My saddest shard, my feather, my shell

Thanks Jayne Chloe, I think I'll always be searching, it isn't a bad thing after all these years, keeps me aiming for a better way... to express... to be in this world. Sometimes I think I find it here... it seems fleeting, that's life I suppose. It is sad, we all have our shards. Hope you're feeling better girl~ Anni ~~~ "Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond o

Thanks Anna, that means so much from you... You whose voice is eloquent in all the various manifestations of love. Mark died over 20 years ago, it never really goes away though, recently I think I can breathe through it easier, maybe because I have new love finally, that comes close to the integrity Mark had, & he also lost his love, but more recently. It felt good to write this finally, without it being like a cave in or a burden to anyone. Warmest wishes to you Anna~ Anni ~~~ "Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond o

Sweet Blanka, you are a cupped flower filled with necter, & we the bees who seek it, we drink at your lovely vessel & sigh with the smoothness of your ways. Thank you for all of this here, & I feel so humbled myself, as I often do at your writing (even just your comments). It is a huge compliment to me these things you have left for me... about being at home in my writing, if I am moved to that by another it is deep & good, & as for your sorrow, I am sorry to know this... but as I say above to Jayne... we all have our shards. You compliment looms enormously for me... it is how I feel about your writing & what I aspire to, I wish I could agree, I feel I am aproaching this, but not quite there in some ways, but thank you so much. & yes, I agree, in fact I think I wrote a poem on that very concept, how we could not be so deep & good & pure & wonderful without the space gauged from us by the awful grief of loss & pain... I forget which poem it was though, one about my otter I think, since he also lost his partner, much more recently, we meet in a far deeper my sacred place as a result. & thank you for seeing that beauty, you see it because it is part of you as well & I think you know it in your beautiful humble way, winged-wolf-loving woman. I wish you all good things~ Anni ~~~ "Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond o

Once again you have viewed me in places of quiet contemplation I suspect no one generally finds me, I do reside quite commonly in silences, I curl up into them at any opportunity, snug between the definitives, the weighty insights, the soft possibilities & the bright gifts of hope & acknowldgement. I have no doubt you love them too, these places of rest & inspiration, where shadows play differently, shifting from where we might have placed them before the words lit them from a subtle otherness. If my silent places are awkward, it is in the viewing, my self consciousness would only be present in the presence of other, since I am not used to being exposed in them... But I don't mind these days, to be exposed in awkward spaces or passionate ones, nor tender, nor fierce even... We are as we are, I do my best to create harmony, to have integrity... it is my "thing", sometimes that can be awkward too, I hope as the years go by I can shape more grace into my choices. I feel so honoured Brian, that you have taken my words & shaped them with your intellect/head/heart to this beautiful form. I see how this works & love it very much. I am hugely grateful since there is a lot to learn in here & I think this a wonderful exercise, for any of us... the subtle flavours we each might offer the other, the refinements (I do love the refinement in your poetry) that I see here, make a lot of sense. I will love this as a sibling of the original. I hope you will not be offended if I don't change the poem (right away at least)... 2 things... One is, I need to ponder these things, the shapes you have gently reworked are lovely & uniform... but the experience was not, it was organic & brutal, so the shape I delivered serves... Death can be like a birth in a way... some 20 years later the fruition of grief is finally leaving my gestating self... this really leads into the secong thing... As beautiful as your rework is (& it is beautiful), there are some essential sentiments that have been removed & altered in the process, such things as nobody can really know I suppose, perhaps the things that lie between the lines that I cupped together on purpose, that rest in the spaces, those silences. & some reside in the simplest of utterance, triggers, bonds between my ghosts & I. There is, as you know, such magic in words, they can smash us against a wall in one simple utterance, or draw us into a memory (or comfort, or lust, or fear) with a split second whisper... You have to know this you are masters of this, you & Olya. I wrote this with the skeleton of the real emotion & drive behind it, I had already stripped it back so it was barely a shadow of the real experience... That is reasonable & a good practice in poetry sometimes, I am not sure how much more of it I want to cull before it is merely a different story... This doesn't mean there is not a lot to learn from your wonderful efforts here. I hope that you know it was far from a wasted exercise. It means a great deal to me, perhaps because it is about my most sacred & vulnerable spaces I am more careful to honour it in a very personal way, but your suggestions are extremely worthy & I am of course humbled & honoured that you gift me that time & effort I know to be precious for several very valid reasons. At the risk of abhorent crudity I wonder should I explain, just in case it was too subtle, that this is the story of my lovers death, his plane crashed into the ocean & was never recovered. He was hired as a pilot that day to tow targets for navy shooting practice. Over 20 years later, I still find it hard to contemplate his last moments, this is the most relaxed I have been about it. I don't know how to thank you for your efforts here, these precious things sink to the heart, they are not showy jewels I might hold up so you can see their effect. I have to trust that you might know the depth of me, the fact that input from you is highly valued, & I drink it as the priceless ambrosia it is, assimilate it with as much reverence & attention I can, and honour it with my best internal ministries. ~ Anni ~~~ "Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond o

