October & November: Polaroids

Resisting Compassion Fatigue

“No more apologies for a bleeding heart when the opposite is no heart at all. Danger of losing our humanity must be met with more humanity."

 -Toni Morrison

A Note on Spring

Kambarang Season, Western Australia 

It’s my sixth spring here
but I’ve only ever seen two snakes, 
I tell my family back home. 
I still walk faster down by the river 
with the pram. 

The colours are still 
vivid before the summer heat 
parches and pales; 
before the desert mocks 
our striving 
from under hosepipe-watered grass blades.

She was here first. 
No one can hold her 
back forever. 

These are not the springtime colours 
I know well, but it is colour, 
symphony,
orchestra,
all of it,
all of us.

There are wars far from us
and wars within us 
and maybe survival for some
or for one 
is seeing one million 
colours resting   
in the kambarang sun. 

---

A Note for Myself [Compassion Fatigue] 

You are finite. You are here and not there. Your body trembles with limitations. Your minutes are punctuated by limited heartbeats. Your feet are bound by borders. Your brain can only process so much information. You can’t be everywhere, and you can’t care about everything.

Today, you may only have enough strength to lift your grocery bags in and out of your car. Today, you might need to let the laundry pile up. Today, reading the news can wait. Today, your planet might need to shrink down to the walls of your own home. Today, you might need to rest in the grace of others.

Today could be a good day to remember how enormous the world is and how small you are. Our heartbeats cannot be hoarded but we will only have around 100,000 today. So, make your sandwich. Sun your eyelids. Drink a chocolate milkshake. Stretch your toes. Sew some buttons on an old shirt. Smell an orange. Take a breath, and then take another one.

Today is a good day to pray for the people you can’t hold and the places you can’t reach. It’s a good day to remember that there are experts and agencies and local organisations serving around the world with resilience and dedication.

There isn’t a single way to be generous. There are many ways to care. You don’t have to understand it all. You don’t have to care about it all. You can still can do tiny things with enormous love.

Tomorrow, the sun will rise without your help. Tomorrow, your empathy will not run dry. Tomorrow, your feet may travel a little further. Tomorrow, you can learn. Tomorrow, there will be more time. You are a helper, and so you will find a way to help, but today it’s enough to just look into the eyes of the people that you know.

Maybe it’s a good day to remember that courage has many, many faces and yours is also one of them.

---

A Note For My Son

I stitched your name into
your daycare bag tonight
as your eyelids curved close
like two sliced moons,
two spoons half filled 
with milk, sweet 
skin, my kin, 
may peace be yours 
and theirs, and theirs 
as you sleep. 


Outside your door,
far from here but near 
bombs rattle homes 
into skeletons. 


I check on you 
more than I should, 
listening, stitching 
cotton words
because I can’t 
sew peace or 
a baby’s breath 
together. 


All I can do now 
is make something, 
anything,
to give you 
when you wake
and the moon disappears 
into dawn. 

---

Other things I’ve loved this month:

• This poem gave me the shivers (‘Gethsemane’ Mary Oliver) because it reminded me that our human forgetfulness and frailty is a part of a bigger story beyond ourselves.

• ‘Write What You Don’t Know’ a substack post by

  Lore Wilbert
  . Especially this: “Write your way into knowing something and then unknowing it and knowing something different.”

• Recommended by

  Annelise Jolley
  ,
  Kaitlyn Teer
  ‘s essay ‘Rewilding the Fairytale’ a captivating reflection on the stories that help us survive, “As a mother, I’m most interested in telling my children stories that will help them adapt and survive—through their relationships, their resourcefulness, their enchantments—on a damaged planet.”

  ---

  As always, I love hearing from you. Feel free to leave feedback, comments or reflections. Thank you for taking the time to read this little publication :)