Making the Move from Surviving to Thriving

Or, What Waits in the Dark Velvet Waters of the Soul

1

You yearn for those grassy clifftops you once walked—for wind
that lifts and tosses the hair as though to make you one
with the untamed landscape,
for the squelch of boot into rain- and sea-spattered soil,
dark earth beneath you,
for the waymarkers and footprints of those who had gone before
to guide you on those brief respites you took
from the life you were building, not knowing
you were using the bricks and mortar
of someone else's dreams

2

You find yourself on a moonless night, carried
thousands of nights and miles and small decisions
from home.
The flat of the land stretches before you;
the seas sit still and settled;
the air hangs heavy
at the end of the paved path that brought you to this edge.
You have been called here before, to this darkness, this night, this sea,
and, terrified, you have returned to the marked path,
only to arrive at this seemingly eternal darkness,
again.

3

A foxglove arrives in the garden of your dreams
like the ones that huddled in the one unruly corner
of your grandmother’s garden; a falcon appears, too,
like the one you once saw, risen
from her nest at Rubha Hunish*; and a fox,
like the bold one who trotted across the street
at daybreak near your mother’s house.
The Old Ones planted foxglove for protection; they found,
hidden in her leaves, a healing for the heart. They understood
that, beneath her wings, tucked below feather and bone, the falcon ferries
messages not just between the earth and the sky, but between
the body and the spirit, the now and the then, between all that has been and
all that might be. They knew the fox
as holder of secrets and mysteries, a sleekit** seer,
a shape-shifter who lives at the edges,
on her own terms, adamant
about nourishing herself.

4

Listen: under the wash of the waves
Of your fear and your ache, there is a whisper
That has been been there all this time, waiting for you—
Through the years when you forgot how to listen; waiting
while you charged on, waiting
while you followed the paths
others set; the whisper waits, yet, at the closed door.
Remember: that wild sea, whose spit you gathered on your skin—she sunk through your pores;
That sodden ground that your foot sunk into rose to meet you;
the ground and the sea, the foxglove and the falcon and the fox, and the ancients who made you— 
all still live within you, waiting
to guide the way.

In this time of my life, as I make my way through unfamiliar terrain, and in these times in the world, where politics and climate change have turned so much into unfamiliar terrain, there’s a part of me that wants to latch onto anything that smacks of stability (or familiarity). She’s the one who spots danger and life rafts, who claws her way to shore somehow, someway, no matter how fierce the storm. She’s the part that developed in relinquishment and fostering and a chaotic childhood. If she were a cat, she’d sense all the dogs and all the raptors (and all the cat haters) in a ten-mile radius; she’d know every hidey hole in town; she’d scrape out a meager nourishment through her ability to smell the remnants around the rims of every can of tuna ten streets over. She’s brave and clever. She’s about survival. And, though I am so very grateful for her, it is past time for her to rest, because she is only about survival. She is not going to render herself vulnerable, nor is she wise—the parts that move us beyond survival and into fulfillment and thriving. (She’s a reactor rather than a guide).

The poem above is an offering and an encouragement to sit with those waves of fear and ache and yearning, to thank the part that wants to react and pounce at every opportunity for stability and familiarity, no matter that it might thwart our chances at really living, and to allow inner wisdom the time and space to guide the way through the dark.

The reading below is in a similar vein. From When the Ocean Flies, it’s Eilidh’s offering and encouragement to the granddaughter she has never known to discover that “what waits in the dark velvet waters of the soul is much greater”.

If you’d like to hear more of When the Ocean Flies, please join me and two other Vine Leaves Press authors—Roz Morris and Howard Lovy—on Zoom on February 17 at 5pm EST, where we’ll be reading from our most recent publications. The event is free, and you can register here.

Other Substack posts with readings of Eilidh’s letters are here and here.

You can buy When the Ocean Flies (and read all of them) directly from the publisher here. It’s in stock at two of my favorite bookstores as well: ByWay Books in Brattleboro, VT, and M.Judson Booksellers in Greenville, SC.

And you can, as always, find out more about me here and contact me here.

*Rubha Hunish: (pronounced rooa hoonish)on the Trotternish Peninsula in the Isle of Skye, Scotland.

**Sleekit: Scots, meaning glossy, crafty, sly. (Often with a connotation of deceitfulness, which I think is misused in the case of the fox.)