Surrender to the Wind

mmmmm…

Spring rain has come,

Strewn dewy petals.

The wind has taken his broad arm and flown,

Sweeping across the tall prairie grasses

And gently laying them down.

“Come,” he says confidently,

Displaying his handiwork,

Inviting me in to a place deep in the meadow,

Cool as a canopied cot.

“Come and lie here with me for a spell.

Let me blow whispering promises over you.

Let me tickle your neck and the bottoms of your feet

And airy little breaths in your ear.

Rest with me here.

Refresh yourself.

Surrender the past,

And think.

Die in ecstatic fanciful bliss with me,

And let all the rusted withered mindset fall,

Forgotten forever.

Newness is here in the dew and my breeze,

And within you.

Wisdom is there

To bring peace and wholeness.

The kingdom within

Will never insult your soul.

Renaissance woman,

Come and dance.

Let me spin you, and twirl and dip

Until you are dizzy and swooning in love

And want only to lie with me.”

-jenn long

Love Lessons

Get in line, boys!

Love lessons start today,

And this is something rare!

Usually those who proffer their wisdom

Don’t have a clue

How to hack it on Monday morning.

They turn into pumpkins

If the clock strikes twelve

And they are not back in their ivory towers.

But here is a man—

A king really,

A man among men,

A man’s man,

A ladies’ man,

Or should I say,

A lady’s?

Ha!

And he knows what the hell he is doing

When he takes you by the heart,

And the hand,

And the bosom,

And the groin.

He does it by looking deeply, so deeply

In thru the windows of my soul,

And taking such careful, tender notice

Of what’s there,

And what’s not,

And ever so gently he tiptoes in, and

Slowly makes himself at home.

He listens to the thoughts and words,

But even more,

He hearkens to the heart’s status quo,

And cuts thru all the other bullshit

Like a hot knife,

Unchaining my heart and setting me free

To love him and to satisfy the desires

Of both our hearts.

Oh yes!

I’m telling you,

He’s the best.

You could learn a thing or three.

If you’re interested,

Peek through this window

On windows,

And watch how he melts me—

How he turns me to putty in his solid hands.

-jenn long

The Epic Wishing

  Chapter One

I think I saw a falling star

This morning as I walked at dawn.

The sun was not yet quite up,

But stretched out a glimmering, golden yawn

So I could see my steps.

And I with my arms reaching up

To the heavens,

My head tilted back to see,

My back arching and stretching a bit,

Yes, after all was said and done, I did feel very free.

It was then that I caught sight of it.

There as I wanly smiled in the powdery blue,

Watching the stars dance on the edge of the night,

A fiery bright streak caught my eye,

There in the corner of my peripheral sight,

And I turned myself to see it.

Barely, I caught the tail as it glimmered,

Just a glimpse of it streaking down,

But I knew what I’d seen,

And I had a wish coming,

So I slowly turned all around

And thought what I could wish for.

So much had happened in the earth.

Nothing remained at all the same.

The mantle had rolled.

The poles had shifted.

No map or landmark at all remained,

And we had not met.

There was water everywhere now!

What had once been a large mass of land

Was now a series of various islands.

Some were larger and some so tiny.

Some were rugged and some slim strands

Ribboned by streams on either side.

All the infrastructure was gone.

Roads might travel miles in both directions

And wind up nowhere,

Or disappear suddenly,

Submerged in a stale and deep lagoon.

Bridges were out, and road signs useless.

Sometimes you might have a vague feeling of familiarity,

Like you’d seen the particular locale before,

But like a dream or déjà vu,

You couldn’t place it,

Or you knew it shouldn’t be there.

And what you didn’t know was:

Had you ventured out beyond?

To the spot where it had been?

Or had the mountain moved and come to you,

Because any of that might be possible.

And I would peer into the Milky Way

At dusk and then again at dawn,

With a memory of gazing into my bowl as a child,

Seeing if the letters made any sense that day

There in the depths of my alphabet soup,

And remembering the old days

When we would watch TV.

I saw once a story about the Ancient Mayans

And how they had tracked the cycle of Venus

To five hundred and eighty-four days,

And I thought how vain modern-kind has been

That we think we are so smug and smart,

When I with all my modern education,

Can’t even tell which one of these

Distant, tiny lights in the sky

Is a star, or which is a planet,

Or whatever else it might be called?

