by Allison Prinsen
This writing was inspired by the poem Inside Out by Laura Grace Weldon, on a day where we gathered to write at Lise Bérubé’s home in the last weeks of her life.
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Inside Out
by Laura Grace Weldon
Only by snapping open scarlet runner bean pods
do we see they are lined with fuzz, shaped
to each vividly hued bean
like a viola case to its instrument.
Only by slicing open a trout
are its bones revealed, lined up like pews
facing the back of a moving church,
its scripture stories of what came before.
We see stars only in the darkness,
feed a flame only by burning,
fuel our bodies only with what lived.
You’d think we’d see a pattern,
yet are surprised when loss
tilts our world, lifestream
into waterfall. We’re told grief
ebbs, when all we want to do
is bring sorrow’s fullness
out in the sun’s cleansing light.
Lay it on the rocks.
Let it air.
I can feel the warm rocks under my body. Not all rocky beaches are comfortable to lie on but this beach is special. The rocks are small and flat and on the very best days they hold the sun's heat. I sat down, my legs stretched out, my back and head next, my arms on either side, feeling the rocks under me.
What would my sorrows look like if they were laid bare on these rocks? Would they be a scattering of different things, like the debris from a lost ship? I can imagine that scene, but when I get clear, I don't think that's quite right. My sorrows are more precious than haphazard wreckage that found its way to shore.
I need to find a rock to hold each one of my sorrows, each person I've lost, each loss I've held inside my body. I let my hands glide over the rocks, shifting them this way and that until I find just the right ones: the smooth flat black ones, the round white ones, and the green ones. The green ones are never smooth but their colour is enough.
For today, I would search until I found a piece of sea glass—one that was aqua blue, worn beautifully by the sea, one that could hold the cathedral of this room, one that could hold this circle, Lise.
I'd take each one and feel it in my palm, warming it again with my hands, remembering. Some may need extra tending; I'm so sorry that happened, I might have to say, letting my finger stroke its edge. Then I would gather them up and take them to a much bigger rock. Carefully lining them up in a row, offering them back to the sun to keep warm, letting them take their place in things, letting my sorrows meet yours.
Allison Prinsen first came to Callanish as a retreat participant in 2006 and now works as a Counsellor and Creative Arts Director at Callanish.