Page 134 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue #3 - December 2015

What are our rites of resurgence? How do we become again people who know how to love this

earth and live by that love? There isn’t a formula, but there is a path. It begins with the land.

Kinship—that ‘connective material’ that joins all life—abides in the body, the spirit and the earth.

And even in a rootless time, we retain this alignment—for it comes through the heart.

I went to the urban woods again with a friend, wanting to show her this place. We took the trails.

We weren’t alone: others were there, men and women who also go to get away. Rounding a

bend, my friend and I came face to face suddenly with a doe. In the grey light of evening she

was almost invisible. She didn’t run. Nearby, we could see that she had a smaller companion.

The doe stood before us majestically, holding her ground and our gaze for a long moment. And

without thinking, we smiled and poured out our blessings and praise.

Sharon English has published two

collections of short stories,

Uncomfortably Numb and Zero Gravity.

Her new novel is called What Has Night

To Do With Sleep? She lives in Toronto,

where she teaches undergraduate

creative writing in the University of

Toronto’s Writing and Rhetoric Program.

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