the other shore

the other shore

there will be other shorelines

and you will reach them

and you will reach for them

and you will reach them

and you will reach for them

with your small hands

and you will reach them

with your big belly

and with your small hands

you will find your way

and with your big belly

you will breathe

and you will find your way

with all our open eyes

and you will breathe

on through

all our open eyes

you will reach for them

through through

to the other shore

In Black “new world” sacred song “the other shore” means heaven and a return to Africa at the same time. Reaching the other shore is a spiritual goal, it is a communal effort. We offer our breathing to the journey our ancestors must take across everything we can imagine into the unimaginable. The unimaginable past and the unimaginable future become the same place. In the time of this photograph, I was reaching for my mother. A few days before we had stood singing as my great grandmother Sarah surrendered back to earth, buried in the citrus grove on land she worked her entire adult life. We sang that our breathing might help her reach beyond before the sugar trade that brought her ancestors, triangulated to Jamaica from where I’m still researching to find in Africa and Scotland. That she might reach where she was going. The other shore.

But in the time of the looking, right now when I look at this picture, I feel the stretch, the contradiction. My spirit is reaching for my father, even as he holds me, grounds me in my reach. He is the one now who must reach beyond my grasp, but am I not the one who must hold on, not let him fall? I am still reaching. Do I believe that he can fly? What is the holding we learn to do across oceans and lifetimes? What is the letting go we can learn awash in grief and love? What do we let go of when we reach out with our hands? Here at the shoreline, the sound of arrival repeats and repeats and repeats and yet every impact shapes the shore, the water arrives at a different place, made different by the persistence of getting there. When I say grief comes in waves, it is not a metaphor. It will dress my face in salt wherever I am. The other shore is the beyond and it is where we were before and it where we are all going, as the song says, soon. Up yonder across the cosmic tides but also down into the deep letting go that could allow us, intergenerational us, to be reaching home and free across across which is right here. Where we are.

P.S. My every day writing practice shapes my days into vessels for generations of love. If you want support with your own daily creative practice, I’d love to be part of your journey. This is the Stardust and Salt Daily Creative Practice Intensive.