Still Time #WritePhoto #Stillness

On October 10, 2019October 10, 2019 By Alethea KehasIn Reflections15 Comments

The chief looked to the horizon, forever surveying the movement of water. All life was cataloged in its molecules, and the chief never tired of reading its memories. There was a comfort to living in this slow time of stone where stasis reminded people who passed by that there is a lingering but also a letting go. The water, forever rocking against the hard stone, eroded centuries and not minutes.

The chief had seen it all. He had watched the reckless shatter against his chest. The mighty who would defeat fall back into the belly of the womb as though returning to the beloved without choice. And, he had seen love, oh yes, he had seen love.

Each morning he watched the sun make love to Earth, filling her with the seeds of its golden light. He watched the sky blush into crimson before it widened into the blue expanse of truth, spreading open without end. Birds, defying gravity as they lifted to the beyond and danced love across the horizon. And in the deep below, he felt it. Love, spreading through liquid memory in the song of the whales and dolphins echoing the heartbeat of the goddess as it stirred through strata and sank deep into his bones.

For Sue Vincent’s Weekly #WritePhoto prompt #stillness

Baba Ghanoush #poetry #foodpoetry

On August 25, 2019August 31, 2021 By Alethea KehasIn Poems2 Comments

Baba Ghanoush

I barely slept, although sleep gave me dreams as proof

before I crept downstairs and slipped

into the haze of slow time. Sometimes the body’s rush is ceased

by the unseen hand. Acceptance the only release. Late

yesterday, the deer returned in a pair to eat fallen apples

but the dog ran through my distraction of the cat

who watched without movement. Stilled in time

Before breakfast, I opened the door to pull weeds

thinking of how fast they grow and take over

space. When I ate late, the waffle was cold

and I left the table feeling undefined

noting the softened eggplants on the counter

One the color of the hidden eye

the other mottled by the crown. I brought the pair outside

turned the grill’s surface into a flame, and roasted

their skins black, peeling after the insides liquified

thinking of caterpillars and butterflies, I pulsed

their remains with tahini, smashed cloves of garlic,

the juice of half a lemon, and pink salt from a faraway sea

until the house smelled of baba ghanoush and my thoughts

turned once again to night and shade and whether you can have

too much darkness, and how the sun in excess

blinds the eyes to sight

Slow Time #merrymeetinglake #nhlakes #waterhealing

On August 2, 2019August 31, 2021 By Alethea KehasIn Reflections, Travel Adventures18 Comments

It’s been a week of slow time. Minutes unhurried as they spread languidly into hours that stretch the boundary of day into night. I find myself shedding worry easily. It falls like dead strands of hair ready to let go with the lightest tug. I do not miss its absence, but find myself welcoming the lift of its weight as it releases.

I needed this week beside the lake, where my eyes can travel the surface of water to meet the rise of Earth before it gives way to sky. Clouds pass by winged travelers. Sea gulls catching gold on their wings, even though the ocean is miles away. They too care not for time or place. Blue dragonflies skim the horizon in search of mosquitos. A cormorant puffs out its chest on the raft we have just anchored as though we have brought it just for him. Another displaced traveler. Or, maybe not. I allow myself to believe I belong somewhere else most days. My home an hour away, holding a calendar of scheduled dates I choose not to think about while I am here. Trading it for this slow time beside the water.

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Most days, I slip inside the fluid molecules to swim. The build of heat releases and the body cools as it finds the memory of origin. I realize how much I need its enfolding. When I return to land it is to feel the soft, sticky floor of pine needles beneath my bare feet. My soles will be blackened by the end of the week. Tattooed by the reminder of slow time that will inevitably speed up again.

This week I have found myself thinking, when thoughts slip through the moments, of how much we carry and do no need. How even when we are meant to be relaxing and letting go, we pull out the phone to snap and share. To preserve and even boast, as though we must believe that our time is better than someone else’s. Forgetting that the less we carry, the freer we are. Forgetting that when we let go of all these attachments, there is no separation.

When I open the artificial screen, I feel its drain. The body constricts. And, so I close it in favor of the easy breath outside doors and windows. Here, where light arrives from sources beyond our grasp, and I can soak in the vast expanse of being. Just being. Present sometimes with just the self, and sometimes with my beloveds and their companions. I find that it is not so challenging, here in this slow lake time, to be a parent to teenagers. To be wife. To be a woman in this stage of life called middle age. I find that it doesn’t matter what I do so much as how I present. That mostly, it’s this letting go. This slowing down, that matters most. This living in time and not through time.