It has been a long time since I wrote. In this time period, we have finished renovations on the top floor of our home and moved upstairs, I have become a (not religious) vegan, I have quit caffeine and I have joined the Y. I am also writing in my paper journal daily and aiming for a poem a day. Many changes. Only now are we getting settled in our new apartment, with many more projects and days together organizing, weeding, and making home.
A home grows slowly. There is a certain feeling I get when I think about my grandparent's home into which I was born in Poland. They had been living there since the war and there was a feeling of permanence. The home I was born into was full of seasons, deaths, births, celebrations... the energetic imprint of life. When we moved into our new apartment even the walls were new. It was hard for me to get a sense of home. Only now is it beginning to reveal itself. I look around now and I am starting to get a feel for this place. It does not feel strange anymore.
It seems like all of this healing all of a sudden entered my life. For years I was in modes of suffering. Even though I still have back pain and hormonal issues I feel like I am finally in a place of healing. I love life, I love the earth, and I love waking to each day. I feel a deep strength within, like a deep well from which I draw.
I promised to post poems. Here is another old one, that some of my friends will remember. It is about the relationship I have felt in the past to such things as land, language and others.
Captive
There is a word in another language
that expresses the pleasure
one feels in being
dependent.
In another speech
there are endless words
for the wind outside my window,
for the rain against my pane.
Nestled in this sound,
in this earthen lullaby,
I begin to shed
my language.
But then my tongue gets in the way,
my throat constricts
and I remain
wanting to name,
to be near this body,
this land.
