The Broken Shell

 

Lately I haven't been writing much poetry or even prose.  I've been in one of my long transitions.  Like a butterfly in a cocoon, I don't even really know when I'll be ready to fly.

In the process of this deep, interior work, I came across an old journal from clay therapy with some other women in a group led by master potter Michelle Rhodes.

Each week, we would gather around the table in her country studio and try to construct something from within.  Here's a piece from April 2008.  It reminds me that process is everything.

I'm working with white river clay today, and it broke into pieces.  Dozens of shells and stones on the table.  My life in pieces.  Here's a broken shell.  The shell is me.  It has a story.

I used to be big, of course, not like you see me now.  I was big and strong, and I thought nothing would ever happen to me, nothing would ever hurt me, and I rolled along my way not worrying about the other smaller shells beneath me.

Then one day I fell and broke.  A part of me broke off – a big part – and I couldn’t believe it.  Nothing like that had ever happened before.  And I lost my confidence.  I was no longer able to protect myself and because of that, another, even bigger and more important part of me broke off.

Then I gave up.  I just wanted to die.  I rolled around and let the ocean carry me along its way.  I couldn’t die but I wanted to die.  Until one day, I realized I was still whole, and in a certain way, still beautiful.

I began to actually like my broken edges and the new lightness of my body without all the bigness of my former self – without even the beauty – and then slowly I began to soften.  And I rolled with the motion of the ocean – not giving in completely and not fighting, but just cooperating with it.

Merging with all the other shells rolling and tumbling into the perfection of healing.

Loving From a Distance So Close

I don’t want to stir the cauldron

Start those beads of joy

Bouncing off each other

Light, color, sound

It’s safer here inside

Where I can talk to you

Heart to heart

And share the never-ending

I don’t want to open the mailbox

And see my name in black ink

On an envelope from you

With some unfamiliar stamp

It’s better to talk to you soul to soul

All the things we really want to say

That don’t depend on gravity’s structures

Or involve people to be hurt

I know that psychic dialogue is suspect

That the test of truth is in the manifestation

I know it would be exciting to see you

But I don’t want to stir it up

I walk in the forest alone

The spirits talk to me

The fairies recognize me clearly

The old trees say ‘Welcome back’

To match my steps to yours would be strange

To feel the tentacles of your presence

Interact with the energy of the woods

Like them I would be subsumed

I’d rather have you with me in my mind

Be all at one with every stalk and branch

And know that on every parallel track

Our lives are intertwined

Before the Internet

Before the Internet there was a different
Kind of loneliness

Obsession was weightier
Not easy to slough off
Without endless distraction

Love felt like an enormous
Production complete with spirits
Arrayed in symphonic splendor

Never before discovered
Or enjoyed
Exactly so

There was a different kind of
Inner silence
In the seams between the sighs

More than just pauses between clicks
Or never-ending texts
The waiting moment

Touchable, reachable
Only by a cascade of experiences
Each to be absorbed

Going back in time to greet myself
I might be surprised
To feel that same ennui

That agony that used to fuel
My creativity
When having a muse

Was the difference between
Loneliness and being
Alone on a sea of joy.