Author: Alison McCants

Ore et labore

The sovereignty of rest in a hustle culture
The grace of saying no to what doesn’t align
A vesper whispered in the golden close of day
Ore et labore, and laborare est orare,
But so are the dreams and imagination
That conjures a different kind of world.

You used to kiss me until you could feel my heartbeat
Quickening its step like I quickened mine to reach you
On a random Tuesday evening,
I’d brought a jar of pasta sauce and some fresh asparagus
To cook you dinner at the end of a workday
And it felt like heaven.

There’s a divinity in the quotidian
To the untrained eye
The one that hasn’t been trained yet to see
Investment opportunities,
The one that sees dimples of cellulite on a thigh akin to lace
And marvels at every passing dog on the street.

To love you well I have to love the world
And to love the world is to remember I
Am of that world
And to love that too.

To embrace you, I embrace the dialectic:
Separate to be together.
Individually show up for the collective.
Freedom in our connections,
Liberation in our intersections.

We know how to walk

We humans know how to walk. 
Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, Armenian, Yazidi, Sudanese, Jew, Palestinian, Tutsi, enslaved African.
Walking allows a few to survive 
And so many to fall, innocent and unarmed, 
Into shallow graves. 
What instinct makes an infant 
Decide to pull itself upright 
And attempt to balance on tiny feet?
Is it simply aping the people around it, 
Or something deeper, more instinctive,
Like how we smile without ever having seen a smile before
Or know our mothers smell even before we know we are alive?
Who taught us, when the indefensible happens,
To walk through streets with placards and flags?
There is power in walking away
And even greater power in running towards
Each other, collective in our plight
And gathered in our love. 
Not a romantic notion or act of possession
But love as labour;
The blood, the pain, the tearing flesh and muscular divarication 
The severance of birth
To bring life into the world
The naked infant covered in blood and slime
Squelching as it lands on its mothers stomach,
Her sweat mingling with its vernix
As she sighs in relief, warming the defenceless new life with her body
Even as she continues to bleed,
Even as she finishes the labour of birth. 
It is time for us to birth a new world 
To midwife each other – 
The most active verb of verbs – 
Instead of walking away and hoping 
We are one of the few who survive. 

Noticing

A dead pigeon in the gutter with the trash
Rivers paved over, hidden and forgotten
And the earth unable to breathe.
Waterlogged earthworms trying to find their way back to the earth
But unsuccessful.
Puddles where the rain has fallen
And has no place to go.
Sometimes it is hard to be one who pays attention in this world.
It is hard to be so soft.

In the depth of night

I could not sleep,
For thoughts I can neither process nor ignore
Prick the tender bruise of my soul.
Dreams of trying my best
Like cloth stretched too thin over goose-pimpled skin;
The clutching hands pulling more and more
Over its trembling freezing body
Only making the cloth thinner
And less effective against the frigid air.
How to let go, do less,
When already it feels like you are never enough?
How, when in the depth of night,
Sleep disrupted by dreams,
You wonder if you do everything you can to be good
To make up for your inherent anger,
To give you license when the torrent inevitably bursts the banks.
When did you learn that anger
Is the only way to be heard when
No one is listening?
When did you learn that your anger
Made you flawed beyond forgiveness?
No wonder what you do is never enough.
No wonder you struggle to exhale.

Even now, you wonder if
Your goodness
Is really goodness
Or is it attempts to compensate
For your badness?
When will you know 
That you are Love?