It is sometimes necessary to break language, to crack it open,
for it to reveal—or release—the meaning we are searching for.
Poetry and hybrid writing
from Morning the Church
Potowomut, Land of Fires—
I come to this place each dawn to awaken to my life,
to begin again the practice of being human.
The night is for atonement,
a silent process done by dreams,
the success of it measured by the weight of the heart at dawn.
at In Relation To The Sea – a multidisciplinary publishing platform founded in 2019:
from Looking for Antarctica
The night was still except for the call of a bird I didn’t recognize. The landscape was not empty though the outlines of distant islands and, closer, other human bundles in their various sleeping contortions, were not intrusive. Under the light of the moon my icy hillside campground was white and peaceful.
But the sky confused me. As close to black as blue can be, it was the deepest, most profound shade of beyond midnight, shot through with miniature silver bullets in arrangements I had not imagined. I thought the sky was upside down, or that I was upside down. I thought about this for a while—sitting upright in my bivy sack, my head covered with fresh snow and my throat whisky-warmed—and I wondered whether at 64 degrees south I was looking at familiar constellations that had been cleverly rotated, for my amusement or edification, or both.
at bradtguides.com/looking-for-antarctica
From Flora and Fauna of My Youth
Even the Ants
My father believed that everything had more than one purpose and more than one strength. Eggs – morning fresh eggs from his hens, whisked in hot milk with precious brandy – restored me to health after winter colds. Raw milk was for his calves and for my breakfast, for my brain. Cows in their birthing showed me that blood carries life as well as death. His own death taught me how to carry on – how to bear weight. Even the ants, he said, bear weight. And he pointed to an ant being gently towed home through the grass by the other ants – lying on its back, clutching to its belly a cache of food that was too great for one ant to bear.