New Moon Writing 5:  dutiful daughters, migrants, and merchants

The transition between summer and autumn is the most beautiful one. 

We see the sky, feel the air shift, notice the sounds.

We recognise it, yet it changes every year, as every atom of us responds to it differently. 

“Hello autumn, I’ve seen you before, perhaps you have something new to teach me”.

As always, the last days of summer are the most exquisite, poignant, and sacred.

Every afternoon of sunshine in September is treated so much more carefully than those we saw in May.  Every hour of evening light now, is respected so much more than the same hours in June. 

The season changes bring up memories, and for many, memories of home.

Like so many other dutiful daughters, I live in a different country to the one where I was born, and while I try and balance my daily life, with my visits, “back home”, I never seem to get it right.

Guilt and Shame come to visit, uninvited.  They settle in, unwelcomed.  They stay around, unwanted.

Like so many other dutiful daughters, who are migrants and merchants, I live and work in one place, and go back home, for short periods.  So many of us do this. 

This is the way it is.

And I wonder, but not for the first time, if I made the right choice, by moving away.

Then I remake the choice every morning, and hope it works out OK.  I ask the angels who walk amongst us, to help me out with the harder bits, and I take a deep breath, and repeat.

Little Summer

The funny thing was, the weather

was brilliant.  Fluffy clouds hung

from

a perfect blue sky, from childhood.

Let there be a little summer left,

I prayed, and wished, and hoped, and said.

One more knickerbockerglory with a long

handled spoon.

Sandy covered toes, laughter in a beer garden,

a night or two in a caravan

near the sea.

One more afternoon, when I won’t squint from the sunlight

or cover my eyes

with my hands, this time.

But look at it properly.

Straight on.