Grief Ritual by Helen Moore

Grief Ritual

Nature Sanctuary, Findhorn Foundation, Scotland

Within the turfed snug of stone, a dozen women & a hushed expectancy
of midwives for all that longs to be birthed from within.  

Opening up to feel into the body, our grief takes different shapes & colours, like
the curved ribbons painted between the slates in the floor.

In this mandala of tears: fear, anger, emptiness, sorrow.  At times, howls fill the
space – we hear the unloved child; the broken heart; our ravaged world; the pain
incising an ancestral line.  

Like Water Lilies rising from the mud, these emotions float, bathing in
sun-warmed waters.  Here it’s safe to touch the dark riverbed – this ritual
​contains the currents, all that needs to flow.

On grief’s sacred ground, we stand together in our fullness.

​

Helen Moore is an award-winning British ecopoet and socially engaged artist based in Sydney. She has published three poetry collections, Hedge Fund, And Other Living Margins (Shearsman Books, 2012), ECOZOA (Permanent Publications, 2015), acclaimed as “a milestone in the journey of ecopoetics” and her recently released third, The Mother Country (Awen Publications 2019), exploring British colonial history in Scotland and Australia and themes of personal, social and ecological dispossession. www.helenmoorepoet.com        

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