This Mama Caravan began at hOMe in Vista, San Diego County, California, USA

I Hope You Understand

(or, Relationships Are Everything)

Blackened feet

Dirt laden from dancing underneath

An earthly, green and blue canopy

Where yellow and black gopher snakes slither under the warm, nearly summer sun and cackling coyotes run and howl on moonlit nites as we walk together.

In silence but mainly in commotion and action.

Your daughters, my son

Our children climb

and swing up, up, up

as you and I revel in our humanity's technological advances and reclaim our vibrant sisterhood.

Down, down, down our covered feet pad

To the good creek where tiny and quarter-sized frogs hop and croak punctuating these confounding times with the calming balm of their ancient song.

Outside this nurturing womb

Our earth quakes with fear

advancing diseases, invisible intruders, life's partner

Death.

And our nation burns

Systems fall, no fucks given

Enraged over hundreds and thousands of years of trauma

Colored bodies desecrated on the altar of white supremacy.

But here in your home

At this hearth

We stir an ancient elixir of breath in tune

With these beating hearts

We feel from the soles of our feet

To the scalp of our head

We sense what's coming as we pull in

Deeper, tears of grief soaking our faces

Peals of laughter ringing out across these foothills

arms of comfort wrapped tightly round each other.

We bless it all

Sacred and holy

Profound and profane.

Releasing the past we now gently walk forward

holding our own shadow's hand.

Noticing

when and how our fantasies lay

as we return to this present

to our ever-evolving sense of center.

And each day I awake to my beeloved, He who holds us from the other side.

Widow now to an almost six-year old, this is my riot. Marching in the streets replaced with the innocence of a childhood vigilantly protected.

This is my protest. I hope you understand. (A poem I wrote in gratitude after these weeks in May.)

3 weeks, to mark a soft, unofficial beginning of our Caravan back in May.

We dropped back into a family constellation that feels like home, where we could partially live out of their garage and use their home at our discretion.

Vista is also the town where I grew up. First through twelfth grade in the unified school district there where I would march through the downtown, city streets performing flips or while flipping flags in holiday parades.

Three girls, whom I once ferried home from school 3x/week when C was an infant, were out of school (due to Covid). So, our days were filled with daily, vibrant energy for baking, collecting tiny frogs and paddling in a kayak on the good creek, role playing in dress-up and so much more.

It was also here on May 2020, at the ranch home of one of my best friend's, where I first felt Burt in the wind and where I dropped into My Dance of Grief.