl.

After all

As we paved over the final patch of soil

we realised trees

were

actually pretty good

for us

after all.