what moves me to fight
giving thanks for my friends, the dragonflies, and those who are much wiser than I
I am currently at a writers residency in the Adirondacks working on a number of pieces that have been living in me for some time now. I am grateful to have such a serene space devoted to freeing these thoughts from the corners of my mind.
This morning, as I sat typing at the desk that overlooks the grass field and the wind roused lake, I found myself reflecting on a conversation I had with someone I love very deeply around our woes, grief, change, and movement. Deep in thought, I watched hoards of dragonflies dance on the wind and fill their bellies with the biting flies that have been abundant on the land since my arrival.
The following is poem I wrote about all of that and more:
What moves me to fight
What moves me to fight is what moves me to hope.
They are the threads of my soul, fractured at birth but rendered whole as I walk the rolling hills and grassy plains;
collecting, in the brush, the ones that I was always made to love.
They are the winds that endlessly turn and the tides that change
whose forces dizzy the appetent biting insects and bring in droves of dragonflies.
Floating on the breeze, they feast and carry on their backs the joy of the afternoon air and the respite of a crystalline lake.
I am moved by the pact that we made in spite of the reluctance of our egos;
Signed with the salts of our tears and the bloodshed of battle.
We committed to build and break and mend and try and hurt and love and try again
For the sake of you and me and us and them.
I mobilize because those before me did and still do
I show up armored by a covenant that supersedes the times.
We move to light our way and to save them from the darkness of their own creation.