Catching Her Thread

You came to me a day before my daughter. As if you fell in my lap like a long- lost dream, even though receiving you has probably been my longest labour of love.

‘Will you also play the piano like the last ones did?’ you ask me. Oh sorry, no, but I can sing. I love to sing.

It was winter when we truly met. Pigeons, nightingales, owls, black birds, sparrows and the green woodpecker. They call you their home, just like I do. It’s so silent, in the breath of night.

Early rays of gold caress the pearly dewed grasses. I watch this each morning.

Deceased arms of the Acacia tree come alive in the shadows along our front door. A swarm of swallows gather atop, tuning their polyphonic performance.

When the chickens come and sit with me in meditation, Pear Tree envelopes me in her warmth, and my light touches her light, and her light touches my light. She must be more than a 100 years old.

Only just now did the old Willow Tree break her branches in its own fall

Down

Down

Down

Down below the snails are a plenty. After the rains I step on one and break its shell. Snails die when their shell is broken. They can only heal a small fracture. But She continues in her same eloquent gracious flow, her antennas up and out. I sit in sadness and awe. Snail visits me in my sleep that night and teaches me about surrender. What magic lives in you each moment.

You show me how to share. A small bit for us, the rest for the birds, insects, butterflies, rodents, chickens. That’s why Cherry Tree blossoms in such full splendour. She feeds the passersby on their way to far off places. They come here each year, flocks of sparrows, a bond between lover and Beloved endlessly mirrored.

My daughter is only seven months old when she picks her first cherry from the tree. Now at nine months, with her head amongst the branches as she dangles off my back while I pick plums for jam making, she circumvents the leaves to reach for its juicier treasures. My other daughter sings of painting with the colours of your wind as it braids branch leaf and hair into strands of blended browns, greens and yellows.

I learn to leave the nettles in sunny places for butterflies to lay their eggs, and the wild grasses we decide not to cut, fold into nests for brooding pheasants. The buzzard keenly awaits his dinner.

‘Don’t do, you say, not too much, but the rose needs more space’, so I cut away the laurel bushes.

You know exactly how to use me in your way of creating balance, stitching me into your landscape. When I pick the blossoms of Elderflower, pollen diffused into the warm air leaves a trail of perfumed wonder. Slowly I sink into your embrace, my roots finding deep soil for soul making.

You awaken me to a belonging that reaches into unknowable depths while reminding me that I too, am food for the living.

A cloud of sound moves as time moves, shifting momentum. From April to May the bees visit the fruit trees at the back, so loud, I can hear it from the kitchen. Picking Linden flowers for tea pulls me into an explosive celebration of life. So I pick slowly, carefully. Listening. Surrounded.

For all of this I take my baby too, a mother’s wish fulfilled. She already only wants to be outside with you. Sand goes in mouth. Grass, moss, sticks, leaves, worms, chicken poop. All to be tasted, experienced.

The neighbour cat purrs and curls her head against my baby’s. The rooster puffs his chest and crows too many times a day. The enfolding of my daughter uncoils into the bloom of your beauty. And I am grateful, so grateful.

In the cellar of my soul an altar finds shape. We celebrate the moon and the stars, my blood seeps into the earth. To give thanks and feed Plum tree who now extends onto our dinner table with her jams and chutneys. Womb to womb, nourishment for nourishment.

I pray. 

May all of life feel welcome here. May all of life feel loved here.

You must have heard me all along, for I was six when I grew up just down the road.