Wilderness – Gifts from the Trail

For Siblings Day

A gold coin slipped to each of us ©Stella Body, 2021 Those for whom light is blood … -quote from Tim Bowling Today, as I step into the morning kitchen, my arms leave me to lift and stretch outward – my own body surprising, involuntary, sibling-stemmed as a young plant. Single andContinue reading “For Siblings Day”

Element of Still

Element of Still ©Stella Body 2020 African Journal: All afternoon, a small green frog sits near me at the far southern edge of a diminishing ‘mkondo’ (Swahili word for creek). Today, the water flows so slowly, it has begun to go backwards. Still he doesn’t move. His skin is smooth, live green freckled with amber. Continue reading “Element of Still”

Element of Father

Element of Father ©Stella Body 2020 Climber of peaks, you I saw first on the steep East coast of Africa, hurling your slender dark, a javelin into the turbid waves, a chaos you craved. I was not yet three, but a faint motherly care-song pressed from my lips, a murmur for the rosebud tenderness of yourContinue reading “Element of Father”

Element of Wild

Element of Wild ©Stella Body The flash taught me to be calm, not to lose light in the sky, to search inside of myself for the galleries of earth… -Pablo Neruda In the summer night, I find you, perched in a branch above me. Your markings, the subdued gray and white of one who once decorated aContinue reading “Element of Wild”