Birch Island Books

But she was a Great Lady,
behind thick veils of deep grey cloud silk

Yet I knew where the Great Lady was
by the lightness which could not be stopped.

Sweet Lady,
let wisdom flow like water
through your willing servant
and be manifest in right action and right stillness.

Still-dark early
with a bit of moon-glow, but only a light touch.

I look around and see worry and striving or
lonely depression or
pandemic,

But for some reason they are not mine.
I am in the right place.
I am in the right work.
I am loving the right people.

I am making progress on cleaning the attic, which is absolutely proof of miracles. Sit with me and I’ll tell you about the correlation between how my house looks and how my mental health is going.

We cleared out a box labeled 1993 this weekend, that’s how long and how deep has been this struggle.

And it’s early yet.

As though it were this approaching night.

In an impossible month,
in the aftermath of an impossible year.

Twenty twenty-one, you have inherited a mess.

I’m hopeful for tomorrow
and frightened,
and I wish for everyone a sudden and compulsive love of knitting
and kindness.

Moon grows.
May peace do so as well.

Sgiob is singing a little song to herself,
something to do with chasing the bouncy ball
and having a cool stone lintel to lie on when she gets too warm.

The sound is close to a purr,
tonal
and it is both comforting and nostalgic.

Something about “this lovely life,
yet I have memories which are not mine
of great flocks and open places.”

It’s not as dark out there this evening as it was yesterday.
Earth rotates, revolves, moves on.

but there used to be a soul-eating demon out there, coming in through the windows,
slipping in as blackness right around the edges where the glass meets the frame,
eating me hollow so that nothing but a husk remained,
going through the motions.

I don’t know exactly when it left,

but out there it is only the Night, which is a good friend.

On the occasion of the expansion of our clan to new adventures and new locales.

May your dragons guard you, Daroc and Adrienne.

Diffuse, gentle.
The house is quiet,
lit only by the lights of the tree and the possibilies of a new year.

Dog between my feet.
That’s a pretty darned good thing.

Very, very early,
before I was fully awake
and the wonderful thing is that we found the soccer ball.

The soccer ball is full, full, full and frozen stiff this time of year,
so Max must catch it and roll it with his chest and tummy
and sometimes overruns it
and tumbles tail-over-snout
and then rolls in the snow
and we all laugh and laugh.

That puts the sparkly diamond on the day even before it has begun.

Challenged me to write all my gratitudes for the entire year 2020.

It went on for pages and pages.

In the midst of bad news nationally and globally, I am grateful for the time
the time,
the peace,
the slowing, slowing, slowing.

I look forward to this morning’s task,
this morning’s giggle,
this morning’s chuckle,

One kind of vacation has been one hundred sixty six and a half hours,
and that turns out to be plenty.

I get to see my writers again!
and I hope they are as glad to be mine as I am to be theirs.