Tag: Aging

le claire [street] in june

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Chicago, Gnosis, june, Narrative, Poem, poeme, poetry, summer, TreesLeave a comment

originally published june 17, 2016, revised june 11, 2023

* please visit the website/app Falling Fruit to add a fruiting tree that is located and accessible in the public way to the foraging database for others.

the author’s mulberry-stained fingers

A clear glimpse
A clear thought
on this clear June night

Of age,
and Alzheimer’s
the old-timer’s disease

A clear memory recorded and archived tonight
An acute awareness of myself
tonight, in time and place
a new track to play on loop for a listener in my future life

a husband, friend, or son
a caregiver, a kind one
a visitor, volunteer, or nurse,
a grandson, or maybe — no one

A reddish dog, eating mulberries
from the sidewalk in shadows
Mottled concrete in the dim light of a city street lamp
obscured by the canopy of that beautiful, June, fruit tree

Woody Guthrie, the mulberry forager

A woman, middle aged, seems so young, even a tad pretty, in her mind’s eye now
Stretching her still strong body upward for plump, dark berries
Reaching for branches trimmed too high by the urban foresters
or arborists or surgeons, I forget what they’re called

On her tippy toes
grabbing, pulling, picking
squeezing the dog’s leash between her thighs
don’t let him get loose in the dark, don’t let him get skunked in the dark

contorted mulberry tree at night
the same contorted mulberry in Sun’s light: wowowow

Some of the best ones are lost in the awkward tussle
before she can palm them, save them, taste them
She triggers a reverberative rain from boughs on high
That precise, delicate sweetness of the bounty in her mouth

The dog’s belly full of the ripe windfall
sustained by both gravity and this woman
His name was Woody, or Digby, I think
He used to climb into our sleep

Smashed and whole
The street, sidewalk and cars stained
by the impressive purple mess
the dark grass hiding perfect treasures for doves tomorrow morn

She and that dog,
They were urban foragers and gleaners in June.

All month long, her fingertips, feet and lips
tinted with their fuchsia dye, it didn’t even once occur to her to check his paws

A clear, recollection of acute melancholy:
this day — that day was also her son’s birthday //
The first birthday he ever spent away from home, away from her — in Nebraska, or was it Alaska?

That glorious tree, that good dog, that golden boy

an impressive purple mess-feast

2023 addendum:

Continue reading “le claire [street] in june” →

Cronehood: the imperative, work, province and privilege of becoming truth and living truthfully in the depths

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Aging, Alchemy, Archetype, Crone, Crone Consciousness, Cronehood, exposition, Feminine, Fruition, grandmother, maiden, Mother, Sacred Feminine, witch, witchery, women, WomenfolkLeave a comment 
Ageing is no accident. It is necessary to the human condition, intended by the soul. We become more characteristic of who we are simply by lasting into later years; the older we become, the more our true natures emerge. Thus the final years have a very important purpose:

the fulfilment and confirmation of one’s character.

- James Hillman
“Life is a farce if a person does not serve truth.”

- Hilma af Klint
“A crone is a woman who has found her voice. She knows that silence is consent. This is a quality that makes older women feared. It is not the innocent voice of a child who says, “the emperor has no clothes,” but the fierce truthfulness of the crone that is the voice of reality. Both the innocent child and the crone are seeing through the illusions, denials, or “spin” to the truth. But the crone knows about the deception and its consequences, and it angers her. Her fierceness springs from the heart, gives her courage, makes her a force to be reckoned with."

— Jean Shinoda Bolen
portrait of a crone
by a queen crone,
Lajuana Lampkins
"Women's most feared power over men is the power to say no. To refuse to take care of men. To refuse to service them sexually. To refuse to buy their products. To refuse to worship their God. To refuse to love them. Every therapist knows that sex can be forced, but no power in the world can force love from any woman who wishes to withhold it."

- Barbara Walker
“The Crone has been missing from our culture for so long that many women, particularly young girls, know nothing of her tutelage. Young girls in our society are not initiated by older women into womanhood with its accompanying dignity and power. 

Without the Crone, the task of belonging to oneself, of being a whole person, is virtually impossible.” 

- Marion Woodman
Continue reading “Cronehood: the imperative, work, province and privilege of becoming truth and living truthfully in the depths” →