Like the ample body of a cackling woman

something is happening.

something pulled me onto my bike, sailing down and puffing uphill until i walked into a great garden and my breath stopped. i slipped into slight incoherence, lost in the purples, crimsons and oranges, the fragrances of the abundant pumpkins kale flowers i don’t know the name of, wandering between the beehives and spirals of beds tucked under heavy branches in wild celebration of spring.

not a tiny boxed-in patch of green like other urban gardens. An exuberant, luscious, chatterbox slope, like the ample body of a cackling woman who has cured well with the wine of time. its decades-old love story with the people is written all over it.

i tentatively wonder if i’ve been claimed again. since leaving the last piece of land that called me, fed me, sheltered me, invited me into its crevasses its dreamworld its pores, i’ve been bereft. suspended in the unknown while the current decides whether to eject me to another continent, or allows me to dig a little deeper my burrough by the breath of the ocean.

my heart has bled, that i no longer belonged to a piece of land. my mouth was peopled with words of longing for the days spent harvesting tomatoes and shovelling goat shit. the familiarity of the growing trees i helped put in the ground. a place where i had lived and learned some legends, that held droplets of my own blood in its folklore.

it feels like everything i do is simply making time until the invitation comes and i belong again.

ears pricked. patient as water.

#land #belonging #yearning #gardening #lovetheland #home #landasteacher