My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.

Someone once asked me to describe a place that would feel perfectly safe. The feeling of being held inside a fallen hollow tree next to a river on a summer day –warm, safe, almost asleep–instantly came to me.

This is the same feeling that comes with my oldest memory, of being born. Traveling in warmth down a kind of river, soft metal touching down and lifting off my head (they used forceps to pull me out). Light at the end. A feeling which couldn’t have been in words but which was entirely clear: Here we go again. A sense of inevitability, and acceptance of whatever would come.

To Be Held, by Linda Hogan

To be held
by the light
was what I wanted,
to be a tree drinking the rain,
no longer parched in this hot land.
To be roots in a tunnel growing
but also to be sheltering the inborn leaves
and the green slide of mineral
down the immense distances
into infinite comfort
and the land here, only clay,
still contains and consumes
the thirsty need
the way a tree always shelters the unborn life
waiting for the healing
after the storm
which has been our life.

For more information about Linda Hogan, please visit her website.

alisonmcghee.com
Words by Winter: my new podcast