Spring opens a channel in my heart–
a sudden and soft rush of possibility.
Whether blue skies or gray,
the elements beckon me to join the surging, budding, blooming life,
while the earth reminds me to ground, center,
to bend and sway,
lest I get blown away.
(for my unsung muses, and in honor of eros)
I am drawn to you
as I am drawn to water,
to river and ocean.
Your allure,
it seeps subtle, into flesh and bone,
into thoughts and dreams,
knowing not boundaries of distance, nor time.
Your allure,
it electrifies my senses.
It awakens the unspoken.
I long to immerse my body in your waters,
to swim your strong currents,
to be held in moments of stillness.
I yearn to feel permeated,
to cleanse and be cleansed.
I could surrender to your waters,
so cool, deep, and dark,
so soothing
to one who burns.
I could let your waters take my life.
But we are not adversaries,
and I am not here to offer up my life.
We are energies capable of joining, elementally–
magma flowing to meet oceanic waves.
We together would be
a crashing, transforming,
warming, cooling,
sighing, steaming union,
creating future fertile ground for regeneration.
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 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.
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,
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.
Early autumn days of waning amber sun,
eyes drawn to the weaving dance of contrasts–
light and shadow dancing through the trees,
shadow and light in a lover’s eyes.
Light and shadow.
Life and death.
Shadow and light.
The raw beauty of the world calls us to awaken with every new day,
lest we fall asleep,
lest we forget.
Summer’s flowers transformed,
hanging full and ripe.
These silent offerings,
willing to satiate hunger,
await the pluck of tender fingers.
A most primal, humble act of love.
An exchange accessible to those paying attention,
to those willing to act,
to those willing to fulfill the need to be seen,
to be known,
to be complete in purpose.
The raw beauty of the world calls us to awaken with every new day,
lest we fall asleep,
lest we forget.
Mid-autumn days of misty gray skies,
of flaming yellow, orange and red,
brown decay and evergreen endurance.
Harvests now gathered,
shelves lined with abundance,
and yet, questions linger–
like open, outstretched hands,
half-drawn circles,
tables set for company–
Will you enter into the natural exchange of love for love?
Will you dine in honor and gratitude?
Will you step into the circle offering your conscious, humble self?
Will you remember your purpose and do what you came here to do?
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.
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.
1
The week my mother’s body began rapidly declining towards death, a doe and her fawn were frequenting my parents’ land. I saw them several times on restorative walks that I took to feel the comfort of the elements. The doe and her fawn would stop and look at me for a moment that felt eternal, then bound away to a safe distance before turning to look back again, as deer do. I was comforted by their presence. My mother’s face became emaciated and her eyes seemed to grow larger. I always admired her green eyes. I find myself now wishing I had spent more time gazing into those green eyes. Her gaze was a present, sometimes piercing one. In her last days, it had a startled quality, a doe-like look. Her gaze seemed to simultaneously see into me and beyond me. She saw visitors invisible to me and acknowledged them with the wave of her hand or the blink of her eyes. There was a luminescence emanating from her shrinking human form. Her soul and spirit and body were in conflict, torn in different directions. She did not want to leave this beloved human body and life, not just yet.
2
My grief is a richly colored, deeply textured landscape, with mountains that cast tall shadows, that feature treacherous and breathtaking cliffs. With dense forests that extend over rolling hills and through valleys. With winding rivers, salty seas, dark damp caves, sunlit meadows of flowers, muddy bogs and pits of quicksand. I wander through all of it daily, willingly. I don’t want the edges softened for me. I don’t want it made better. I want to experience all of it. I am hungry for the journey. My pain brings insight. I am curious about the depths of my soul. I hold deep gratitude for the love that helps carry me through, that prevents me from getting mired down, from getting too lost for too long. I have been an escort to the threshold and back of both birth and death. I am transformed with new understandings, new appreciations, new awe for the multi-dimensional nature of life and death.
I feel a strong sense of urgency. If I might not be here in this body tomorrow, what am I doing waiting on anything? But then, there are things in life that require my patience and nurturing to grow. How do I know the difference? When to act, when to wait? This liminal space is testing my trust. It is asking me to hold on and to let go at the same time. It is teaching me about the subtleties of separation and loneliness, of solitude and companionship–these may be profound realities of this physical human existence and also tricks of the human mind, for I have felt utterly alone in the midst of company, and yet, I also know that even when I am alone, I am never truly alone.
3
Spreading her ashes,
in my garden,
along wildlife refuge bluff,
under western red cedar,
into softly burbling creek,
I came upon bone fragments.
Bone and ash of the body,
bone and ash of her body,
bone and ash of your body, Mother.
bone and ash of your body, Mother…
your body that formed my body.
Bone of my bone,
flesh of my flesh,
blood of my blood.
Bone and body that no longer belong, to you,
no longer attached to soul and spirit.
now ash,
now returning.
I once asked,
Where do we begin and end?
We are a continuous, circular flow
of beginnings and endings–
with no beginning and never ending.
I wonder now,
How do soul and spirit unhook from the body beloved?
Everbearing 