A good weekend
For Tommy
I.
In a medicine song circle on Friday night
My left hand clutched my friend Sara’s right
And my right hand rested on my belly
Where no child was or ever would be.
We sang soulfully of mermaids and rivers and stars
To Luis’s gentle guitar which he held like a lover.
Between notes I licked tears from the corners of my mouth,
And gradually my resonating ribcage lulled me into trance.
I gave thanks in my heart for the felt presence
Of things I thought, before I met you, were just
Beautiful ideas.
II.
At breathwork on Saturday morning grief and rage tore through me
And left behind the most sublime perfection.
Karla, blessed maker and holder of healing spaces,
Rocked my shoulders, my hips, and afterwards hugged me,
Tossing my wet eye-mask in the sink.
“Let it go”, someone had said last time;
But I’d not been holding onto anything.
My doors and windows are always open
And I let things find their own way in and out.
Every visitor blesses and nourishes me,
Even the pain, even the pain, even the pain.
Especially the pain, my darling.
I trust them all to arrive and leave
At exactly the right time. I know I am not the smartest being
Living inside me. What sense would there be in me taking charge
When the Divine Mother is right here?
Later that morning I swam in the sea, alone and then with Kaye,
And knew that nothing needed to be any different. Nothing.
III.
On Sunday in the sea again, this time with two of your kids,
And wearing denim because that was all I had,
I was happier than I knew how to be.
We named the waves – “here comes Jacob!” – and talked about how
They don’t mean to knock you over.
They’re just big friendly dogs who want to say hi and don’t realise how big they are,
Or maybe how small you are
When you’re only just six.
Forty years older than that and stranded on dry land,
You propped yourself up on an elbow to look
As often as a good parent needs to.
I imagined the sun beating down on your closed eyes,
The thrum of the earth under you,
The wash of the sea in your ears,
And hoped you felt it all as love.
When your daughter and I came back in
You said that she had been out further than she ever had before.
She and I wandered back home to your hot tub,
Talking about mortgage defaults and how to spot prickles in the grass,
While you stayed a bit longer with her brother.
(When she chose to go with me
A small pain I didn’t know I had been housing
Hopped up onto my windowsill and flew away.)
Back at yours I stripped for the hot tub and she said of my piercings,
“You have twinkles there”. Oh sweetheart, I thought. Today
I am made practically entirely of twinkles.
This weekend is ringing my heart like 100 little silver bells,
I am so free and so loved.
My surrender is complete.
IV.
Many times in recent months when my heart has cried out with longing,
The Divine Mother has said to me, “You can’t have that.”
And then she has said, “But you can have this, and this, and this.”
And it takes as many tears as it takes, but finally, finally
The miraculous shift occurs so that I not only see but feel the madness
Of giving my energy to unrealities and absences
When I walk in golden splendour.
V.
“Your vein is dancing!”,
The nurse at the Blood Centre said today. Of course it is.
The world is sacred and alive and it flows into and out of me,
Beat by beat, breath by breath.
I have a bell at my ankle.
My skin smells of sandalwood.
I am learning the songs.
I love you, my brother.
Slowly, perfectly, I step into the flow.