This is not Augustine’s confessions. This is not an essay on what love should mean. This is a poetic evocation of recognizing the beauty of friendship, the beauty of companionship. The blessing of breaking bread together and sharing in conversation that is the heart of who and how we are. Who and how we are forever becoming. Even when the Muse abandons us.
My dear friend, Ann, and I shared a wonderful lunch, talking, tears, supreme laughter, exquisite food. During that conversation, it became clear to me that the poetry of life is love that is situated where kindness and kinship and commitment highlight our meaning, our meaning for being and doing, which is intimately linked, for many of us, with our pens to the page. Fingers to the keyboard. Twinned and intertwined with lushness of choice.
A choice to have boundaries, whereby though the heart and the flesh can feel moved by what may present itself to be love, stepping back and feeling with the intellect of the heart and the intellect of the mind what is not being said, what is not being expressed warrants keen attention. A life-changing recognition of the possibility to wash away miasma and mist and pretence. And to stare directly into the depth and clarity that is: Wisdom. She Who Is. Sophia Speaking.
After Ann and I celebrated our birthdays at that wonderful meal, breaking bread, and fasts, it struck me that the time had arrived for me to complete the book of poetry I had been working on for well over three years. I knew that I was stalling on that book because miasma and misted-seeing was clouding, was crowding what it was I did not truly want to see. In effect dictating a narrative which would not and could not align with my soul’s knowing.
As a wonderful Mentor said to me many, many years ago, “Margot There are only two themes about which we write: love and death.”
Upon returning home, I began to write and to write and to write and to finish that book. The title is: Hearts Hearing. In sharing abundant emails with the inspiring Poet George Elliott Clarke, I recognized that our Muse begets us in compelling and profound ways that demand our pens to move across blank pages. To listen carefully. To hear.
After the lunch of “confessions” with Ann, it became crystal clear that my Muse was a Shapeshifter of the sort that wished only to placate their wary and weary life. Each time I thought I heard correctly and clearly the voice of hope, of healing, and trust, what became clear was that this Muse was amusing themselves. Belittling poetry. Sacrificing kinship, an unknown to me until one spark of recognition, their need to remain in power over how and what my very pen was calling out of me.
I too, I came to understand, am a Shapeshifter. When I heard their laughter, disguised and delight, I shrunk. I skulked away. A victim of their need, want, and desire to keep in penning a particular poetic rhythm. In a moment I felt it justifiable to feast on their “betrayal.” To blame. To point. To permit my heart to harden. Never again to heal. For I was abandoned. And all but sham.
Because I could not feel into the truth of being “justified” for hardening my heart, for thinking that “healing” were impossible, as if there is only one meaning of that fascinating word, further because to name myself a “sham” due to the sense of abandonment I felt from that Muse, I understood that what had occurred was transformation. Expansive and expanded call from the liminal to explore even further even deeper. A new frontier inviting. Building the roads. Marking the paths as I walk them. Opportunity. Creativity’s call to surrender to the beauty of mystery. Mystery to which the pen of the poet surrenders.
The poems that I have selected from, Hearts Hearing, to share here are the pieces that warmed me. Pieces that, in a flash, warned me that to accept being un-manacled and liberated me from the Muse meant that I was adrift without agency. Without kinship with mystery and the liminal, was to deny myself the act of feasting on joy.
“Rupture not a transition,” a phrase from Prime Minister Mark Carney. The notion of “rupture not a transition” may at first hearing feel to be terrifying, frightening, at the very least unnerving. All true. However, it encompasses more truths. Akin to what occurs after a forest has been decimated by fire.
The Earth is re-embraced by new shoots. Sprouting upon the body of Gaia, green, tentative, and redolent of possibility speaks. The shape of branches remembered. Roots holding firmly. Dug deep and unshakeable sigh. Possibility inclines its ears. Hearing.
Hearts Hearing, grew from “confessions” at lunch share shared with Ann. A rich and beautiful exploration of love in all love’s forms. Fragility. Fire. Invitation to dive with glee into freedom. To be fired because creativity’s call is the Mother of all Muses and chooses to always gift us with Her Wisdom. And love.
Selections from Hearts Hearing
Carried Aloft
Amid variable temptation
Carried aloft
(Seagulls coasting in
Summer skies)
Bowed heads
Filled to
Overflowing
With faith,
Remember to
Forget hounding
Malignancy.
© Margot Van Sluytman
~~~
Curry
Thirst quenched
Via my pen’s persistent
Seeking. Quenched by
Rallying syllables.
Aligning gladness.
Flavouring my ideations
With random spices.
Pungent. Pungent.
Piercing my soul’s
Ever-seeking.
Sating my heart’s
Ever finding.
© Margot Van Sluytman
Discover more from Feminism and Religion
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Feminism and Religion 