Friends, how are your hearts?
Your minds?
Your bodies?
Do you feel like you’ve been carrying an awful lot for an awfully long time?
How do we hold it all?
How do we show up to this beautiful, bruised world in ways that make sure we can keep on showing up?
Im writing this at the weekend but as you receive this we will be experiencing the moment of magnitude of a full moon lunar eclipse.
This arrives with us a fortnight before the solar eclipse, and it really feels potent.
These two, at this time, and with all of of this.
Where do we put it all?
Last week I heard Mosab Abu Toha read this incomparable poem as we gathered to raise funds for the children of Gaza, and I’ve been unable to set down the feelings it brought up in me. I’ve found no way to release them, nowhere to leave them, no idea how to integrate them properly, either.
‘The moon overhead
is not the moon.’
What a line.
What an ending (which is really a way in).
What a poet.
To be in circle with him and so many other writers who want to use their voice to stand with the people of Palestine was a deeply humbling, truly transformative experience.
I am changed by it.
I wrote a poem to read that night called DURING GENOCIDE, THE WOMEN HOLD THINGS.
I found it unspeakably moving to read this that night, and the next day I cried my heart out just thinking about the power of poetry.
Of what it means to bear witness and to record it.
The day after that day was World Poetry Day, and I sat in my wee attic room room and recorded the poem I wrote for BEARING WITNESS.
It’s here , and the password is
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