I awake to the word “layering” and think of compost made from gathering organic ingredients and layering them until they come together to make a nutrient-rich mulch for the garden.

We do the same when someone dies – come together – layer various people known in different ways – we layer and compost levels and layers of grief until one day there is a little more life and ability to raise our heads from the ground and look around.

Oh, what a beautiful world it is today.

I woke this morning thinking of Stanley Kunitz’s poem “The Layers”.  He was a gardener and a poet, and perhaps the two are twined.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

“Live in the layers,

not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

It’s the fourth day since my brother passed.  This morning the grief is different like I’ve been hit by a truck. If I were a car, I would be towed to the body shop and repaired.  I’m not a car. How will the pain of grief manifest today?

I’m reminded of these words by John Squadra from his poem “Circle of the Goddess” in the book This Ecstasy.

When you love,

you complete a circle.

When you die,

the circle remains.

The circle remains because my brother loved and it takes time for the surrounding sprouts to rise in this new exposure to sun.  When the Mother redwood tree dies, a circle forms around the space. It’s not immediate even though the roots are already twined. The rise take time.  

I open to the loving support I’m receiving and nest inside my own circle like a cat curled.

I’m a fan furled and unfurled wondering what reaches in to caress me now.

It’s evening.  It’s been a day of connection, love, and peace. I feel different, changed, as though massaged from above. My brother is here and I miss him, reach toward his light like the leaves of a Maple tree.