Love Notes Everywhere, for Sahale

Love Notes Everywhere, for Sahale

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One of our newest members, Yana Ludwig, has just moved to Wales to complete her Master's Degree in creative writing. During our Summer Gathering '25 Open Mic night she gifted us all with this wonderful poem about Sahale. Enjoy!

–Love Notes Everywhere, written and read by Yana Ludwig

For years, you have turned each other inside out

then backfilled the spaces.

The evidence is everywhere: the new well,

the larger than life carved heron, the Swamp.

There are walking paths, and sacred groves,

and stairs up the edge of a steep hill,

ending where you feed each other.

The buildings are the same mix

as the people who occupy them–

tired and damn near done

or freshly painted

or seeking renewal.

The yurt is worse for the wear and the treehouse

has been condemned by popular opinion

and good sense.

A dozen spaces have been

purposed and repurposed

with all the quirks that happen

when geological layers of love

are your maintenance crew.

There is so much water:

gurgling with joy,

flowing with rapids and ease,

standing and waiting like hope,

sunk into the earth under our feet

like hours of patience.

Water collecting in apples to be pressed

into the perfect cider of September.

Water running wild, water

standing where you want it

and standing where you don’t want it,

water from the sky and the neighboring hills,

wiping this space

and the spaces between you clean

over and over again.

There is the smell of pine and cedar,

of human sweat and deer musk.

There are tiny budding grapes,

growing in the sun

more robust than ever,

fruits of a thousand hands

and a dozen architects,

struggling to replace the two.

There are chipmunks now–

play mates never seen in the early days–

scurrying up into the eaves

where nobody wants them

but nobody wants the unkind

ejection it would take to get rid of them,

so they live with us in cautious trust

joining the human pack

who live together in cautious trust,

the most human activity,

and we re-learn play

by watching our furry sibs

chase each other through the trees.

This place is art–

painted canvases each with their own story,

resting garden beds waiting for the lovers

of Seed and Attention to lay down in them again,

the ephemeral beauty of spawning salmon,

perfectly folded towels like hospitality origami,

places with playful names

like Christopher Walkin and Taj Mahollis.

Jumbled aesthetics

turn this whole place into tapestry,

into evidence of so many humans

being

and working so hard

to be

better

humans

being.

There are whole lives shaped by decades.

There are weekend warriors who passed through once

and took river stones and altered knowing

away with them.

There are a thousand tethers to this place

spider silk thin, barely remembered by the ones who stayed,

and ferry boat thick ropes that bind

for better or worse, in sickness and in health,

thwarting death do us part by leaving finger traces

in inherited dishes, and homes, and ritual remembered.

It has been too much.

It has been just right.

It has been enough to love the land.

It will be enough to rest here together,

and surrender,

like fallen sticks in the walnut grove,

slow decomposition

feeding the next

regeneration.

It

will be

good

and

enough.