Going Back to the Beginning

I came to Canada in 1981. I was born in 1976, and for the first few years of my life lived in Poland. I cannot really describe the shifts in my young consciousness when we moved. Here is one poem that begins the story.

Refugee

Draw me a picture of a heart,
one made of child stories.
Girl in white, a raven, old night.
Or about a dragon who devours maidens,
his fire put out by a bag of salt
dressed in roses and fine cloth.

It was the middle of the night and the lights came on,
stark and blinding.
Take one toy, they said,
wrapped me in silence,
took me away from all the stories and pictures
I had ever known.

Now, when I speak my native tongue,
it is a little voice I hear.
Now there are black places, rifts,
faint images and fragments of tale.
And sometimes I don’t know the difference between
the pictures,
and the saltmine in my eyes.

Lately I have been struggling and trying to figure out how much to give. I feel a sometimes uncontrollable calling and desire to give and be of service, and then find myself wallowing in anger I don't know how to express because I have passed boundaries I didn't know were there and exhausted myself. During the anger I want to shut myself away, as if I could hide myself from people and situations in my life. But I think that although natural boundaries are healthy my desire to stop the flow of giving, to stopper the flow of energy by shutting myself away is what causes my anger as it is there that I become lonely, depressed and disconnected.

Learning my own patterns and energy flows has been very exciting lately, as I can begin to manage the flow, and allow myself recharge time when I feel depleted, and not revert back to the walls that harm me. I find myself trying to describe an experience I had but cannot remember - something about the osmosis between humans and the flow of energy from the universe and how the giving or the allowing of passage of energy through me to others is what makes me alive. Beyond all the shadows that sometimes I can lift from me like a cobweb I know that there is a strong mountain woman picking wildflowers in the sun, past all the negative worry and anxiety shades that are a layer, that are not me.