THREE
U3-P1
The porch is a peace that I can come to. Return as often as I need to remember to listen to the birds even if I’m away. Watch the leaves as they cycle through life. Always reborn because they are connected to a network of roots. Know my neighbors and the roots in their yards.
My grandma nem came and planted these trees. Used seeds and soil to lay down roots -- crepe myrtle, pear, plum, mimosa, and more that I cannot name but can certainly admire.
The capitalists are coming down the road. These trees will not stay but those roots will be remembered as they always must be. She remembers trees that have been replaced by dollars and can tell me wherever and whenever we are.
The library is on the porch. Sometimes she is in bed resting. What knowing is she collecting?
The birds come to the yard knowing they will be fed where she laid down roots. Cardinals, Blue Jays, Doves, Blue Budgies, Blackbirds. The squirrels come too, digging and burying their food. There should be a garden here so we can dig and bury our food too. There are flowers that I’ve witnessed cycling through and have felt the ways that I am cycling too. I have watched neighbors come and go and still we know who laid down roots. When the trees have gone, we’ll still know
The porch is a piece of study, of reflection, of recollection. I have learned about roots by witnessing what’s available to see: the evidence of roots that they laid. I have been listening to the movement. It sharpened my sight. And still I have needed to dig to really know the truth of the roots.
I wonder what will it mean for the trees to be gone when you are the one who planted the seeds. When you have seen what you tended to replaced by dollars? Is that a Mothering wound? Will the porch still be a peace?
*********
Perhaps they cannot come inside from the salt around the house. The demarcation between where we sleep and where we experience might be a wisdom I have not yet understood. What are we keeping out? What are we keeping in? What’s the cost of being unable to open a window?
We need some air. Some space to let it all dissipate. Nothing becomes present that cannot move. None of us exist without each other. We affirm our being. We need every element to do so. What’s available outside is every element. It’s why we are everywhere
There is something kept out but not for lack of invitation. More like with intention.
If you are outside, don’t lament for what’s absent inside. You are surrounded. We are everywhere. Wherever you are, we are too. You are moving water. You are air. We have a portal and the space to move through you.
What you see is only a bit of All that is. Have you considered that you don’t have to see us because we can be felt? Because here we laid roots. Cultivated, nurtured, and beautified the land where the evidence of calling us forth is outside. You sit amongst the magic. You are surrounded. We are never absent no matter what it looks like.
*********
In the waiting space I wonder about eclipses and my mother and phases, misunderstandings and mistakes, what waters I have been led to, crystals left in the ocean and salt that helped the coils of my hair wrap tighter around each other. I wonder about all the honey that’s been on my tongue and words I’ve whispered. Did they stick? Did the waves carry them?
In the waiting space I wonder when you came here did you find yourself overcome by sweetness or by crashing waves? Did you taste the salt too? Did you try to take a picture of the Moon and find yourself surprised by how much it looks like the Sun when it’s captured? Like it’s not there when it’s new?
In the waiting space I’ve been counting the days --or more accurately the nights -- that I have prayed and climbed and prayed and climbed and prayed and wished and hoped and dreamed about jumping
Over the moon. Into a wave. Off an overlook. Into a lake.
After the climb sometimes it’s sweet with laughter. Sometimes it’s salty with tears. I’ve been staring into night skies and mirrors, not quite sure who is reflected back to me. Who is calling my name and telling me to look at myself before I try to breathe underwater?
U3-P2
This is not that but everything is everything. Even in contrast you must be able to discern. These are not butterflies. This is not a signal to run. But it is activation. It is staying and exploring the depths of sweetness and the height of mountains. It is sunlight and snow mingling to make puddles. Jump in.
This is not that and if everything is everything, then you should feel the difference between then and now and know that then was required for now. You can feel Spring because you felt Winter. You can play in the river because you walked up a mountain and heard God calling your name. Knew that you could always return to walk up the mountain again whenever you needed to be reminded. Here is your reminder.
This is not that and that never lasts forever. And if everything is everything then this is but a moment too. Jump in.
Walk up the mountain. Feel your body. Hear God whisper your name. Rest in the river. Feel your body. Hear God whisper your name. Hear Baba. Feel your body. Hear God whisper your name. Hear Yeye. Feel your body. Hear God whisper your name.
