Geranium petals in the Snow ...

Goddesses live forever
mere mortals do not.

We have a limited life span
and we do not heal as quickly
or as well.
Our stupidity costs
unimaginably.

I lived life as though it were something to be tasted
and felt
inhabited
and worn
through all its knee and elbow patches
to the ground
and again
into the earth
and back
with all my might.

Ground dirt and pebbles
puddles at the end of the hill
Fields furrowed and laid out end to end
from Hwy 20 to Greenfield Ave,
Hwy 36 to Hwy 83.
Field grass and alfalfa, corn and grandpa’s concord grapes
Ela’s orchard and weeping willows, old oaks and sparkling aspens
Pine trees and huge maples, great grandpa’s orchard
Geese that were vicious (until they knew you)
Proud guard dogs that were never mean to me
Bees and kittens and barn swallows and grackles
Dandelions and baby robins and lilies of the valley
Zinnias and peonies
Waterbugs and tree swallows on the river by our first house
Egrets and the great blue heron
Crickets and grasshoppers in the field by the second house
Leopard frogs, toads, and salamanders
Crabapple trees
Beetles and spiders Mom would wake us to see
Storms and tornados, rainbows, the Moon ...
Autumn leaves and windstorms, clouds streaming through the skies
Snowstorms and worlds blanketed in white the next morning
glittering in January’s sun after November’s gloom
diamonds frozen endless rural early morning wealth in dark purple shadow dusk
waking Guardian trees
and
geranium petals ...

I lived the wrong life.
Don’t get me wrong, it was beautiful
So many places ...

Ah,
the sand in Kuwait
fine and soft, the stars
so otherwordly the sky
unearthly clear.
Trees on the main street of Astana proud and old.
Large, gorgeous red poppies in backyards
abutting a cosmopolitan city center bursting into construction of 5-star hotels.
A farmer’s market in an elegantly tiled structure in Dushanbe along the River, dusty and old, yet
boasting spices in a cornucopia of colours, proud silk road echoes, fruits and breads and fabrics …
what part our part in that destruction I own?
A quiet feminist bookstore in Paris
where I had the most delicious scones and tea, tucked into
a little corner table where I wrote in my journal
near the fireplace. It was January and cold,
and they did not mind how long I stayed.
An english bookstore in Prague, where I found
a huge volume of Vaclav Havel’s writings, which I bought
and carried from there across the continent and home despite its weight
and my lack of appropriate luggage, just for the treasure of it!
The beach at the North Sea in den Hague where
for a moment
a woman
shared with me
a warmth
I needed but could not reciprocate.
Blind, dumb, ignorant
me.
In an instant it was all gone.
And buried.
Even if in itself it was not to be.
The truth could not recognize herself
a language buried so many many many mirrors and deceptions
past recognition
and it returned only to kill itself slowly.
Unknowingly
In Remorse.
Thus began my unwinding.

In Italy
a man threatened me
and once he was gone and I was in a safe place
I drank beyond what was safe,
a trigger response it took years and therapy to comprehend.
Strangers watched over me.
I am forever grateful.
Thank you, lovely women at a restaurant I do not remember
You saw. You knew, and you kept me safe.

I loved traveling on my own.
My time, my life, my laughter was my own.
My thoughts, my voice, was mine.
I sang, I wept, I spoke, I called, I answered.
I sailed, I swam, I ran, I played.
I loved, I lost, I took, I gave. I held, I was held. I touched, I was touched.
I came when I wished, and I went when I wished. I had my own space, my own conveyance.
I was no longer left, abandoned. I had my own power, my own voice, my own wishes.
I could accept or decline.
Now all is changed.
I have no idependent identity, no preferences I recognize. I do not come in or go out
without cost.
I do not live without price.
Nothing is free. I am not free. I no longer have even the illusion of being free.
I have loathed belonging to someone else
although I longed for that above all else
and believed it the epitome of acceptance and accomplishment alone--
as my mother had done.
I thought it would make me safe.
I has done no such thing.
It has been my undoing.
Figure it out.

This, this is my last will and testament.
Learn, learn from this.
You are your own.
Yes, of course, you will love and be loved.
Yes, of course, follow that gilded path. Pursue that lovely dream
of child and partnership and family.
You will do it anyway.
I cannot stop you, nor would I dare.
You would not listen.
Why should you? I did not.
And anyway,
It is your right, as it was mine.
It is our programming.

Years of careful cultivation and outright sabotage, assasination, and destruction
have shaken the very foundations of all the powers of protection
set up for us by our mothers
and our mothers’ mothers
and their mothers, and their mothers’ mothers
and their mothers’ mothers’ mothers, and their mothers
and so on, beyond memory ...
All our institutions of might have been chipped away until all
our safety nets, all
now
all, all are gone.

They have colonized us as we have colonized this earth.
That the monarchs and the bees are in peril is no great surprise
but that less favorable insects also wane shows there is nothing,
nothing that is safe from humanity’s poisonous grasp.

But know this: this gilded path, that lovely dream
It is a lie.
Who we truly are we no longer remember
If we ever knew.

Leave a path you will recognize.
Leave resources you can find when you need them
sufficient to allow you
and those who remain
to thrive.
Do not let them consume all of you.
They will if you let them.
And they will leave you for dead once they believe there is nothing left.
Even though they say they love you
and they believe they do. That is what makes this so hard.
Evolution, Narcism 101.
Figure it out.

When that time comes, you will have to fend for yourself.
You will be old and broken then.
You know what that means.
You have seen it.
You are seeing it now.
Figure it out.