LIQUIDITY

 

 

 

 

Beautiful Fall Day at Kirkridge, Bangor, PA

Forty-two

She was forty-two

Alison, whose words live on, in the poet’s voice

Who sits next to me in this circle

On this mountain.

He reads her poem

about letting go, loss, and choosing one’s favorite song wisely

In light of music being the last thing frequently our brains will remember.

The lesson learned is plant flowers in the Fall

Even if  you are certain you will not see them in the Spring.

 

Tonight

The moon will be circled in a ring

The luminaries and fire in the forest will burn

My sins and regrets to a shard

And ’No Time’ will be granted

To suspend us

Between the Here and Now, and the What is to Come.

 

There are rocks, trees, tears

earth, fire, ether, mist…

There is sky.

 

I don’t know if those past are under my feet

Or over my head

But I walk this maze with others lit only by the luminaries

Connected in spirit,

Baptized in our humanness

Praying that this is a true reality,

That I can weep and leave the past behind

Tears splashing the rocks, warmed by the fire of the soul.

 

I am inland from the Ocean

My life afloat a memory from the year

I am relishing the strong magnetism of the rock

Earthy, heavy moisture of the leaf-laden cloak of the ground

I am balancing that part of myself that was unleashed,

Untethered, literally floating on salt water in the tropics last season.

 

The storm is anticipated

Unsure and bipolar in her path,

Threatening the Coast, and building walls of water

Of heights humans can only equate to buildings or mountains.

 

She is forty-two

Her last name Christian

Like her relative Fletcher

Who sailed aboard the same ship

The Bounty.

What will happen of her soul?

This Christian who the sea wants

during this time of No Time,

When the veil is thin.

Her body recovered,

But her soul released.

Will she decide to exist on the sea’s unwavering consistency,

Or relinquish her spirit to the sky, or earth?

 

I will race the storm home,

Heading South,

Despite the fact that the Geese have turned

Their biannual migration

completely around,

back to the North

the poet beside me reports.

The forces it takes to change the cycle and path of Nature

Can be nothing shy of Immense

And I fear for the Coast’s safety, and for all in her path.

 

I string my words together

So small in the shadowy gauze.

I embrace my newly-minted writer friends

And I head the direction the Geese

Have convinced themselves not to fly.

 

Southbound and Lonely,

Racing the storm,

Finding the pocket of calm,

Ducking the cyclone

And exploiting the troph,

I make it home to a place

Which she has only kissed,

The storm that is predicted to pummel

My native coast, and flood the tributaries

To leave my chosen sister without power

And blow the trees down.

 

This weekend is a testament to Faith

This No Time is a testament to Love.

These hours and this energy, a ceremony of Trust.

This time an investment in renewal

and recognition of Strength, Will, and Providence.

 

Power of Circles,

Vibration of Rock, inheritance of Stone

The bending of the elm

The permanence of the mountain

The life here on Earth

The space between I and You,

The sanctity of the here after, the ever after, the never after.

The soul’s release to the mist

The watery graveyard.

 

There is connection to it all,

To God

To the cherub faces of my brother and sisters of the Alphabet,

To the words ringing through this mountain side,

To the leaves falling through the forest

Ushering in the beginning of a long sleep.

 

I feel the timber of the storm,

Her signature is apparent in the ring around the moon,

In the muffled voices of the preparation

To leave.

In the Exodus of return,

And the respect of the raging winds offshore,

In the water built in walls of potential destruction

And those struggling to survive as the Bounty goes down.

The signs, the subtle clues

Pointing to survival, and potential loss of Today, and Tomorrow.

The friction between here and there,

Between once was and now is.

I am alive in the-in-between,

On this side of the veil

Of my forty-second year.

  

Gretchen LH Witzgall

November 2012, Kirkridge – Bangor, PA

 

 

A Lonely Valentine

Valentine’s Eve 2009

 

Death is in this room with us,

Your Death and my breaking heart.

 

Between the two of you

there is a count of eight legs,

Closer to the Earth than I,

Instinct over Need.

 

I already feel the emptiness,

yet you are both still here,

my old friends.

 

You know my soul like no human,

You have made it what it is,

You have grown me up

and taught me Love,

Compassion,

Adaptibility.

 

In your Ancient Knowledge

You have accepted me though mere mortal.

 

My empathy is great for any human

that has never loved an animal.

The warm fur, the wild sinew, the most

uncomplicated, strong love…

To have missed this

would have forfeited a great experience.

 

I have a friend who says

the animals are our guides…

That when we have reached our next soul level

they leave this Earth and go…

Knowing that their work is done.

 

This thought does not leave me much incentive

in my evolution.

Their souls so intertwined in my heart,

their innocence,

their acceptance, 

They are both leaving me…

 

One

The tumor, hot and angry

pushing the scapula up…

Reminding me to file these moments

in my memory,

the warm, the purr, the sweet flick of the tail…

 

The other

losing the legs,

sloping down,

majesty faltering,

neurology spinning…

 

The days following their departure

will be filled with a loneliness,

with its own trademark emptiness.

No human, great or small,

will fill.

 

I will feel broken for awhile,

until that landmark in my heart

is surveyed….

Clearly delineated and marked.

 

Where the memory of felt-feeling ears,

cold noses, whiskers, and fur is carefully

tucked away, but immediate,

Where love lies….

 

Gretchen L.H. Witzgall

 

 

‘Feathers’ St. Mary’s City – June 1st or 2nd, 2010 – looking over Church Point where I met Chris in January 1989