Without Words

We walk without words through the near pasture

where Monarchs flit above flowers,

Larks build grass houses,

an old birch tree towers.

Your hard edge softens as you lift

a fallen bird’s nest, carry it tenderly, eyes brightening,

not thinking of your father dead three years

nor the rough road you have taken.

Beneath the bridge lured by trolls,

first one free to pretty young girls

devoured by monsters who are dealers.

Behind the weapon of anger you wield

against people you blame for their

imperfect love that cannot hear or heal you.

Crushed by unrelieved grief,

primal pain,

your cruel and constant companion.

Held in hospital where razor cuts mended,

a diagnosis rendered -

Major Depressive Disorder.

We come to the hilltop overlooking

the home of your ancestors

where girls left school younger than you

to care for siblings, fathers, households, husbands.

Where women’s work was never-ending,

the arc of life foretold, unbending;

where dreams were buried like still-born children

in family graveyards secretly tended.

Here on this ancient hill

their voices surround you,

speak without words the language

of bird song, birch limb, butterfly wing.

Call you by your true name:

Daughter of Star Dust,

Mycelium Sister,

One With All Being,

your life is full of possibility,

you are the flowering

of your grandmothers’

dreaming.

About the Author

Mycelia C. is a new writer who lives with her spouse, the artist Victoria Bennett Reed, at Merry Chase Farm in the Southern Hilltowns of Massachusetts. Mycelia is a cancer survivor, a distance dreamer and wild soul woman. This is her first poetry submission.