My lovely Richard, you bloom more warmly every comment I read from you... Thank you & I feel your hug & as I said to Jayne, I am probably more ok with it for writing this work than I was ... & it is many years on also. I was so blessed to have the company of Marks beautiful family who absorbed me & cocooned me during those early years (we are still very close), & I have been so lucky to have had him in my life at all, & the legacy was huge, I am who I am, the best of me, largely as a result of that loss I experienced... the world experienced... It was the worst experience & gifted me the very best outcomes in terms of who I chose to be in response. Can I just say that you do "hug" me (even if that is not your intent), I find hugs in many places (because I tend to crave them sometimes)... I find comfort often in your comments, in who you are here & in the fact that you write so wonderfully from the heart with your poetry. It is where I find my comfort... when I see other people doing life well, despite it's challenges. You are a really great advocate for such Richard, I think if I were you... as humble as you are... you should be far more proud of yourself. Thank you again xx~ Anni ~~~ "Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond o

Anna, that's beautiful, you warm me so much, always, I feel a great deal of affection for you, I love the depth you write from & so wish you all good things butterfly woman. xxWe dont believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveal

Dearest Arrow, I have missed you a great deal, it is such a wonderful thing to see you on a page of my writing. I wondered how this would be for you. Hoped it would be ok. Our stories are so different, there was no "dying" in my experience with Mark, he left in the morning suggesting I come flying with him, I was tempted, but had arranged to meet friends at Cape Shank a remote wild ocean beach here in Victoria, that afternoon Marks brother in law knocked at my door to tell me the news, it was sudden - I lost the desire to speak to most people, there seemed no point, little to say worthy of expressing (but of course I still did), had to force myself to speak... & eat, & sleep, & just about everything else for some time, it was a sudden thing, or I might have felt something of what you express I imagine. When his father died of a brain tumour & when my best friend was dying from breast cancer it was a little more like needing to express... but I did so through water again (we've discussed this after your beautiful story of the pool that moved me, & still does from memory, to the point of such stillness). Dying from disease or some slow process has a very different legacy to sudden death, accidents or suicide, but no one is ever really effected the same anyway as you well know. I am glad it gave you that voice though, I have loved your writing always, I suspect it might be hard to trust that of me since I am so effusive... it makes my gratitude & admiration no less valid, but that is, I suppose, in the eye of the beholder. But Arrow, it is the very ghosts I am drawn so strongly to that I saw so early in your work, that same sense of haunting hole in the heartness, I suspected long before you ever confessed, remeber I cinfessed mys suspician, or perhaps just confessed my own experience trying to be diplomatic, in a pm long ago. For me there is always more comfort in connecting with others who understand those hollows left by grief, it need not be a central theme in any conversation & may be a foolish element to hold as an icon, but it seems a slight comfort to me in a place I suspect there will always be some level of discomfort. Anni with respect & warmth x We dont believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveal