solitude

i had one of those deeply quiet days...touching on different places inside me...witnessing the ebb and flow of feelings...looking at the possibilities before me...walking the earth...drumming by the water...keeping to myself in contemplation...

i took some time in the wind and sun...sitting with the swan who lost its partner a year or so ago...it still keeps to itself at mt. hope...there at a small pond edged with weeping willow trees...canadian geese sometimes will visit and a few ducks as well...but mostly it is a swan of solitude now...and i stayed with it and we talked for a spell...then i drummed and it came closer...i drummed for the spoiled nest a couple of seasons ago...and for the loss of the other...i drummed for it and myself too...i am still trying to heal the overturned patch of my heart where nothing grows...i hope for a field of wildflowers there now...i hope to heal the hurt....to transform the loss and give myself peace...funny to mourn something none of us really possesses in the first place...maybe this is the thing which scares us and keeps us from loving relationships...maybe we think we can possess it and when it will not be contained and controlled it is then too frightening to remain in...i dont know...but the swan was helping me along as i drummed...

the swan reminded me of spring days when i was a teenager...days stretched out on the greening grass sipping sun tea....writing and drawing and imagining my life...

once i wrote out all the years i would live....94 years...this was how long my great-granny had lived...1972...1973...1974...on and on the page filled...and then beside the year i wrote where i would be or what i would accomplish...

i would travel and marry a woman and have children and build a house and publish a book and paint and home school my kids...we would all go to wonderful places...and in the far future i would hold my first grandbaby and take all my family someplace wonderful to celebrate my 90th year...the page was full of life...

so today i did the same...with the swan watching over me...i took out my journal and wrote out the years...travel...relationships....deaths...the birth of my niece and nephew...illness...different places i have lived...i did put myself out to 94 but i cant really imagine making it that far...i would be fine with being a healthy woman in her 70s when i pass...so i put a smiley face at 72...my moms age now...so i have roughly 20 more years of life in theory...

i looked at wasted years and broken years...i looked at happy years and years full to the brim with adventure or a job i loved or the newness of a relationship...i saw many years how i felt i was starting over...that this was it...i would put down roots and stay put...but then i would feel too limited or something would stir in me to see what was just out of sight...a month or two in ireland...a year in nova scotia...a summer in south america...a year on an island in maine...along the ohio river the year we had the hundred year flood...cross country trips...a motorcycle ride from west virginia to key west...sitting in greenwich village drinking jasmine tea while patty smith read poetry all glassy eyed and crazy...walking around castro in sanfran with a smiling woman who adored me...finding adventures there...but the family dreams fell apart again and again...yet all and all my life has been full and with many different twists and turns...not often boring...more happiness than sorrow when it is written out beside the years...

i did good in the world often...helped folks...i conquered fears and embraced challenges...i won many battles and lost a few as well...my heart would break and then repair...

so here i was with a piece of paper and a swan today...the years ahead written out...i know i could write in anything and make much of it happen if i want it bad enough...if i have the time...but it is funny...when i went to write anything down my heart wasnt in it...i would mark it out...

the swan sailed off across the pond...the wind picked up...the page flapped in the wind like a wing...i drew a big smiley face over all the coming years and closed my journal...i drummed softly and journeyed...

i was in the future...blowing out a single candle on a cupcake...i felt someone smiling at me...patting my shoulder...it was peaceful...i suppose this is all i needed to know because the journey then ended...and when i came out of it the swan had returned...her right wing flapping in the air like my journal page...i shapeshifted into a swan and stayed for awhile longer...

this was a good day...