I’m honored to be a part of this collection of poems edited by Gabriela Marie Milton. The anthology is a testament to the endurance of the human spirit and our ability to heal and create from our wounds. Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women has been release one day early and is now available on Amazon.
To tumble out of the unfolding draw in a breath
Remember who you are
Remember the child who knew how to dance with light
Your doorway to truth
Like Alice peering into the Looking Glass without fear
Grab ahold of wonder
Dive into the ripening
You the vine, but also the seed
Arising from the place of beginnings
Everything already coded
waiting to break open
To reach beyond the ground
draw down light and spread the tender vine
Rejoining the spiral dance
For Sue
The opened body becomes the vessel
of healer and also receiver
I find her in the Seer’s Circle
cloaked in the feathers of owl, anointing
those who come to give also receive
in her beloved place of heather and stone
time and space unfold into the opening
I feel the press of her lips between the brow
🐉
Seven days brings us back to her circle
to witness the winged soul ever-giving
feathers of bird become the butterfly
“Look closely,” she tells me. “See.”
I watch membranes divide
into notes. Hear the music of cells
holding the song that is life
Enraptured until form turns slug-like
and I question the pull back to density
reluctant to notice what is soft is also strong
vulnerable, yeilding
the snail enters the body’s chariot
A tiny spiral opens
into infinity
and suddenly we are in the place of stars. Vast
limitless
the serpent pulls us into its arbor
to understand rebirth
above a farmer’s field
density becomes a head of stone
fixed as though immobile
“Each is a piece of Her. A brain’s repository.”
I nod, understanding distance to be a ruse and watch
wisdom circle the mound in the body of the serpent
collapsing time’s hold while the clock splits open
rising sinuous into the darkness
the serpent swallows the sun, transforming
into dragon. Now winged
returning to seed the waiting womb below
light splits the body’s veins
finding the path once again
Once again Sue Vincent’s #writephoto prompt photo has mirrored my dreams. It’s been a challenging two weeks. My computer died, again, and the resuscitation of it was more laborious and disruptive than I had hoped it would be. Breathing into the letting go what may be lost, and what may take monumental efforts to fully restore, has been a call to open the heart.
Lavender Dream
I dreamt of the self starved
my body yielding to others, breathing
out instead of in. I will be there
for you, she knows the whisper as rote
memory so deep the threads bind her own
love. You can see it in her narrowed hips
breasts, almost pre-pubescent. As though
the body learned before it could fully grow
to turn inward upon itself. Preservation
in the outer yielding. I will be there for you
too, her voice echoes outside its walls
He brought the amethyst cracked open. Primal
rocks forged by the Mother’s fire
bumpy and dulled gray on the outside
Broken by will. He placed them around my neck
A lei of love. Her lavender heart
revealed itself in a field of green
Love
returned
to love
Beneath your weighty boughs
and those grains of time you pile
as though you have something to save
I wait for you
holding the mountains of your creation
the outer layers adding density to the inner
Pause
Take your breath beyond
let the weight of your time slip
into the river of glass
peer into the depths below
and see me shining back at you
For Sue Vincent’s weekly #writephoto prompt challenge. Please click here to participate.
Talk to me about silence
I can’t hear your words
A mind closed by fear shuts
the ears and averts the eyes
while the voice calling out
to be heard
becomes a child
waiting to be seen
[Futility]
↓
Last night, I must have been
traveling backwards
on this road we share
Fear holding constriction
the voice buried between
your mountains
[trapped]
→
I’ve decided to take a new turn
to the place called “Onward”
It lies just beyond those hills
where the air is open and free
And the sun spreads her fingers wide
to trace the valley of shadows
back into the light
For Sue Vincent’s weekly #writephoto prompt challenge. If you’d like to participate, please click here.
A healing meditation for all who may also feel the call to rewrite their stories:
Oh, my child, you are never broken
The light of you is whole, complete in itself
The darkness of the other who has desired to break you
is a denial of your light, but it is not you
Do not give way yourself to be broken into fragments
Gather the shards, and realize that when you heal the wounds
all that remains is the golden soul
Whole and complete in and of itself
♥
So I wish to tell you a different story
A story about a soul whose origin has no origin
because she always was and always will be
She is life eternal
as all souls are
but she desired to live in the body of a human being
to learn the process of becoming
over and over again, in different forms
She named herself, and so she was
the Light of Self as the Whole
She was never not whole
She was never shattered light
♥
Trace her origins back to your birth
and reform a new story
See her whole and golden
So vast that there is no separation
between where she begins and where she ends
♥
Take this story with you
back into the womb
Recognize the cord
is not a tie to the true self
Allow her to realize that any rejection and loathing
she feels is not a reflection of her light
It is not hers to own
or to take into her being as truth
♥
Allow her to expand her light beyond
this place called rejection and lack
Allow her to turn the loathing into love
See it coursing through the cord
bringing to her the fullness of its nourishment
♥
Allow her to leave the womb
and birth herself into the world of wonderment
Where all things are possible
and no codings of false truths exist
to take her away from her core of Truth
that she is love and forever will be
♥
Allow her to feel this and realize this
as she discovers the temporary state of separation
through the physical body
while knowing the soul
is never separated from the whole
♥
Allow her light to vibrate
in that wave of continuity with source
and forever ride it as a part of the whole
There is a tempest inside of you
a storm collecting every cell into being
yet you scatter them
rejecting
until they become the wounded
cowering in this cage you have created
its walls only as strong as your might
∇
The will to dissolve comes from the inside
see the nymph hovering in stasis
her exoskeleton an ugly sheath
holding the becoming
before she can fly she must crawl
waking one leg, and then the other
stretching into the whole
the eyes must learn trust
as they peer through the gaps
and gather the reluctant parts
take as long as you need
feel the journey new
the body moving outside of the shell
ripples the molecules
until they adhere into wings
when you are ready, spread the veins wide
allow the space in between to unfold
and open to the blue beyond
Open
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you” – Rumi
I enter the womb to release
rejection. Love sings through blood
to churn this muddied river. Her mother
was a bastard-child born into hunger
fed on want and the dust of lies
but she gave me the name Truth
forgetting what I would remember
to wash the film of hate
Indifference is a rip
-tide. Despair, the sandy
floor. Light is the sky
of the heart and I rock
my body
open
The Light Behind the Story 