#napowrimo2023 #day30 #clearlyIhaveloved

#napowrimo2023

#day30

#clearlyIhaveloved 

Clearly, I have loved,
before I knew the chough.
I learned love from the womb,
From time nestled under my mother’s breast,
From a long line of fierce matriarchs; grandmothers, aunts, friends of my mothers.
From indulgent grandfathers, sometimes absent father,

and a dad who taught me how to love beyond blood lines.
From my brother and a moped riding Santa.
From poets, and authors classical and modern and a book of words.
From lovers, who schooled that love could be disaster, perfection and something middling. 
From a child such a complete facsimile of myself and his father, 

combined to make a great kid and a fine young man.
From circle sisters who lift me with goose and angel wings, soft and downy.
From colleagues who have supped on mostly apples and raged at crags and cracks,

 while fighting to hold on.
From deities who showed me my own butt prints in the sand.
From nature who can pour balm on almost any ache.
All the times that I have faltered in loving myself this perfectly,
tenderly they have loved me harder to sing my soul back home. 
Clearly I have loved,
before I knew the chough