like leaves on a fall strewn lawn
drifting...
Time moves quickly now
more quickly than the early days of newborn babes
and spring bulbs seeking sun-warmed air.
My remembrances of this place can’t keep up!
The days I have remaining here
pass rapidly one after the other,
every morning I have one fewer
to wake in this house
to spend a day in this air
to pass the places that brought me joy
or left me scarred.
It’s the scars that jolt my memory the most.
My child rearing years were very hard,
schooling chief among the most difficult events.
If I could change one thing it would be this -
I would teach my own children
how to
teach themselves,
be joyful and loving,
communicate with all beings,
yet
to trust themselves above all others
how to live in the world as they would like it to be lived in
how to dream
Truly lovely, as a home body I try to take mental images of each day and know I'll want to sort through them in the future.
mental snapshots are much better than actual photos! Thank you for stopping by and commenting.
Why is leaving familiar places so heavy? ♡
I would rather hold onto them forever, and let them turn to rubble before they left my life forever. When I do go back to take a peak at what they have become, I always break down sobbing. If we lived there once, there is a large part of us still there. We are reunited, and have to leave again.
Lovely! This comes at a fitting time (autumn) and for me, just days after the K-12, 3-story brick school of my childhood was leveled. Demolished. "It's just a building." The memories remain. So, whassup with the empty spaces? The weight of any regrets should be lifted, right? It's all dust now.
For you, at least, the house you will vacate will stand for years to come, whoever else may live under its roof, however many new children may be born there, and however many mistakes the parents may make. And they will make mistakes. We all do. Hindsight is 20/20. We may have trusted our intuition, only to wish we'd listened to our elders. Or we may have listened to our elders and failed to heed our own intuition.
Well, you set off a lot of thoughts and feelings with this one! Bravo!
Lovely comment!
My trust was in my "betters", the medical experts, the educational experts, trusting those to know more than I did was my biggest mistake.
My grammar school was leveled too. With its u-shaped, high windowed courtyard that my cousin and I whacked tennis balls against for hours on end (the cousin whose house I am buying), the swings I learned about flight on, the see saws and merry go rounds I learned physics on. The school my mother taught in. The big pool next door. We walked to the pool and back in our swim suits and flip flops, carrying nothing but a towel.
All gone now, leveled, athletic fields for my high school, which remains. I would love to head back there.
I'm thinking now my poem is about second chances. So you've set off a lot of thoughts. Thanks!
Ohhh sad, the school and playground and pool and all that has been leveled.
Even your son has been "leveled" in a sense, a result of trusting external authorities vs mom's intuition, owasco's intuition. So sad. May the "second chances" soon manifest themselves and yield good things!
I've just started this 2 hour interview, but she exposes how the medical industry has perverted a mother's intuition, among other things.
https://medicinestories.libsyn.com/30-supporting-the-innate-intelligence-of-the-immune-system-cilla-whatcott?mc_cid=1484d0657c&mc_eid=5d3eb1c5b6
How do you manage to listen to 2-hour videos?
i really need to work on my listening skills!
I'm only halfway through. I keep them playing in the background until I hear something I don't already know (I've already listened to a great many), then tune in.
One thing this video covers is how a mother's sense of protecting her baby has been disabled. Babies are injected within the first hour of birth, with a vaccine that "protects" them from a disease most of them will never ever encounter. The baby's skin is pierced! Instinctively taboo! And we just go along with this. I think this particular jab is the most powerful black magic.
I keep hearing ads for the pneumonia vaccine.
Pneumonia is bacterial, isn't it? How can there be a vaccine for that?
Doctors go through so many years of intense, rigorous schooling, which few people can pass the exams to get into or win over the competition for limited openings in med school, so we are expected to revere and trust those who made the grade.
I used to believe in modern medicine and wanted to be a health practitioner myself. Now I just want to avoid the whole scene and go live in the woods like Little Witch Hazel in the Phoebe Wahl book.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56200635-little-witch-hazel?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=tjHO4m850w&rank=1
I don't think this vaccine existed when my three were born:
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324136
Benefits of the hepatitis B vaccine The main benefit of the vaccine is its effectiveness. The AAP note that if doctors give the first dose of the hepatitis B …
It all looks awesome. This quiz: Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine?
Mythic Medicine on Instagram
Music by Mariee Sioux (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)
That quiz was hard!! How to choose between the Lion and the Bee as spirit animals; the five outfits at the vintage store (purple dress, white lace top, green and silver robe); which gemstone (gold is not even a stone!) - did you take the quiz? My plant is violet:
This must be your plant, @owasco!
So I took the quiz again, this time answering with the other choices (so hard to decide!), and got mugwort.
I didn't know this about violets. I like candied violets though...
Brilliant!
I'm sorry about your school. I do not understand why they knock them down.
It is hard to understand that life goes on in spite of us trying to hold it in a mental and physical space that no longer contains us. When it is time to move forward, life shakes and I join you in your shudder of discount, of expectation before the new that is not new but rather older. Life is a roulette...
Beautiful poem, my friend @owasco
And a beautiful comment! Thank you.
This is a beautiful piece and resonates in many ways.
Lately I go through memories like a big scrap book where I find myself thinking about the past and relating it to life today, for both the negative and positive, and thinking about what it means for the future.
It all gets a little fuzzy though when considering the world doesn't feel like the same place since smart tech emerged, and with the current state of things.
"how to live in the world as they would like it to be lived in"
I love that, just imagine if everyone lived that way :)
Thanks for the Dwellings :)
Thanks for getting my double entendre. And of course for appreciating my poem. I haven't been writing many of those, partly because they take so long and earn so darn little. However, this is the most any poem of mine ever made. I know I know, I can't expect poetry to make much, and I don't write it to earn, but a bit of moola doesn't hurt!
As I get to slow down (life is not so crazy as it was with kids in those horrible places we call schools), there is more time for memories. I find many of them are not so good!
I always dreamt of moving on... still do, but after a childhood and youth of going here and there I have stayed the same place for a long, long time... and the reason was children, who need to teach themselves... but I am, to my surprise, still asked for advice. Strange. Lovely poem.
I have no choice but to leave here. Until I had no choice, I thought I had no options. But the options of where to go were many, so many it was difficult to choose one. But choose one I did, and it turned out to be my hometown of long long ago, a place I swore I would never go back to. And I am very excited about living there again.
I stayed here, even though I did not like it, so that my children could have stability, so I understand that choice. Schooling and medical "care" derailed us for years though.
Thank you for your comment!
"Hometown of long long ago" - That is a title for a short story! I hope it will be all new and interesting for you.
Tell me the tales that to me were so dear
Long, long ago, long, long ago
Sing me the songs I delighted to hear
Long, long ago, long ago
Now you are come all my grief is removed
Let me forget for how long you have roved
Let me believe that you love as you loved
Long, long ago, long ago
Do you remember the path where we met
Long, long ago, long, long ago
Ah yes, you told me you ne'er forget
Long, long ago, long ago
Then, to all others, my smile you preferred
Love, when you spoke, gave a charm to each word
Still my heart treasures the praises I heard
Long, long ago, long ago
Thanks :)