You have been reminded. Remembered. Jump in.
*********
Because I am ready and willing to receive, I can pour without finding myself empty.
U3-P3
We are brilliant. Look at how it moves through us, through other folks. Feel the stories converging in us and finding expression through us. Being brought to fruition by us. Honor the process. Appreciate the moments where All is coming together. Diverging from narratives that don’t serve us or our freedom. Our stories are truths. Let us tell them together.
*********
Everybody around
is reflecting
the bullshit that
I’m on.
I don’t know
how I got here,
but I know
from where
I came–
that hole out
of which
I was digging
myself and
every bit of
dirt
that suffocated me.
I got a whiff of air,
called it
fresh,
but it was
layered with
dust that had
not settled.
So here I am
choking
still even though
I am no longer
buried.
*********
We can only
exist in this
space, the in-
between where
all our hopes
and desires
drown.
Row a little
harder?
Pump legs
and arms
faster?
No.
Just float.
The waves will
always carry
you to reality.
U3-P4
First trust, listen, warrior goddess. Expect miracles, allow yourself space to just be, destroy and create (1).
Before that, tears about mountains and heartbreak. Within that, realization. I still feel sad. About the thing.
And then while sitting there, you can’t even fathom the blessings that God has for you. A passage marked, speaking of 147 years and four generations (2). I find it hard to believe. Why would I note that?
Then, let it all work out. There is no one like you. You’re still here. With new life, despite all the times you would have forsaken it. You’re still here.
Then, the crack. The reminder that there was nothing there to be offered but body. Couldn’t discern fake grass from real grass, artificial light from sun (3). But I would have laid there forever in it. In places where I cannot rest. And then came the crack. Maybe it was my own back. My spine snapping from laying where I’d find no rest, nothing soft, nothing real, nothing that could be called love.
The point being, it’s probably not the bottom. It’s the end of a world, but not the end of the world. There are blessings if you just trust, listen, warrior goddess.
(1)
(2)
(3)
*********
There is no punishment. There is God’s grace, and it is through our fallibility as humans that we learn of God’s grace and strive to remember it and practice it for ourselves and among one another. Furthermore, God does not want us to suffer. God lays a path for our enjoyment, and so it is wise to enjoy the blessings and foolish to plague ourselves with anxieties about our enjoyment or when it will end. To be grateful for and enjoy our blessings is to serve God.
U3-P6
I am back around to birthing myself. To anxieties about birthing. To death and dying. To folding and twisting and tangling and unraveling into everything that ain’t all me but certainly is me if me ever was.
And it’s okay. Not in the sense of I feel fine. Or like I haven’t spent the week sobbing into pillows and voids. More like I’ve been here before. And on the other side of the portal that was me is me. And this is just dying and birthing. Endlessly. Fractally. Fruitfully.
What sweet things I have tasted from every harvest.
U3-P8
You didn’t do anything wrong. This is you. This is who you are. The merciless echoes of what is begging to be created. More than ideated. Brought into form. This is you. This is you calling you. You will not let yourself rest until you answer.
Bathe. Pray. Live. Repeat.
I was not wrong. I rarely am. Something had closed, and I was outside of it trying to reason my way back in. What good is reason when the feeling has disappeared?
If you keep walking, you will find that there are new doors. Some that will open up to you. Some that are open only because you can choose to close them.
I know you’re tired. I know you think that you don’t want to be bothered and that you don’t have much left in you. And that’s okay. Just like feeling all that you have felt is okay, too. It’s all but a moment. Remember the tools you just used. Remember the tools you just gained. Give thanks for the tools.
Modupe.
Nothing was a waste of time. Everything was on time. Give thanks for the tools.
Modupe.
Leaning into patience, passivity doesn’t dull the ache. There’s a fire in me that wants to roar and melt you into a pool that I can sink in. But what good is losing the power of my being, my essence, for the sake of my own conceit?
*********
Leaning into patience, passivity doesn’t dull the ache. There’s a fire in me that wants to roar and melt you into a pool that I can sink in. But what good is losing the power of my being, my essence, for the sake of my own conceit?