I was born the same year as you, Jane Kenyon.
Do you remember 1947, how our parents birthed us,
with mounting hope tat we would be able to
heal our families, who were only feeling we
would spread joy and bounty everywhere.

What did you feel from the start, dear Jane?
I cried endlessly for my first year. Can you see me
holding in every inch of my childlike self, the grief that
resulted and blossomed from mental illness in my family.
My parents still reeling from experiences in
World War II where my father taught
men to fly airplanes and not return.

My mother, followed my dad, canning peaches and
comforting widows of soldiers who did not return.
Later, I felt intense grief from my grandson.
As I grew into a school girl, I felt sadness
emanating  from my sister. I could not make a single
one hold happiness in their hearts. 

And I inhaled deeply, the sorrow that flew forth from
their grief as the.palpable truth from within.
And what comes to me now about it is that the grief aligns
me with Mother Earth who brought this to me. It was the
spoils of war she insisted I express the grief. 

The ways Spirit came through my sister and grandson are
mysterious and painful.
And you, Jane, did you feel responsible for this agony?
You say you have felt longing for the presence of your kin.

Have you  felt the effect of the rage in your families?
You say it must have been felt the loneliness of alienation.
And you Jane, what drove you to write?

You say, I must have have felt torn apart by their
vulnerability to others. And as i grew to a young woman,
deep in my uterus as well as in my heart, I feel connected
to them through the mother line, through the father line. 

And you Jane, could your love and well wishes
even remotely cure them, cannot make them whole,
as much as you might wish?

You are right, I grieve over betrayals brought about
by their paranoia.
What made you mourn?

I mourned the sense of trust and innocence
I once attributed to them.
So Jane, is this grief the part of
Mother Earth we were born it carry?
Yes, alive or dead, we are in Her body wherever we go.
And we are tied as sisters. And the
cycles are ever spinning forth.

And I grieve the loss of my fantasy of effectiveness, of
being able to help, of making a difference.
And I shed this as I did my monthly
menstrual blood so many years ago.

Jane, where are you now, having passed over decades back,
dying of lymphoma? Oh dear one. I am close to the Mother.
She taught me to feel grief in response to to the loss of
her stunning world of sentient beings,
her ecosystems, and landscapes.

She taught me to hold in my heart what has left:
disappearing, and dying — and to comfort them all.