This wet winter soul’stice, drenched by this incessant dripping; torrential memories of a million moments lost: the company of companions I used to hold, not dear enough; new acquaintances without the notice nor need to want us.
Twisted roots, gnarled with the knots of having known, now not knowing nor understanding. Knots that gnaw into every stricken shoot, tearing at the bark of my hide that once grew smooth and straightway in the sun.
July driftwood washed up on an eroded shore at the core of my soul. I find no foothold, trying to bed in a bank of sand to find something--anything--to give who knows what would provide substrate to my lack of soil.
Rivers flooded and rose to a peak, raging at a pace overwhelming grief; sweeping us downstream of all we hung onto, when unforgotten we clung to the noise of children behind our shoulders bent on washing up dishes.
Not even the grass, though green, grows for fear of the damp and dank undergrowth rising around it, composed only of fallen leaves, long dead and decaying in the litter determined to descend deeper yet, under the weight of this wet.
We are alone and there is no one home.
Our neighbours hide in hollows and burrows underground, and even the stray cats stay locked away in holes under rocks long hardened by frost in the creeping fog of this gathering grey.
Yet I see the black swans are still about, sitting on the flood like empresses, and coming to shore to prune their feathers; calling to their mates to stay close--but they will not let me come close.
Herons go about the shallows, patrolling its borders, and petrels ride on the winds above the surf and swoop down to gather at the edge of these shifting sands in a great flock of black and white spotted petty coats.
The bleak skies roll about their heads and they stand together, bright red legs and beaks facing the elements, waiting for what the storm might bring in the wake of this long-suffering swell.
They are at home and belong to their own.
How? What have I lost that I ever may have possessed it; if I could have but walked among them, barefoot and naked in this frigid cold, content to go about on bare rock and frozen ground with only the weather and its seasons to feed me?
The cormorant dives in delight to feast on schools of darting bait and comes to perch above the waters in a boast of a belly full of what I can’t even see much less prize.
She doesn’t flock or even side with the heron, but goes about content in her splendid isolation, whether on the wind, or in the wet, or waiting aground.
The wattle takes root in whatever and does not wait for August, but buds and blooms with boldness in bright yellow before a blue and shaded canvas; much to the relief of every desperate insect whose wings were born to wear on the weight of this thick and laddened air.
It is not sown and needs not be shown.
Aretha Franklin, her soul'stice blues; Thomas Eliot, his hard-worn roots.
