Sacredness of Tears

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love".

Washington Irving

 

Today's NaBlMoPo is to write about the last time I cried. The answer is that I don't remember. Not because it is a rare occurrence. I attach no judgment to crying or not crying. Like Joni Mitchell says in her song, "People's Parties" - "laughing and crying...it's the same release".

Wild Horses in The Rhondda

This is a poem I wrote for my father.



War Paint

I remember your stories told only to me

in the darkness we shared before sleep.
Of souls loving the untamed land,
of feather and bones, and paint made from the earth.

I dreamed then, of wild places, of horses

the colour of prairie rainbows,
a line of warrior joining earth with sky.

The circle of years brought us to barren land. 

We fought, rattling like empty pods,
war paint dripping in the blaze of an angry sun.

Returning home after your sudden death,

you had left one moccasin lying in the dark.
I wept then for the endings I would miss,
and those shared wild places of our separate hearts.

 

“The true democrat is he who with purely nonviolent means defends his liberty and, therefore, his country's and ultimately that of the whole of mankind.” Gandhi

For the past seven years I have spent three to four weeks during late July and early August in Manhattan. Originally it was to attend Actionweek, an annual ten-day Poetry Therapy and writing intensive, as part of my training to become a Poetry Therapist. Other writers and Poetry Therapists came from Canada, Mexico and Japan as well as from New York City and State and other parts of the USA. Over the years they have become close and dear friends. I keep their specifics in mind whenever anyone makes a sweeping generalisation about Americans, for what is meaningful and memorable is in the detail.

Tomorrow they will vote for their president. I have a good idea who they will all be voting for, however disappointed they might be about Barack Obama’s first term in office. I know, too, how excited they were when he was first elected. That resonates painfully - I remember my own profound relief and optimism on that night back in 1997 when New Labour won the general Election.

 I always laughed at my politically cynical mother who used to say that if they put a sheep up as the Labour candidate in the Rhondda then it would be elected. She wasn’t far wrong but she never stopped voting Labour.

 I was talking with a friend a few days ago about The Great Famine of Mao's China and the Arab Spring. She felt that having enough to eat under a tyrant was worth the relinquishing of personal freedom. I begged to differ.

So my thoughts about tomorrow’s election lead me to this - I must, a bit like my mother did,  keep faith with the democratic process and at the same time learn to stomach the inevitable disappointments. 

A Way Home Through the Woods

 I've been in the wrong place

long enough to know I'm in the right place now.
Eddi Reader

I was born and brought up in the Rhondda Valley. I went to Swansea University and then to the University of Wales, Cardiff for my PGCE. My first teaching post was in Hampshire and the last in West Yorkshire. For most of my adult life I lived in England. 

Cynefin is a Welsh word that cannot be simply translated. It has multiple meanings – the place of our belonging, of our roots, a place where people and nature are interconnected, the place where we were meant to be.

It took a mysterious viral illness that lasted for two years, to bring me home not just to Wales but to a part of Wales that my soul had always longed for – the mountains of North Wales. I came to live in the forest at Coed Hafod y Llyn. This forest marked the final stage in my recovery. Here I found the fulcrum – acknowledging that up and down, lost and found are all essentially places along the way.

Each year I spend a month in Manhattan and love the vibrancy of the city and the spaciousness of Central Park. Every summer I camp near The Lizard in Cornwall and feel pained when I leave the ocean and the stunningly beautiful coastal path. It is the lively connection with place that makes it worth living in.

Last week I took the opportunity to walk home through the forest from a different direction and on a newly designated path. I reconnected with the pure joy of having a forest to walk home through – right to my front door.