Present; Forward, in a Poem

Margot Heffernan, MLS, has an entry in the book Jesus the Imagination: A Journal of Spiritual Revolution: Christ-Orpheus (Volume Three 2019)

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

 
Words, I love them more as I get older. They, like ancestors, pull me; assembling, as visitation; gathering around midnight. And they, outfitted in the garb of ancient kin, are sitting; close.

Words are replica – re/formed from flesh and wounds. It’s what I’m learning, again, through creative writing.

And poetry is wanderlust, words, tilted toward beginning: My mother, she would know that too, if she were here. And I found her, again, in my hands – hands stained, and formed from the soil we walked on once. And she is here, in a poem, called “Osseous, Intact”. She, reclaimed now, not only in words, but in the breath and pause between them – the softness of memory conjoined to omission.

And our words, if we are lucky, will land in a place that they belong. I am so grateful that “Osseous, Intact”, my first creative piece to appear in publication, is here, in Jesus the Imagination: A Journal of Spiritual Revolution: Christ Orpheus, Volume 3.

You can learn more about this journal, and the Center for Sophiological Studies (the journal editor, Michael Martin, is the Director).