This Mama Caravan began at hOMe in Vista, San Diego County, California, USA
Updated: Feb 14
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.