Untethered
You can now hug for a price
Only recently have I dared to step into the realm of poetry. First, quietly, listening to my dear friend Ghalia Naseer reciting the poems of her grandfather. Then, a bit louder by bringing poetry into my facilitation practice, opening workshops and gatherings with a poem from a collection of poems on the wonders of science and nature called The Universe in Verse, collected by Maria Popova.
And now, not louder, but with my own voice, I started writing poetry myself. It is absurd how much scarier it is than writing from within the cushy comfort of prose. But prose no longer covered the pathways I am exploring. Modernity seems to hold us hostage in reactions, reason, reductionism and solutionism. And the louder the cry for measurable, immediate solutions, the more I feel drawn to forms of expression that undercut logic.
“Poetry asks us to look beyond words.
Asks us to seek the kind of blur where clarity
is held in combining ideas.”
Nora Bateson,
Combining
Untethered
Untethered from location from land with people who belong to the beings the rivers the rhythms and the seasons of place Untethered from a place cared for by people who belong to each other shared breaths to the rhythm of the river to the humus our damp mossy friend Instead I feel at home in types of smells categories of places imagined landscapes and feelings forests feel like home mountains open their arms their icy lakes embrace me I feel at home in myself in my family And then? A wall An untethered nothingness Without community all that remains a lost sense of belonging My home has no home tethered backwards Topsy Turvy a family without community Hugs without arms holding on to warmth Trees without branches lost to photosynthesis Rivers without stones shaping her current
Forever grateful to belong and love forever confused to live without community
Accompanied by the persistent shadows of modernity’s communities The gym The bookclub The neighbourhood watch The hug community You can now hug for a price Communities Commodified Hugging Communities Commodified Belonging
Commodification Commodified Communities Communification Commodified Communities A word so powerful and yet We hollowed it cut the relations discarded the weight launched a membership charged a price called it community
Further filling our emptiness Now from within a false sense of belonging
Hesitation
Somehow, I felt no hesitation in sending prose into your inboxes, but now with poetry, there is a heavy resistance. I feel like I shouldn’t bother you with pieces that hold no clear insight, recommendation or learning.
If this is no more than a fear, and you would love to receive poems in your inbox, please let me know.