“River Broken Story” by Molly Scott
A river runs between
the ragged edges of my broken story
Its blessing is its silence
But when desire and longing rise up
in me like a high wind keening never ever
in my heart, and when
the ghosts of gone loves jangle
in the current like loosened stones,
I run distracted
on both sides of myself,
wild, tearing my hair, believing
everything and nothing, seeing
rift and not the river, until
the moon appears and wraps
its ancient arms around
me and my world
and then I see
and with the river,
sing.
____________________
Share your response to this work, in any form, here
Molly Scott’s Artist Statement: Throughout a colorful life ranging from theater, television, concert performance and recording, to mothering, social justice work, psychology, teaching and travel, I have drawn deepest meaning and creative juice as a writer from the inter-web of music, language and the natural world. I grew
up on a clear lake and the Deep Green of that under-water realm lies just beneath the skin of my present experience as an “older” woman. Along the way, I’ve garnered advance degrees, taught internationally, made recordings, formulated therapeutic voice work called Creative Resonance, published Up to the Windy Gate: Poems of Grief and Grace, and won the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry prize. I’m writing fulltime now, living with animals in a wooden house at the end of a dirt road, doing the best I can to respond to this cherished, terrifying, infinitely precious world with pen, voice, and tuned intention– every day.
