Getting Here

 9th September 2020

Here is a revision of a piece from before. 

In this time of Pandemic, when all sense seems to be hidden where no one can find it, our lives have to go on in some sort of acceptable way. 

Keep safe friends and have no fear, things will be ok in the end.

How Did I Get Here

On my birthday that year, 

Not so long ago,

I  risked shattering my dream,

a dream I was frightened 

of seeing evaporate 

once the heat was turned up.

I took a chance.

With palms sweaty, heart pounding 

in my chest, I stop for a moment 

to breathe

Before

I plunge into the unknown,

my soul lay bare, exposed,

like the emperor who thinks he's

 clothed in Gold and fine linen. 

I had no idea if I could, 

Who was I to think I was able?

But was I, would it work?

No, I, me, a nobody, I had nothing,

nothing to say, surely. 

Yet, I was forgetting, 

forgetting the woman I was,

A lioness

With deep roots in the mountains

in the  valleys, in the bogs, 

Of the forty shades, 

With Storytellers for ancestors.

I should have known that I could

that I would,

And, oh so softly,  I did.

And here I am.

From Where

15th April 2018

Here are some ramblings in response to Origens , by Imelda Maguire:

From Where Do I Come

I come from the edge of the city,

that suburban, semi-detached, quiet place on the hill,

from a father who was orphaned before he could speak, 

who remembered the bomb shelters, the ration books.

From a father who was himself evacuated during the war.

I come from that "we worked hard to get here"  place.

My father proud to have had an education, 

proud to have become, "blue collar"

to have left the trowel behind.

I come from that stock of women

who made more of what they were given,

who rose  from the soil of their ancestors. 

From a mother who ran, ran barefoot 

from  want and hunger.

Who spent her life adding to her funds,

working hard for her money, saving her money,

afraid somehow, it might evaporate.

I come from that country of alone, 

where all physical needs were cared for 

but where, my heart was barren wasteland,

where the hope of my father hung round my neck

a noose strangling my own true longing. 

But

I come from a family of fighters 

Chains are loosened and the battle goes on