Invocation

Today is my 30th (!) birthday, and I wanted to share a piece of writing and some artwork.  I created the poem and imagery as part of a visual journaling workshop taught by wonderfully talented artist Constance Pierce, which I attended (and loved) back in June 2009.  
Although this poem was written long before I became pregnant -- almost 4 years earlier, to the month -- when I looked at it again the other day, it could not have felt more relevant given my impending shift into parenthood.  
The "assignment" at the time was to meditate on the journal we were about to forge out of paper and intuitive art, and to write something that would welcome the viewer to explore the results.  This was my offering, and it remains my offering to any who read it today and beyond:

Invocation

This page rested, blank, overnight.

I now see gathered around it the Me’s and Others who have been on journeys similar to the one I am about to take.

I see the Me who mourns, creating visual memorials to the lost.

I see the Me who stubbornly persists, deciding at three years old to make a bow with three loops.

I see the Me who reflects, journaling in fits and starts, but always pondering in the pauses between pages.

I see the Me who laughs, daring tears to accompany the intensity of the joy.

This page is also flanked by motherness.

My mother, and her two mothers—
closeness not restrained by “in-law.”

How will I sense the presence of
my other selves,
my mother selves?

I listen, and one word appears:  Acceptance.

Sometimes I misread “scared” as “sacred.”

Accept it all.

Sometimes I misread “worrier” as “warrior.”

Accept it all.

All that works for my good:
Turn this “scared worrier” into a “sacred warrior.”

© Leah F. Marcus 2009