September calls in all the year

Next week I turn 35. I am wondering where the years went. The last three and a half years seem to have been swallowed in grief. In 2003, I lost the child I was carrying. Yet in the act of giving life and carrying death, I was connected to something much older, much deeper than any 'reality'. Before I knew I was pregnant, I started to dream my child. Before I knew the child was going to die, I dreamt the goodbye. Before I got to name my child in life, I knew my child was named Rowan, the tree of night and secret wishes. The poem below is one I wrote in my daily journal, 2 weeks before I 'knew' I was pregnant. I have continued to write a poem a day since this time.

That loss, and the subsequent trauma of health difficulties, left me exhausted. I shouted at the moon for this loss and wished it were different. Now, as I surface from the grief and feel myself re-entering the world, I know that the loss has left me forever changed but also grown. To love fully means to accept that we, as human beings, also lose. We must always let go. I still wish for that child, and do not know if I will ever have another, but the gift of that loss is the treasure of love. September is here, and I turn another year. A hot wind blows across Cumbria, from a distant and unknown land. It feels strange but right and as the new moon enters, I sense a new journey unfolding.

Poem 1 (3rd May)

In the warm of our bed, I give birth to giant turtles,
carve myself a coracle in which to sit,
my desperate attempt at foiling them.

I could be your mother, I whispered, knowing I lied
yet, even this hardened shall, this sharp
beak and claw can give food.
My black tongue darts in and out,
delivering green mucus, food of the slime gods.

Eat, my children, eat to grow strong,
so that you can swim and become invisible,
so you can become sea-invisible

as the half-light of morning makes this invisible,
eliminated by the kiss of the moon and sun.

As day rises, I slip away into the water,
hiding what I have become.