In the old town, it’s too busy to walk
and I have to concentrate to avoid tripping.
Shopping takes me an extra hour
and when I’m done, my back is tight.
by Rebecca L. Atherton
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Sometimes, spoken things have more potency than one desires;
said “spoken” things hurting, cutting, impaling,
creating wounds and drawing blood.
Sometimes was today,
and yesterday and the day before that,
and the wounds are still bleeding red.
Unresolved, open-ended,
party to a conversation part-done:
there is no moving on or away from.
by Rebecca L. Atherton
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The morning after the full moon
there are seagulls everywhere
and crickets cling to the breeze.
The trees are alive with feathered song,
and somewhere far away where I cannot see
a cuckoo speaks.
by Rebecca L. Atherton
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Something strange is happening. When I am quiet, I feel it: a slight discomfort in my solar plexus, a hollow dent in my heart; distant rumblings from a far off place: a place I once lived in, perhaps..? And it’s a gift – this strange something happening, this happening of something strange – requiring thought and introspection, time and space, permission, surrender, effort, work… I yawn: already I am tired. I also wonder… “will I pass; will I be good enough or brave or strong enough?” Expectation sends me inward – head over foot, arms tightly wrapped around. It’s like time has sped up or continued to move without me, creating worlds in my absence, deleting countries in my sleep, causing things that were small and insignificant to grow ripe carrying things that were old and no longer significant along with them in order for them too to be changed.
And now there is this new life growing inside of this old life, this already mostly grown life that to me has always remained the same, forcing me to accommodate shifts in accepting and seeing, trusting and believing, feeling and making, baking, creating… along with an awareness that in a not-so-very-far-off ‘away’, there will be this arrival of this presence that was not and now is, transforming everything that then happens in thousands of ways.
Spreading its essence like the roots of a tree; touching and growing into pieces of her and pieces of me, pieces of them and pieces of us… it will become interweaved, one of the same, and from that moment on there will be no separation – no it without her, her without it – and the person I knew and spent time with, still occasionally spend time with, will be indelibly tied and chained, never to be seen as an alone or an independent separate self again.
by Rebecca L. Atherton
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Below, a pair of fluorescent pants
lie discarded on the pavement –
swept by an errant breeze
that seeks to make an impact
on a city distracted by the heat.
by Rebecca L. Atherton
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In summer, the tax nomads come to town,
rich from their time at sea.
I watch as they fill my favourite places
swapping one form of confinement for another.
by Rebecca L. Atherton
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Gut raw.
Bleeding emotions.
Avoiding interaction, just in case.
Feeling the aftermath of a night spent
spinning and dancing,
twisting to avoid colliding
with unpleasant things
like heat and rage
and a body invested in self-destruction,
unpicking and undoing
everything
that time and love hath made.
by Rebecca L. Atherton
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The peace of an outdoor cafe
is like the medicine of a cool breeze to my mind,
blowing away monsters and cobwebs,
breathing life through month-shut windows,
opening closed wide.
Outstretched and uncurled,
my legs relax –
releasing my body,
leading my limbs…
away from the tight dark centre,
the labyrinth eye –
so that they might return to whence they came
way back in the beginning,
when day was day
and night was night.
by Rebecca L. Atherton
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Morning sunlight squeezing through shade.
A gentle breeze crisscrossing the table.
You and me sat ever so slightly apart
dissecting each other’s lives
over sleeping phones,
motionless keys
and the whisper of today’s paper.
by Rebecca L. Atherton
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Living in a house full of mirrors,
I am forced to confront myself
on a much deeper level,
and, while uncomfortable,
it is leading me to uncover new things.
by Rebecca L. Atherton
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Rebecca L. Atherton 