I missed the Dear Friday last week. There are not enough hours in the day. One child homeschooling, one virtual learning. Cooking and cleaning and laundry. Bugs to watch, sunsets to catch and every single spare moment stolen in paint.
Suitcases are out to head back to our island. I am pulled, once again, in two different directions. The ache for home has faded with time--at least for me--and I've settled very strongly into Kenya. But this expat life does not stand still and the packing must begin.
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Today's poem is by Joy Harjo, the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States.
Fire
a woman can’t survive
by her own breath
alone
she must know
the voices of mountains
she must recognize
the foreverness of blue sky
she must flow
with the elusive
bodies
of night wind woman
who will take her into
her own self
look at me
i am not a separate woman
i am a continuance
of blue sky
i am the throat
of the sandia mountains
a night wind woman
who burns
with every breath
she takes.