Tag Archives: digital art.

Sunday’s Week in ReVerse – 14 June 2020

How could I have known last autumn that today I would find myself cocooned in a sea of green having shed mountains of dusty dross along the journey. We hadn’t planned to move, to buy a little house on a hill in the foothills. To sell the city house that had grown too large. And yet it all happened as if preordained. We were well moved in and sold the old house days before the pandemic shut the world down. The timing of it all, breathtaking in precision, though I was not fully sure any of it would happen at the time.

For months now I have sheltered in place in this healing oasis far from the hustling bustle, visited occasionally by deer and squirrels, and roused each morning by the sun peering through the trees and bird song. Who knew I needed to be here in this place in this time? I was certainly clueless at the onset of this upheaval in my life. We hadn’t planned this; most certainly, we did not, and yet…

I am amazed each day by how right it feels, how perfect, how healing. How I love the silence. How my soul swells with each breath. I am learning to how let go and be. It’s a scary thing to consider at first, but little by little this latest of life’s adventures is teaching me to trust that no amount of planning can prepare me for this. Being is powerful and awesome and dare I say, peaceful, like the calm in the eye of a storm. We speak of the calm before a storm, but I am learning that there is also a deep calm that settles to one’s bones after a storm has passed. The questions that haunt me, why, where, when, or how melt away. That there are new lessons to be learned, my teachers singing from the starry canopy at night, from the shaded hollows amist the trees, from the earth rumbling gently beneath my feet. And I am grateful, oh so grateful be here and now.

Peaceful Sunday to you. Stay safe, be well, and always, all ways be kind not only to others but to yourself!


Sunday’s Week in ReVerse – 14 June 2020

I look in the mirror, on the edge
whistling empty in reverence
the breeze…a breath of peace
leaves dance on the breeze
the earth grows wild and free

~kat


A ReVerse poem (a practice I started many years ago) is a summary poem with a single line lifted from each entry of a collection of work over a particular timeframe and re-penned in chronological order as a new poem. Unlike a collaborative poem, the ReVerse features the words of one writer, providing a glimpse into their thoughts over time. I use it as a review of the previous week.


secret world

deep beneath the grass
and stone where it is
dark and moist, the earth
grows wild and free…root
tendrils murmur and insects
rustle in a secret world
beneath our feet

~kat


Magnetic Poetry – The Nature Kit


the calm after the storm

the calm after the storm

after the rain
earth shimmers green
leaves dance on the breeze
wisps of my hair toss a flutter
as I breathe in the calm

~kat


A Gogyohka for today. What a lovely day it is! Peace to you! ❤️


angel breath

we hardly noticed
when the angels came
but our hearts could tell
for there was magic in
the breeze…a breath of peace
lingering to remind us

~kat


Magnetic Poetry – the Poet’s Kit


i am them

i am them

my ancestors have muttered
through me, a mouth like fire
that says I am brave, that
only those who love the light
can comprehend, I am centuries
away from my people, their
history writes my solidarity
with them, I am a continent,
a country, a home, my body
whistling empty in reverence

~kat


A Blackout Poem inspired by the poem below, by by Assétou Xango

Many of my contemporaries,
role models,
But especially,
Ancestors
Have a name that brings the tongue to worship.
Names that feel like ritual in your mouth.
I don’t want a name said without pause,
muttered without intention.
I am through with names that leave me unmoved.
Names that leave the speaker’s mouth unscathed.
I want a name like fire,
like rebellion,
like my hand gripping massa’s whip—
I want a name from before the ships
A name Donald Trump might choke on.
I want a name that catches you in the throat
if you say it wrong
and if you’re afraid to say it wrong,
then I guess you should be.
I want a name only the brave can say
a name that only fits right in the mouth of those who love me right,
because only the brave
can love me right
Assétou Xango is the name you take when you are tired
of burying your jewels under thick layers of
soot
and self-doubt.
Assétou the light
Xango the pickaxe
so that people must mine your soul
just to get your attention.
If you have to ask why I changed my name,
it is already too far beyond your comprehension.
Call me callous,
but with a name like Xango
I cannot afford to tread lightly.
You go hard
or you go home
and I am centuries
and ships away
from any semblance
of a homeland.
I am a thief’s poor bookkeeping skills way from any source of ancestry.
I am blindly collecting the shattered pieces of a continent
much larger than my comprehension.
I hate explaining my name to people:
their eyes peering over my journal
looking for a history they can rewrite
Ask me what my name means
What the fuck does your name mean Linda?
Not every word needs an English equivalent in order to have significance.
I am done folding myself up to fit your stereotype.
Your black friend.
Your headline.
Your African Queen Meme.
Your hurt feelings.
Your desire to learn the rhetoric of solidarity
without the practice.
I do not have time to carry your allyship.
I am trying to build a continent,
A country,
A home.
My name is the only thing I have that is unassimilated
and I’m not even sure I can call it mine.
The body is a safeless place if you do not know its name.
Assétou is what it sounds like when you are trying to bend a syllable
into a home.
With shaky shudders
And wind whistling through your empty,
I feel empty.
There is no safety in a name.
No home in a body.
A name is honestly just a name
A name is honestly just a ritual
And it still sounds like reverence.

by Assétou Xango