stand

stand

feet in the water

at the edge of the land

that made us

sand

takes our skin

like tithe to burnish

all the salt within

thin

brown stance

the sun

took her chance

to love us

Here we stand at the edge of the world. Daddy almost one foot out the sea. Daughter delighted by all the forms of sunlight. All the love that shines on her from all directions. Is she taking it for granted? Wasn’t it actually already granted, given, always hers? When did she learn that she had to earn the light and salt that keeps her here? Today would be my father’s 67th birthday. And sometimes I still blame myself. I didn’t keep him here. I wrote poems for him every day after his diagnosis. They must not have been worth their salt in time. The experts say this eclipse energy is an opportunity to go within. To rest our minds. All day yesterday I had a restless mind. Have you ever felt that? Desperate to avoid your grief through busyness but too clouded with grief to think or act clearly at all? That was me yesterday. Wishing there was something I could do and unequipped to actually do anything well. On The End of the World podcast Adrienne Maree Brown said that maybe spirit-centered world everything would shut down during eclipses. And I’m doing my best. Tomorrow is my birthday. So today I am going to the beach (not the beach in the picture) where I won’t have anything I need to work. Sometimes that’s the only way I can turn it off. Turns out I will be staying in the same place I stayed one birthday years about 10 years ago during my Saturn’s Return. I remember calling my dad and having a long conversation, drawing on his study of astrology. This is when he was still walking miles everyday. Was he walking while we were talking? He told me I was born during his Saturn Return. And just like that I turned his life around. And in his second Saturn’s Return he was satisfied with his life. He said he felt like he did it. He got us kids to a place where we sure of who we were, where we knew what we needed to do to live what he called “inspired and inspiring lives.” He felt like there wasn’t anything else he wanted to accomplish. I felt happy for him and sad at the same time. “What will keep him here?” I wondered silently. And I couldn’t hear it that day, but now I know the small achieving voice within whispered, “you will keep him here by always doing something impressive, you will offer relentless success that he won’t want to miss it. So he will stay.”

My achieving voice is eloquent and wrong. Persuasive and so very lost. She can’t help it. She’s capitalism’s daughter. She offers me what she has, but it’s a lie. And now it’s a lie I can’t ignore because all the evidence is right in front of me. It didn’t work. Work will not keep anyone from dying. Including me.

Tomorrow is my birthday and I am not capitalism’s daughter. I am Clyde’s daughter, the place where sea meets land. The place where salt meets sun. I am the burning fact that this moment was given, and not earned. I am evidence that love lives. I am reborn because love learns.

P.S. What is your child helping you learn ? Inner Child Summer School is in session! Sign up here.

P.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. Videos, poem prompts, meditations and more are here for you in the Stardust and Salt Daily Creative Practice Intensive.