'Somewhere' by Emma Blas

in the grip of our youth,
we rush through seasons,
scrabbling down paths
on the side of a mountain,
slipping on scree and scuffing up knees,
in our impatience,
to get to the top, or the bottom,
anywhere,
as long as it is s o m e w h e r e;
we leap autumn to spring,
voraciously gathering
a harvest of experiences in between;
until our patience starts to lengthen,
and our biggest desires
are to pause time;
when we come to the realisation
that life will always run at a gallop,
and the greatest gift
we can ever receive,
is when another takes a moment
to walk beside us,
standing shoulder-to-shoulder
under the hurrying clouds,
honouring our human seasons,
we bend the arc of time.

Do we have human seasons? Do they run in order, along with the seasons of the earth or do they have their own syncopated rhythm? Does it change with the passage of time? Do the names Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter fit those human seasons?

Her Heart Poetry  https://herheartpoetry.com  is a community platform seeking to support and inspire new and existing poets; their poetry challenges go from educating on poetic forms, introducing the community to celebrated poets and poetry to inspiring with word, visual and conceptual prompts.

The prompt, 'The Human Seasons' by John Keats, a British Romantic poet born in 1795, is more poignantly read, when we consider that he died at the age of 25. He left behind just fifty-four, published poems, but is considered one of the world's greatest poets. He trained as a surgeon, to fulfil his ambition of "doing the world some good", yet it is his poetic legacy that has inspired the world, beyond measure (how do you measure more than two centuries of students, readers, artists and poets who have been inspired by his poems?).

This poem is timeless in how it captures the human life, boiled down into four phases, to march with the four seasons of nature (that would be flipped for the southern hemisphere) and are echo'd in the four 'ashramas' of spiritual (yogic) life:
Brahmacharya (Student) 
Grihasta (Householder)
Vanaprasthya (Hermit)
Sannyasa (Renunciate)

As these four ashramas are not linear (we can renunciate at any age, return to be a student), I feel in this age, neither are the 'human season's. We can have our 'lusty spring' later in life, or feel drawn into a winter of 'pale misfeature' at any time or age; yet what continues to evolve and match the seasons of the northern hemisphere (where winter is a time of sinking into our own introspection) is our perception of time and the patience to be within its boundaries.

The constant within those four 'human seasons' are the people that accompany us on the journey, their value growing in our perception, as it slows to really see and appreciate that kinship as a filter for viewing and experiencing life.

​I'd love to hear your reflections on this interpretation and your own.

we have hands
and we were born pure
to this world, maiden;
but we are not handmaids,
vessels to be filled,
at another’s will;
it may be that we have the gift
to carry life into the world,
but the weight of a life can weigh heavy,
can force a back to break and crack;
we need both those hands
to grip, to fill and to empty
our own cup, before it cleaves in two;
if those hands are tied
behind our backs,
who will catch us
when pushed to fall?
we have seen how this world
likes to snatch and grab,
it doesn’t listen when out we call,
it has deafened even our sisters
to our cries,
and we fall, broken to the floor.
you cannot take our hands,
they are ours not yours,
it would be like cutting off your feet,
so you cannot walk behind us
late at night, or creep into our room,
so you cannot stand in front of us
grasping at our flesh
thinking you have a right to it,
because we are soft
and were born with a womb.
how would you like it
​if you were made to always crawl?
by emma blas

Last week in Alabama, USA, a law was passed making the providing of an abortion a felony, punishable by prison. 25 white men voted in the law. This poem is not about abortion. It is about a white male majority making decisions about that affect all women.

​“Though women make up 51% of Alabama's population, its lawmakers are 85% male. There are only four women in the 35-seat Alabama Senate, and they are all Democrats.” (bbc news)