Category Archives: transformation

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reflective

This if for Blogging from A to Z, the letter R. Virtues and views, feelings….

When do you feel reflective?

What does reflective mean to you?

I took this picture thinking of photrablogger’s Mundane Monday Challenge, now #106. The photograph is from Fort Worden, one of the gun emplacements on the bunkers. But it is returning to moss and green and the sun was out and sky reflected.

Here is Dictionary.com reflective:

adjective

1.that reflects; reflecting.

2.of or relating to reflection.

3.cast by reflection.

4.given to, marked by, or concerned with meditation or deliberation:
a reflective person.

Reflections can be beautiful. Not always, though. Thinking of reflection brings this poem up:

Reflections

Sometimes the growing pains
Are hard
Sometimes when you move on
It hurts
Put away childish toys
Friends have gone other ways
Even family
You love them
Still
You’ve changed

They resist
Don’t like the evolution
Upsets the plans
Changes the rules
Don’t you love me
As I really am?
The authentic
True
Real
Me?

Or only the hazy
Image
You had in your head
Of who you thought I was
Friend, daughter, cousin
Suddenly I am eight feet tall
Ogre
Threatening
Stunned by silence
Abandoned by your withdrawal

But my skin is shed
I spread my hood
And rise
And flick my tongue
Not to threaten
But to smell
To taste
Your curious presence

When you rear back
In alarm
I am startled

I see a cobra
Reflected in your eyes

(written about 2002)

 

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ardor

“the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra, la!”

I walk uptown today in the sun and the birds and I are out in the sun. It is warm and just amazing. There are flowers everywhere. Arriving home I change to bike gear and then it’s cloudy again. I change out and here is the sun. I will do the A to Z after all, because I am posting daily anyhow and the alphabet trickles round my thoughts. A, a day, a day late, arduous or ardor?

The birds and I are
slain by the sun: welcome
ardor spring flowers

My topic is Virtues and Views….there are Seven Virtues just as there are Seven Sins. Last year I wrote about a different feeling each day. Are the virtues feelings? And there is more than one list of virtues….

 

 

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new growth

I’ve been thinking about the A to Z challenge again. I did it last year, with 7 sins and friends. I wrote about an emotion each day…. and I planned to do it this year starting with the 7 virtues. Bet you can’t name as many virtues as sins…. though I don’t think any of the emotions are sins. They are part of us. They are part of the way we respond to the world and survive. We have to learn to pay attention to them and not label any of them as negative or bad. We cannot excise grief or fear or anger from our psyche and remain human. Instead we need to learn to be curious about each emotion….

…..and there has been a shift in my life, three parts all shifting at once, this week. It is very odd to have all three go at once. I may leave the virtues until next year, because this sudden freedom is strange, peculiar, unfamiliar…. I need to expand in it and explore it….

New growth….

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Lessons in letting go

It interests me
this letting go

done at the height of vulnerability
or perhaps these are depths

why would a friend walk away
when I cry

when I have lost a financial battle

and in the past
the weekend my sister died

friends come
friends go

do not take it to heart
when they go

I am not lying to myself
that this person loved me

and left when I was in the blue deeps
left me additionally shattered by going

they tell themselves and others
too emotional too dark too dramatic

and I am startled out of my grief
to more grief loss

death is final
but I can talk to the dead

when the living have left
there is a gaping wound

Beloved comforts me
and it is not about me

they tell themselves and others
but they are running from their own

depths, grief, emotion, darkness
they cannot stand by me in darkness

I forgive again
and I am content

alone with the Beloved
in the depths

and there is such beauty here
if my friends were still friends

I could show them the pearls
in these deeps

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Resilient

We went for a walk last night down town. On the way back, the bell in the fire tower was illuminated and looks magical. The tower was built in 1890 for the town fire bell and has been preserved. Read about it at the Jefferson County Historical Society : http://www.jchsmuseum.org/Resources/Resources-HistoricPreservationBellTower.html

I hope we can come together as a country for health care as this community has for the bell tower….

This is for the Photo Prompt: resilient.

 

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birth

Reading about drugs

LSD
and that people re-experience the terrible trauma of birth

but wait: terrible trauma…

I had the grace and delight and sometimes terror
of catching babies, new and slippery and surprised
for nineteen years

they do not arrive traumatized

an older obstetrician
always gentle
when I would ask for help
deep calm and sometimes
he would wait for the newborn
and not rush us to the operating room

and if the child emerged
he would say “girl ears”
or “boy ears”
he always guessed
frequently wrong
his small tickle of humor
and the mother too busy at that moment
to notice at all
except that his voice was calm

I think of the one forming
in the womb
the sounds of mother’s heart and guts
dark and sounds
of father brother sister other

the first time I see
the new baby in clinic
I imitate the sound of the doppler
swish swish swish
and the newborn alerts, and knows my voice too

I think of the one forming
in the womb
and my daughter
who tried to come early
confining me to bed for three months
and adrenaline-like terbutaline
continuously
my hands tremble
my heart rate at one hundred
I knit to channel the figdets
six sweaters
and my daughter is worth it

I think of the one forming
in the womb
out of room
the space is too tight
can no longer stretch or kick
head down
ready

I think of the one forming
in the womb
saying now
I need more room
now and the cascade starts

we don’t know what starts labor
the baby or the mother
or both

now
I need more room
and the infant pushes towards the door
towards more room

and I have had
the grace and delight and sometimes terror
of catching them
slick and messy and bloody
as they emerge
into the light

open their eyes
and breathe
startled
at light and room and air