Hawthorns may be no protection

I have been thinking about quiet violences - to the environment, to women - the silences. That go unnoticed, or unspoken. That happen quietly - under bark and behind closed doors. That are carried in on crates, and through hushed words. The ones that go unregulated, and those that regulate us. That change a landscape and a life.

I walk in the bush, I gather hawthorns. These I stitch onto a used cotton sheet. I will stitch this panel onto an ash tree in my yard in a few weeks. It is in the spring that the ash borer begins its quiet work. It takes a year in a warm climate, two in colder ones, for an ash borer to kill a tree. Many, not all women, survive the violences. I don't know if any of the ash will survive.

In my traces you will find
silence, or bring your own to it.
In my tracks you will find the
language of my having been,
or you will not see at all.
In my marks there is the
record of my passage.
Unable to read my lines,
you cannot hear. Your
silence creates a country
for my language.

This is panel one of a larger installation project. My gratitude to Judy Martin for mentorship.