It’s Friday! We made it through another week…well, nearly. I like Fridays because they still feel like Fridays, and after Fridays are Saturdays and Saturdays mean we can sleep in!
This is day five of #morningcoffeesessions, and I’m happy to announce these brilliant sessions will continue into next week. If you’d like to join us, here’s the link:
Firefly Morning Coffee Sessions
Our prompt today was ‘Here I Am’…
Here is what came out…
Here I Am
Yesterday afternoon I planted an acorn in a field from my childhood.
Before it was an acorn it was an orb, a giant ball of worry and fear,
electric light too big to hold so I put it on my back. I was wearing
my favourite overalls. The worry and fear came out my pores like
sweat and the wind told me I had to let them go at the luscious
mouth of a collection of trees I am still getting to know –
banyan walnut oak chestnut cherry – grand bark-bodied sentients
called me into their cool embrace and held me in their perfect
shadows until the elk arrived. He was agile and patient. His hay-like
fur weighted with oil I could feel because I touched him and we
walked side by side with my hand on his muscled shoulder blade.
He said I had to hold my orb and he’d turn it into an acorn. I did
what he said. He did what he said. On the other side of the wizard-tree
forest the elk and I contemplated the field that used to live across the
street from my childhood home. I didn’t know it was firmly planted and
thriving in the farm of my memories. The elk’s nose was cold on my
cheek as he nudged me to go and plant the acorn. Just be you he said
with a gentle hip-hop lilt to his words.
I admit that I was afraid even though the acorn was holding my
worry and fear. Some of it was leaking out the little top hat.
I fell to my knees in the centre of the field and dug a hole
with my bare hands. The digging was easy. My fingers were
stronger than I remembered. I dropped the acorn in the hole
and covered it with dirt.I watched in awe as my hands curled
into fists and unleashed an Ali-esque flurry of punches on
the ground. After, I was spent so I lay back in the picky dry
grass and colourful weeds of my childhood emptiness and I
stared at the sky.
The sky looked the same.
Alive.
Open.
Confident in its skyness.
The sun’s rays are like light bands on the back of Pages as she sleeps.
This brings me joy. I want to feel joy.
But sometimes it’s hard.
I asked the Husband when all this will be over. The silence before he spoke said the truth.
And so…one day at a time. One poem at a time. One prayer at a time.
Push out love. Push out hope. Push out joy. Be kind. Be safe.
VANESSA SHIELDS, writer 