I am being led
by my navel,
gazing at an invisible umbilicus
connecting me to my world.
I see all the life around me
with the tenderness we offer
to womb-mates,
feel the pulsing of a deep mother unseen.
I have been searching
for the source closer in,
my nurturing placenta,
and my god!
it has been hanging there,
bloody and delicate,
essential to my being,
feeding me all this time.
Some people throw bones,
or tea leaves
some splash paint
or make collages
to rearrange what they have found so far.
Some think they need a medium
or another person’s power
to access the deep voices.
Some throw words at a page
to see what sticks,
some let themselves dance.
The forms are infinite
and come second;
the first is the empty buzz,
the universal vibration
waiting for your trust
so it can find random expression.
When I ask
“which truth?”
I know that I have not yet circled
back deeply around
the pond
far enough
because it sounds like there
are still multiple versions
like light shining off a diamond
with many facets
which is true
until you are the diamond
or slip into the pond
that is not lonely,
one pond with plenty.
All those people
waiting tables
or turning tricks,
waiting for the knight
to discover them
and me in this hidden room
doing the same,
only worse,
because they know what they wait for
and I am inconstant
in my waiting,
expecting different footfalls
or Godot
or voices of invitation
and the only time
in which I can stop waiting
is now
but still I feel the invisible shrug
that says I’m waiting
for something more
but now
is the only exit.
Like a 1940s actress,
a plucky sweet heroine,
I go back to my dressing room
and don’t see the door is ajar.
I have stripped down
to this lovely peach silk slip,
and am fiddling with my garters,
more functional than sexy,
lost in my own thoughts
when I see you at the door
with roses
and a message I didn’t realize
I was waiting for
and all I can say is “Really?”
in an innocent incredulity
followed by this fear
and gratitude
but I find the courage
to stay this exposed
and take your flowers from you,
putting them in a vase
so they will bloom a little longer
making room on the table
for whatever else is offered
from strangers I have feared
and don’t need to.
Billions of Buddhas
and if you count the ants
I’m not even sure
of the order of magnitude.
Hard and so easy
to fall into this seeing
and not let it scare you
in defeat or numb hiding,
to gasp a silent welcome.
Not just cool water or warm,
but parched desert
and the knowing we are carrion,
food for Gaia’s children.
I keep sneaking furtive glances
at the clock
as if to ask permission
to keep the lists at bay
a little longer,
make a little more room
for this seductive pastime,
the disrobing of me.
It is not all silk
in these layers,
first the smokey coveralls,
the camouflage of bulky toque,
the clothes that came as gifts
from prior closets
and I inherited
or received without asking.
Some of these dresses
feel like my own skin
and come off slowly,
craning to catch in the mirror
out of the corner of my eye
where the clasp is,
stretching into unfamiliar postures,
wiggling it off.
Yes, there is ego here
adding musk to the room
but I can’t see any other path to freedom
than to dive through her
and find out
who is calling.
The first adolescence
moved through me
with such strong quakes
that I had to ignore them,
could not bear to free the moving ground
for fear of toppling.
So I kept busy,
moved faster than the tremors,
found ways to listen to the light
so that it could not touch me
deeply,
or break me in the ways I felt too fragile.
And whether that was right or wrong
no longer makes sense to ask,
since the chasm has found me
and there is no more running.
This second adolescence
is not the same
and yet has a similar adrenalin,
this time flowing,
and the sweet tremors
lick from inside
and I am just as lost
but also know there is no me to lose.
There is a willingness to hold just enough space,
a private piece of planet,
for these tectonic ruptures
to bang at will,
cause valleys or mountains
with hot lava
and other tools,
be shaped by forces
I have no control over
and yet unleash.
We are all planet-shapers
though we run from our destiny
and the demands
of being laid bare
to shaking ground.
The lonesome wailers sing
about a ribbon of highway
and I have always heard
the part about the highway
and how we are forced to
keep moving.
Today I heard the song
of the ribbon,
the way it flows under our feet
and also in our chests
and shines back at us
through the eyes of other travellers
and flutters in all the empty holes
and birdsong.
And that ribbon
moves for us,
on a highway
or a couch,
there is speed in it
and stillness,
and that’s the ride we’re looking for
and it takes us nowhere
and ties us up with everything
and once it fills us
we feel the sad laughter
and croon about love
throughout the journey.
I would zap you
if I could,
because that’s the urge
we humans have,
to fix quickly,
with our eager intent,
the things we think are broken.
And so we keep coercing others
to join our plan
or pay them
to influence or build;
I don’t mean just the fat cats here
but all of us
who know we have the answers
if only more people would listen.
But I am learning so much from Mareigh
who is missing some invisible blanket
that most of us wear
and so has the freedom
to ask questions all day long.
And her questions are so obvious
that they strike like fresh rain
and draw me out of having answers.