Three stumps

When I first moved to Portland I lived in a large house in St. John's. That winter was mild and I was able to drag a rake and a shovel into the backyard to do what I called "the Lord's work."
So many years of old leaves and broken branches covered the yard, letting the earth rest. Keeping it tucked and nurtured until it could be played with and cultivated.
From the raking, shoveling, and uncovering of juicy black leaves I found a path made of stones. I uncovered secret places. The movement in the yard began to stir. Newer growth and seedlings emerged.
In a corner of the yard I designated a shrine to the three voices in our life: our childhood, our mother-self, and our elder. I circled three stumps around a larger stump where they could converge and talk. I placed stones on this table symbolic of nothing or this-that.
It wasn't meant to last, it was simply intended as an idea or a hypothetical place I could always go where the real work was being done. The Fates unraveling their spools. Subjects of great importance being negotiated and settled.
Later, I learned in a workshop about Goddess worship about the significance of the three phases of the moon and the three phases of our life.
The Maiden: when the moon is waxing. The Mother: when the moon is full. The Crone: when the moon wanes.
Each are loaded with meaning, characteristics that represent learning, mastery, and wisdom.
"Listen to your intuition," the psychic told me at the Farmer's Market in Eugene a few days ago.
"Your intuition is a wise woman who sits here," she said, pointing to a place above her breast.
She sits there, inside me. She lives in my work as an artist of course.
​But I like to imagine her as them, the three women, continuously in conference in a circle of three stumps.