Cunning, Baffling and Powerful

When I rolled over at 4AM

I couldn’t feel my heart clattering in my own chest

Like a chain slipping into spokes on first gear.

I didn’t hear my stomach acid gurgling as it slithered towards my throat,

To make room for the bag of rocks that impregnated my gut.

My mouth was not so dry that I dreamed of sinking

Into an Ocean of my own regrets.

My sweat didn’t retreat onto my bedsheets

As if to say, “It’s not me, it’s you”.

I woke before the sun and thought:

This must mean that I am in control.

So I decided to make a drink.

©2020 Megan Hambly, All Rights Reserved

She Is With Me

When the acoustic strum charges the air
Everyone raises their hands up high
But my trembling fists remain clenched at my sides.
I search the pews with wary eyes for confirmation
But I do not sense Her.

She was with me on the rarest scene
A blanket of white purity covered the Evergreens.
Crystalline flakes fluttered downwards delicately
Kissing the top of my nose with care.
It makes me remember a time filled with childlike fun
When my heart soared when sliding down an icy slope
while Mama held onto me.
It’s as if She dropped the snow to show
How Her love envelopes us all.

She was with me again at a troubled time
A hospital room, a mother leaving too soon.
My fragile heart tried frantically to pick up
its shattered pieces,
before the nurses gazed with pity.
My spirit left my body and watched from the distance
It was there that I noticed my entire family sat beside me
And She whispered that there is beauty even in despair.
I felt Her everyday then after
A woman’s touch for comfort and guidance.

“He’s a good, good Father” they sing in waves
But none of those red letters seem to tell of the way
That Her light shines through the amber leaves
Or how Her crows leave presents when they are pleased.

They call those Pagan that speak to Her
A ‘false God’, they say, worship of demons.
But I think I’ve already been to Hell
And I prefer Her company over those who can’t tell
The way She whispers on this Green Earth.
Or rages across the Waters.
Her grace enchants me under the full Moon
And I know that She is with me.

 

 

 ©2019 Megan Hambly ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Photo Credit: Pamela Matthews

The First City

Sometimes when the sun hits the skyscrapers in a certain hue of gold
My mind reminds me of a time when I lived in my first city.
I traveled the tracks left in dirt from mamas car
Stopping my bike at potholes, in wait for my own green light to say “go”
And the rain did not keep me from traveling uncharted streets
Even when the puddles shook so big the leaves stopped floating.

Into the woods I ventured when the pellets dropped down too fat
Blanketed by the courtesy of Sequoia trees.
The wind howled like flutes through swaying branches
And it was here among the ferns that I perfected my dance.

The long tree roots made staircases
To businesses made of hollowed trunks and stick piles.
The caterpillars were rounded up to learn like school children
While the busy sparrows flitted around like busy executives, hard at work
And newts lazed about on the wet ground, delighted with it all.
I will never leave home, I thought then
Sammie, my red retriever, was the perfect police officer to watch over us all.

At least until mama’s call for supper could be heard.
Witchery must have kept my clothing dry
As I sprinted back over the worn mud trail in my bare feet
Until I reached my bike in the clearing near grandfather’s automobile shop.

If I close my eyes, I can imagine that these grey bricks
Are actually columns of sappy cascara trees
Like the kind that lined the edge of the woods where I first laid roots
In that first city.

 

 

©2019 Megan Hambly All Rights Reserved

Where I Remain

When I drowned at the beach as a child, I tried to scream underwater.

Bubbles captured the sound and carried it away to the thin sheet of surface

Reaching for the reflection of my mother, beyond my grasp

And I think that I never left that sunken place…

 

The voices here are also dull and distant

Filtering through my mind like two televisions playing at once.

How do I smother the fire in my lungs

when it was made by water?

There is a medicine to ease my pain,

but they say it takes two months of trial and error to work.

Surely by then the current will carry my form away

Like another plastic bag caught in the flow.

 

The woman with ash cheeks drinks her Starbucks from the bin

She smiles to an unseen friend on a patch of grass while her toes appear to have grown like foxgloves through the top of her old leather boots.

And I think she is the definition of free.

But I cannot sleep on scratchy blankets from disciples under the littered passes

So I decide that I must stay here, in my sunken place.

My neck cracks in a contorted sigh at the memory of my eyes opening, the sun on Mama’s face

She said, “We thought we lost you!”

But doesn’t she know, that I never left that beach?

My scream is carried on a foamy bubble along waves of melancholy

Crossing the bar of my disease

Over the Ocean of blues and blacks, past the ship with sails twisted

To a place just out of reach of the Lighthouse’s illuminating kiss.

And it is there, I remain.

 

©2019 Megan Hambly All Rights Reserved