My Hands

 I looked at my hands today, really looked at them, 

remembering the grease burns from the Sunset Inn oil fryer 

when I ignored the stings and pushed through again and again and again

I looked at my hands and refelt stroking my children's so so soft hair when they fell asleep on my chest ; being sad and seeking comfort or when sick brushing damp hair from their fevereish foreheads. That ::smell:: that linked us before they were born in the world and I watched their impossibly tiny hands grasping my thumb. 

I looked at my hands and remembered how many people I grabbed onto not wanting to let them go until I had to. How many times I reached for my children in frustration and how I held my head in those hands and vowed to do better. 

I looked at my hands and felt how hard I dug those gardens, planted those trees, stuck them deep into the dirt ... 

I looked at my hands and put them up instinctively, defensively envisioning the past when I didn't want what was happening 

I look at my hands and I feel like creating

I look at my hands and I feel like singing

I look at my hands and I feel like crying, 

seeing my mother's hands after she died, laid folded on her stomach. Her hands in white gloves winning the sewing award, in mittens with her ice skates on posed in eternity, at the sink with a set grimace on her face at the frustration (I assumed) of raising five children in a military household,  reaching out to welcome everyone who came to her door, especially her grandchildren, and the forgetting of her precious beautiful hands in her last years, her nails chewed and dry... 

I look at my hands and open them. 

and then i cup my face in those hands and breathe <3 

Time Space Peace Not Necessarily in that Order

 Waking up in winter in the silent and slow motionless pace 

ignoring the busy, have to, shop shop shop, lights ablaze,  old songs attempting to fence in 

all the expectation of what is supposed to be encircled instead in the beauty of what it is

time.

to blow smoke like the dragon within

space.

to see the perpetual universe in all my relations

peace.

to hear the silent pitch swallowed by snowflake multitudes 

Living now in this woke-white-privledged-by-birth-on-stolen-lands-Polish-Scottish-French-goodness-knows-what-else body honouring the truth. ancestry. culture. a long nowness still being unearthed, living now in December 2025 is painful. exquisite. 

Feeling duality at every turn of the spiral  

The thing is ... we think we have time

 Seeing the white CR-V doesn’t punch my guts anymore 

Makes me sad momentarily and then I get on with all the other people whom I live in my life 

However long that life might be

I’m so blessed but feeling human ... I often take that for granted 

That the house won’t need repairing or wood need cutting or meals need making, that somehow I can reverse my ageing and go back to finish all the sewing, painting, writing, walking, hugging, phone calls 

But like rumi said (I think) “ the thing is we think we have time”

So here I am listening to the dog snore and writing it down 

Listening to the best of me spilling out My lovely human heart who so often doubts and wonders Full of curiousity and wanting to wander until I remember all of what waits in the action of doing the everyday. 

Lessons

 22June2025

white guys warring

fear rates soaring

to a place that invites Spirit to 

embrace or  to ignoring

all and diving into personal

hells to Death

to rebirth to

walking outside to

see lessons left by all Beings 

on a birdsong, in a breeze

Letters for my Mother Julianne Marie

 16975250/5865399928079152281 

Where my butterfly heart flutters, 

trying to fly back to the Meadow 

back to your wide open arms, your Love, your smell, 

Bread baking, cabbage rolls, birthday candles and endless cups of Tea with honey,

your Twinkling eyes in my minds eye,

remembering your words to your own mother 

"I want her back the way she was" 

stomping my childish almost-53-year old Feet

to command the Universe to do as I will

And hearing no answer, giving it over Again. and Again. and Again. 

and Again.

whatever it means Today, because yesterday is gone and only my memories remain

yours lost, wandering, down those pale green hallways 

Here I sit, trying to be all spiritual and such 

Looking for the little miracles today

Up late thinking of creation
something new to fill in the gaps of something dying
bit by bit
of my mother's face, dimming
with each video call

That only two weeks ago we shared the conspiracy
in laughing at the inside joke
loving each other simply by being

 

The Water Walker

From the Facebook Post of Grandmother Sharon Day:


For Josephine Mandamin on behalf of water walkers

Ogima Ogitchidagkwe
M’dewanikwe
Ogima Ogitchidagkwe
M’dewanikwe
The nibi found in you
A true warrior
Ingah izitchigay nibi ohnjay
I will do it for the water
Ogima Ogitchidagkwe
M’dewanikwe
You are my hero

Listen to the nibi
She speaks if we will only listen
Swirling round and round
Waves breaking onto shore
She speaks if we will only listen
As she’s moving on downstream
She sings to us in wintertime
ice breaks on the frozen stream
Listen to the nibi
She speaks if we will only listen

Ogima Ogitchidagkwe
M’dewanikwe
Ogima Ogitchidagkwe
M’dewanikwe
We’ve learned so much from you
Of love and fierce devotion too
giiBimosaayan nibi ohnjay
we walked for the water
Ogima Ogitchidagkwe
M’dewanikwe Bidasigaye
You are my hero

SDay 2/22/19