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My mother's ivory comb — such things are rare — has yellow teeth which will not bend or break. They're widely-spaced, a kind of mini-rake to tame her heavy, bracken-coloured hair.
I've never seen red squirrels in the wild. My mother's coat, so soft, was made of them. The slippery satin lining soothed me then. I nestled in it often as a child.
I have a wooden tray among the things my aunt brought from Brazil. You can still see, set in a frame of coloured marquetry, the ghost of brilliant, iridescent wings.
Love needs some room to grow, a little distance to appreciate our separate selves. To fuse is to negate what makes us human. You will never know
all of me, though the years with all their shared exchange, link us together. An absence for a time will never wear the face of fear, and closeness need not tether
the soul's ability to flower in wholly unanticipated ways. For steadfast love has this intrinsic power to welcome changes as a sign of grace.
Spirit that raises the gale on the moor, what is your name?
that sifts drifted snow through the hinge of the door, what is your name?
that furls the white breakers over the shore, what is your name?
that flies overhead the red banners of war, what is your name?
that sighs in the forest as if to explore, what is your name?
that lights sudden flame that explodes with a roar, what is your name?
that pushes the clouds from behind and before, what is your name?
that breathes in the life of the heart, in its core, what is your name?
Sometimes a line vibrates like a plucked string. In this I hear the sighing of the seas, the pibroch's thin lament, the autumn wind among the trees, the yearning of the exiled for their home.
It isn't just the plight of refugees bereft their land, their longing to return that moves me. Deep within the human heart there lives the sorrow of a vanished past, imagined Edens lost.
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