this poem ...

slayed me

Sometimes, we come across a piece of writing that slays us, shoves reality right through us like a sword, perspective mixed with an energy that’s been unleashed by sudden awareness.

It’s visceral, slaying is. Your guts end up on the floor before you and you either die for want of the energy needed to get them back inside you, or you make your way through that messy task, picking up the bits and pieces of truth and mystery and outright lies and placing them back in inside, hoping that you’ve rearranged them somehow and that you’ll truly be different for having had this laceration of awareness and not settle back into the primacy of the touch – clothing against skin, air in and out, the wind passing across our brow, the shape of our feet merged to the shoes we’ve laced ourselves into, and being insensitive, even, to most of that anyway – and remain, instead, utterly and stunningly aware of life, shocked into its intimacies and intricacies, unexpected, unprepared, unscripted, unmoored from whatever safe stasis we’d locked ourselves away in and flung into a re-orientation to this, that, whatever, everything all at once. It is too much. And we weep for lack of knowing what else might be the right response or how to carry it with us, too few pockets for all the figs.

unlocked, and flung into re-orientation

That’s how I felt about this poem. I reached out to get permission to reprint it but haven’t received it yet. If I do, I’ll update, but for the moment, I invite you to leave here - something writers never want readers to do - and soak in the beauty and pathos of this poem from Ross Gray’s, Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude, published (with permission) in Emergence Magazine and then come back to read some more ….

To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian

pavement figs - the heart of the matter

Thanks for clicking the arrow that’s brought you back for the more…. I started writing the “more” but realized that anything I’d add would likely do the opposite. Instead, check out “Burial” in the same collection, a beautiful ode to Gray’s father, or find a poem you’d like to share and link to it in the comments.

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My mother-in-law, Margaret, knew most women feel broken in some way. Over decades, she honoured and dignified them by asking for their recipes, no matter how many of the same she already had. I hope you experience her generous heart as I share something from her collection at the end of each post. Every recipe holds a story, one I’ll never know.