Month: June 2024

the reincarnation of sylvia plath

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Alchemy, barn swallows, flora, Gnostic, june, ki, kin, liminality, limineen, mystic, Persephone, plath, Poem, poeme, poet, poetry, Psychic, Rebirth, Reincarnation, Samsara, sylvia plath, witch, witchery, women, WomenfolkLeave a comment

this was the summer of
broken limbs on trees, animals — and men
this was the summer of
the fuck-it, no-good vegetable garden
this was the summer of
“not this year”, “but, maybe next,” — again
this was the summer of
the i-still-can’t-believe-she’s-dead birthday
this was the summer of
nesting swallows, wicked sparrows, and a fallen starling nestling, whom she fed, and kept in her pocket for future starlight
this was the summer of
hanging baskets heavy with rainbow gazanias and pots full of midnight black petunias — for balance — incessant dead-heading and concrete stains, a small price
this was the summer of
the blue serpent; of serpentine bracelets and of the serpent-printed dress — she to be photographed on this land with the flowers, the dog and the bird, like Frida
this was the summer of
first-realizing she may be the reincarnation of the spirit once-embodied in
Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath & her crystal gazing ball.
photo: Eric Stahlberg, 1954
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chosen by swallows, finally

On By ©️K.T. 2025In barn swallows, blue swallows, crone chronicles, Crone Consciousness, Cronehood, dirt road chronicles, earthlings, fauna, howard nemerov, joy, june, kin, kinship, nature, outer rural, photograph, photography, Poem, poetryLeave a comment

an ascetic’s petitionary prayer, answered

for six consecutive summers, i’ve observed barn swallows enter and inspect the barn — diving and swooping in and out, perching and chattering wholly unbothered by my presence — but not until this, my sixth summer, did they finally deem worthy and decide to make their nest on a joist in this old, ramshackle barn

to experience their nesting is such a tender mercy in the time of remote, yet constant virtual witness and heartrage of genocide, of global horrors and famine — and of the daily unnatural disasters and unrelenting evidence of abrupt, irreversible climate breakdown and biodiversity/ecosystems collapse.

barn swallow nest under construction,
june 9, 2024
Audobon’s Birds of America, Popular Edition,
1950, Macmillan,


*from the author’s collection of vintage books of North American birds, wildlife and insects

O swallows, swallows, poems are not The point. Finding again the world, That is the point, where loveliness Adorns intelligible things 
Because the mind’s eye lit the sun.

Howard Nemerov

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sonlight [june 2024]

On By ©️K.T. 2025In biographical, Family, june, Mother, Motherhood, myth, Poem, poet, poetry, son, SonlightLeave a comment

what radiance i’ve possessed in your eyes
has naturally dimmed after these 30 years;
and so has yours — in mine, these last five,
if i am being truthful,
which you know me to be,
guttingly

once the solar star, now, a mere lighthouse on the other’s shore,

do you still wonder what you are?

you,
my sonlight, are still golden, burning hot and bright,


but these blue lenses of ours,

and these blue talks of ours,


reveal
we are animal, elemental,

sometimes too human, and fragile.

only, you fail to acknowledge another possibility, another cosmic continuum.

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sonlight [june 2014]

On By ©️K.T. 2025In biographical, childhood, june, Motherhood, relationships, son, Sonlight, threshold, timeLeave a comment

you drove away, West,

from Chicago, annoyed, yet exhilarated
while i was full of held tears,
a mother, trying to mother a boy,
on his bold edge of two decades of life

2014 was a rough
half year to June

we lost our first person to fetanyl
but he would not be [y]our last

i witnessed your grandmother’s January bitter coldness for the second time
and i still have a lasting bone chill from it

by the time you drive across the Mississippi River,
you have forgiven me
but i, you — even before you drove out of our alley,
we keep forgiving one another, me and you.

a couple of weeks later,

i am with our first, sweet dog in our Sun-filled back yard, as he is given a gentle, good death / we have shared so many firsts, but this,

i/we do without you; 17 years — ours, for sixteen — this loyal and strong dog that you chose on Mother’s Day weekend on LaSalle Street

how can it ever be a home again without you, without him

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sonlight [june 2004]

On By ©️K.T. 2025In biographical, childhood, Mother, Motherhood, photograph, son, Sonlight, summer, time, true things, WyomingLeave a comment

the author and her son in the Great Room of
the Old Faithful Inn, Yellowstone National Park,
Wyoming, June 2004

a lucky reservation for one night of lodging and a late dinner — made by telephone months earlier, but just barely early enough,

choosing sweaters to wear to dinner as the June Sun
finally sets / you and i match in black cotton ramie, always and still, my favorite

hungrily watching the clock, in the Great Room, nestled in the same chair by the colossal fireplace

we’d been camping the previous night, in a thunderstorm and downpour at Bridge Bay,
where we awoke to a bison’s grunting, and their immense shadow upon our tent;
we shared our griddled french toast breakfast and percolated coffee with a couple in a VW camper, who were no doubt younger than you are today in June, 2024

with our “Wildlife of Yellowstone” booklet, we identify an osprey perched above our heads in a pine tree as we pack up our camp — a first, for each of us

mudpots, fumaroles, bison herds, bison “jams”, pelicans, waterfalls, canyons, elk, towering basalt columns, sulfur, a wild river, geysers, marmots, hot springs — and Morning Glory Pool.

so many firsts, for me and you.

your shining, smiling face[s]
around that table
by candlelight

what a gift, what a day, what a dream
to share this exquisite meal with you, two,
in such a truly wild place

is this real life?

the clink of silverware
voices and laughter centered — and from every direction,

imply, “yes”.

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sonlight [june 1994]

On By ©️K.T. 2025In PoemLeave a comment
originally written & published June 2024; revised June 2025

i am on my hands and knees
a belly full of baby,

and so happy,

in our backyard

in June

i am pushing the wrong variety of snapdragons into the soil of the new-to-me flowerbeds — in all my young, botanical ignorance,
on this 3rd day, your ‘due’ date,

they call on a landline
to say to me, “your dead, first father’s second wife is now also dead
… and there is a little money from his railroad retirement pension to be disbursed to you, his only child, a daughter”

the timing feels supernatural.

like a gift, from him — ten years, plus one day, after his death on June 2, 1984 — on your “due” date.

a gift.

we are living friday to friday after just barely mortgaging a little worker’s cottage on Grace Street in Six Corners-Portage Park, nine months ago.

on this 3rd day, your ‘due’ date,
in Streeterville, they say to me, “you’re not even effaced,
let alone opening: go home — but come back soon.”

ultimately, we, me and you, go back in exactly 13 days.
the timing is inconveniently perfect:

The World Cup, biblical Chicago heat and humidity, and the hypnotic O.J. Simpson circus
are not my and your fault;

your father and i bring you home on a sweltering Father’s Day.

you, are now, undeniably a Chicago summer baby and i, was always meant to be your Chicago summer mother.

//

i think about that word — “dilated” retroactively:
how my womb would open and become your light-filled
tunnel, one way — or another

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