Today I walked an old familiar path through woods I have known since young childhood. Only this time I began where I usually end, and I ended where I usually begin. Everything looked different, altered on the flipside. I came upon unmarked trails leading into mystery–had they been here before? I had lapses of disorientation. Where was I? Do I know this grove of cedars? …this seasonal pond? this patch of horsetail? this steep incline? this creek? I turned in a circle. The path lay quietly behind me and before me. I felt, more than thought, I know this forest, this compacted earth beneath my feet, this April sunlight illuminating trillium and salmonberry blossoms. I know the unseen presences surrounding. I am known here. It occurred to me then, that perhaps I was undoing a spell cast through years of footfalls, or maybe I was weaving a new one–a spell of spring, one of transformation and renewal.
Tag: Anemone
Seven Prayers, #4
May I be fluid
as the creek
pouring down the hill
making music out of every obstacle.
Seven Prayers, #2
May we, you and I,
come into awareness
of our powers
of intellect,
our every thought
and imagining–
may we know them as gifts, sacred.
Dear Heart
Dear Heart,
(a letter to my heart and any other heart in need)
The absence of romantic, sexual, intimate love that you are currently experiencing is not a sign of your inadequacy, nor of your unworthiness. You are worthy of healthy, whole, reciprocal love. One day you may find it, or perhaps it will find you. Take a moment to remember you chose this path, and there is purpose in it. Solitude and loneliness are great teachers. Take a moment to acknowledge the abundance, the multitude of forms, of love in your life. Love is all around you just waiting for you to notice, to enjoy, and to pass on. Conjure all you have to give your phantom lovers–your fierce passion, your warmth, your softness, your playfulness, your strength, your pleasure, your touch, your humor, your fantasy, your special sauce, your everything–and let it rain down on your being in a quenching, nourishing, ecstatic flow. No one else owns your love. Though others may ignite and inspire your love, it is yours and it belongs only to you dear heart.
Parts of Her
Parts of her are held.
Parts of her are held together.
Parts of her are held together by stories.
Stories inhabit her cells
shape her thoughts
form her identity
radiate her heart
haunt her spirit.
She belongs to some,
and some belong to her.
Others have traveled from beyond.
All are interwoven,
all are calling,
all are longing,
some are begging–
to be recalled
to be told
to be heard
to be released.
If she tells,
who will listen?
If she tells,
who will believe?
If she tells,
who will keep her stories?
Will her telling be a mending?
An unraveling?
Or, will her telling be an unraveling and a mending?
She understands her questions are ancient–
that there is no knowing,
that there will be no reassurance.
The answers will come
when she begins–
and as with all beginnings,
her voice must rise from the dark silence of the unknown.
I Am
I am a child of heat and friction,
of love and lust,
of laughter and wisdom.
I am a child of golden summer sun,
of amber harvest moon,
birthed in mountain shadow,
in a land of dense coniferous forests and fertile foothills,
a land carved by snow melt and river flow,
a land where the wild meets cultivation.
My heart forged in molten lava,
simmering quiet and deep within Wy’east–
local legend of unrequited love–
I too burn hot and constant.
I too love long and fierce.
My spirit is kin to the fox.
I spend nights shape-shifting,
traveling keen and swift and silent.
Ancestry from the north, from the west–
a bloodline of labor through the seasons–
I call upon your guidance in my prayers.
I am a newborn,
I am time-worn.
I am learning–
how to tend and temper my fire,
to cleanse and free my waters,
to listen and to be of service,
how to reclaim and to be claimed,
how to love and to be loved,
how to create balance in the midst of chaos.
Desires
I want to feel the cool damp caress of night on my skin–
the density.
I want to feel the intimacy created in the absence of light–
the hush.
I want to breathe the darkness of earth–
the intoxication.
I want to drink the medicine of night–
the renewal.
I want to linger in tree-shadow with you,
then bathe our flesh in moonlight–
the fantasy.
I want to lay under the cosmic sea,
as you name the stars–
the communion.
I want to know we exist
outside of my dreams–
the fruition.
In the Eternity of Your Absence
In the eternity of your absence,
I encounter layers of myself.
My divinity, my demon.
My dreams, my desires.
My goddess, my god.
My nature, my essence.
My suffering, my pleasure.
My past, my present, my future.
I encounter the borders and boundaries of me and everything.
In the eternity of your absence,
I learn the contentment of solitude,
and where the edges blur into loneliness.
I hear and see with newfound clarity.
I feel the burning pulse of my longing.
In the eternity of your absence,
I learn that my body
hungers for your body,
while my soul seeks you who sees and feels beyond–
the you who knows your power,
your root of creation,
your divinity and your demon.
In the eternity of your absence,
I admit, it is high time to take off the masks,
to remove the uniforms,
to break the chains of patriarchy.
This undoing of gender is revealing,
we are multi-dimensional star-beings
housed within sensate earth bodies.
In the eternity of your absence,
I know my root of creation–
how it illuminates destiny’s path–
how desire and intuition intersect.
I learn to distinguish the depths,
of my power,
and the purpose of attraction.
We Fall Apart to Become
The empty shell shimmers against the dry, rustling grass of August.
I crouch low to the earth.
I gather her brittle, translucent skin, gently.
This skin of days passed.
I admire the patterns of her scales,
the texture visible, tangible,
color now faded.
I hold her cast-away sheath in the palm of my hand.
I think how I am like her.
I am part snake.
I too have outgrown my skin.
I too have shed the old, many times–
for survival,
for cleansing,
for growth,
for truth.
The shedding is agony.
The shedding is ecstasy.
It is a death and a rebirth.
I hold her old skin–
this temporary art of moments lived,
this disintegrating map of who she was.
I watch it flutter into pieces and scatter in the wind, returning.
A Love Letter
Oh Love, I have been searching for traces of you for centuries.
I have been digging for your bones.
I have been singing your name.
I have been peering, plunging, into the depths.
I have been listening for messages carried on the wind, in dreams.
I followed the trail of your scent
caught in the heat of summer–
drawn by an instinctual desire,
lured by magnetic force,
pulled by eternal threads of destiny.
You and I, we are ancient history.
We are future possibility.
Our time could be now.
We could mirror and magnify the light within.
We could come into enlivened alignment.
We have water and laughter in our souls, for healing.
We have fire and passion in our hearts, for loving.
We are divine. We are stardust.
We are animal. We are human.
Our words stir the four winds.
Our hands tend the earth.
We are more than can be seen–
earthly and cosmic elements embodied.
One day, we will walk the threaded path home to each other.
We will shake the earth with the amplified rhythms of our dance.
You and I, we are ancient history.
We are future possibility.
This could be our time.
A time to mirror and magnify the light within.
A time to come into enlivened alignment.
Everbearing 