there are days

my beloved pounamu.

there are days when i feel bruised,
an injury i have forgotten leaves me wincing.

there are days when i am a tender shoot,
and the world feels frosty.

there are days when i require softness and quiet all around me,
the caress of a stone in my hand.

there are days when i need to be held by a yielding couch
swept away from the scratchyplace by words and silence

there are days when i want to go home

making a face

i made this on the beach in Greymouth

art is flowing through me like a river

i see images that capture my heart everywhere

most days i go out with paint on my arms and hands

i manipulate dishes and utensils into patterns

and the natural world fills me up

on this beach with wild wilfull sea

and rocks and stones, shaken from their underground wombs by earthquakes and landslides, smoothed by glaciers and rivers and finally the tumbling of the sea, felt like they greeted my hands,

driftwood, long ago living and breathing, adrift from its' anchored in the earth beginnings transformed into tree bones drying in the sun

i could feel some of them holding their breath waiting to be placed

others saying NO in a very definite fashion

and this wild woman appeared under my hands

and stared back at me

asking where she was in my heart...

do i know the answer?