The prompt for writing group this month was CHANGE. I approached it from a little different perspective. I walk up the well-worn wooden steps of the little store on the corner of 7th Avenue and Oxford that’s tacked onto the front of an equally small house. We call it Tom’s because that’s the name of
After a summer hiatus, our writing group gathered via Zoom yesterday to share what we’ve written to the prompt “a black and white photograph.” Here’s my piece. The 3 x 4-inch photograph is blurry, and the lighting isn’t good. In it, a couple stands in front of a porch covered with vines or garland in a
The first lesson presents when I am still wet and cold and crying after cold steel forceps pull me from the safe, warm sanctuary of her womb into a room where the air is heavy with sorrow. Suddenly, there is this light and it is loud and I am wiped and weighed and taken from
Mesmerized, I watch the snow blow across the surface of the frozen river. In the distance, a small animal runs across the ice toward the shore. A fox, maybe? Downriver a short distance, there's an office building on the opposite shore. I worked there a lifetime ago but it's owned by a different business now.
I hear horns honking in the distance when I’m tucking tiny seeds into the earth at my community garden plot. On the way home, we encounter an endless line of trucks and busses that have come from nearby communities to show support for the indigenous community and the local former Indian Residential School where the
Long before dawn I stand at the window in the den and look up at the moon. It seems especially bright and beautiful in the south west sky. My imagination flits about, and I think about the ancients and the superstition and stories they crafted around this light in the night. I expect that among these
I entered the new year wrung out. Empty. With little desire to tend to start-of-the-year things that ordered my days in the past. So I didn’t. in the morning I got dressed in my “daytime pajamas” and leaned in to the meditation of holding my pup in my arms and piecing a jigsaw puzzle. Hour
Night is heavy. Somehow my body knows it’s too early, in the same way it knows I’m not going to fall easily back to sleep. My mind meanders and, as much as I’d prefer not to think about that thing, it lingers there. A tear forms. I cover it in prayer and lift those others
With a soft blanket wrapped around my shoulders, I step barefoot out onto the deck where it’s wet, dark, and quiet. I need to connect with the Divine. I felt drawn from my bed where I lay sleepless and restless, trying to pray and not sure if the muddled thoughts in my mind were prayer
I’m drawn out to the deck by splendour in the morning sky. I lean against the railing, hands cupped around a warm cup of coffee, and worship as I look to the east. My whispered prayers mingle with the sounds of day beginning in the valley below. In the distance, from the valley, comes the
Gerry’s away and I’m awakened by Maya. I sleep through disturbances most of the time but when I’m alone, I wake quickly and easily at my pup’s restlessness. The body knows when it is the one on duty, like when my children were babies and their slightest stirring would bring me immediately to wakefulness. I