“Almost Awake” by Molly Scott
After all that
who is this?
Still on my feet after
the woven sea recedes
whispering how it almost
knocked me down, whispering
how it will be back
Barefooted at the brink,
Sand moves through my toes
grain by grain
Standing in place I turn to see
what’s gone and what is
newly given.
Now that the waves are quiet
I see the sea has pushed
the landscape of my skin
into these valleyed furrows,
rumpled over my bones
like the quilt
of an unquiet
sleeper
But here I am, almost awake!
A great love has washed over me,
over the scars, the salt of my
old sorrows
Light shines on the great land,
Light graces the long rolling water
And I am here
to love this world,
and what it brings
and what it takes away.
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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.