Yet, how the ancients knew the stars

And navigated to distant lands

Filled with the treasures they desired

To decorate their lives and

Express their artistic imaginations!

But me? I’m limited to surviving,

And the stars may hold no hope for me.

Who’s to say?

They will, however, be no help to me at all in my wanderings.

Pure luck will cause my path to cross again

The lives of friends I knew before, my family

Or even my own children.

And so I kindled the morning fire,

Breathing life back into the fading coals,

Gathering some leaves and a few twiggy sticks

And one more big one that I’d found.

The little eggs I’d scavenged yesterday,

I set to roast above the flames,

And thanked God and the starry host above

For another day’s existence.

Then watching the firebrands

There at first light,

Seeing them spark out, and cool, and go dim,

Reminded me of that sight I’d seen,

And that I hadn’t yet

Wished for anything.

I took my fire stick and rolled the eggs out,

Letting them cool a bit on a stone,

And had no idea what I should wish for—

Barely surviving! There all alone!

And yet my mind was so cluttered

By old dreams and wishes from my former life:

Things I had wanted, or wanted to do,

Or to be, or not to be

As a mother or as a wife,

And so I peeled the smaller egg,

Its brown specks crumbling in my hungry hand,

And I watched the pieces falling down

Onto my hearth stones,

Into the fire pit, and onto the sand,

And I took a small bite of my toasty victual,

And I savored the texture,

The vigor, the taste,

And I licked my fingers and around my lips

Not wanting that any should go to waste.

Then I hurriedly peeled the other egg—

This with a soft, off-white shell

From maybe a turtle, or a snake?

It seemed more poached than the roasted one,

But full of flavor and I nibbled on it

As I ruminated on my fate.

What was still Real?

What was still there?

What had ever been?

What might be next?

How difficult it was to let go

Of some of the old routines I had.

I should be doing the laundry right now.

I should be cooking breakfast for someone else

Shouldn’t I, besides for myself?

Yes, it was with a rutted brain that I

Would stumble thru my days,

Trying to shake the feeling that I should be

Doing something somewhere else,

Being somewhere or something else.

Thus had I tortured myself for months,

Although, that torture was so common for me

To inflict on myself, that it somehow brought me

Comfort now,

As I struggled to do what I had to do

Just to live.

But today I’d seen the star.

And even though it meant

The star had had to die,

The old life spoke a word of hope

Croaking out from its old dead ways and superstitions,

And a part within the deepest heart of me

Wanted to believe:

“Yes! I had a wish coming!”

Chapter Two

I had been on a fool’s errand.

Just needing a few things from the store

And a few minutes of peace and quiet to myself.

            I hadn’t gone more than twenty-five miles

Away from what used to be called my home.

But suddenly the highway buckled before my very eyes, and huge

Cracks and crevices bulged and sagged,

And the car I was driving shook and bounced

And I got out and into an open place to try and wait it out.

            But for hours this went on and I watched eerily and in terror,

Trying to guess where the next sinkhole would appear and avoid it.

Sometimes it would ease for just a minute or two,

And I would look around and try to breathe

And try to calm myself,

And tell myself that everything was fine.

I would look as far as I could down the road—

The way that used to lead back home,

But the direction had disappeared,

And I had a sick and twisted feeling in my gut

That told me there would be much tribulation

In trying to go back that way.

But as I would just be gaining heart

And thinking of climbing back in my car

And trying to get at least as far

As it would take me along,

Aftershocks would ripple through,

Leaving me leaning this way and that

Trying to find my balance again

And toppling as I merely tried to stand,

And so I froze in awe and numbness,

Crying some, and sometimes yelling—

Screaming at the earth to stop it,

And vainly commanding time to cease

And more—

To go back on its natural course and

Maybe then return all things back to “normal,”

Whatever that was,

And to return me to the place where I was,

If not lively, comfortable.

           

All afternoon I steadied myself in a solid ditch,

And as the sun began to set,

Panic, too, set in, and I stumbled back

Across the uneven ground toward my car,

Which now lay in an open field.

I noticed the pattern of tremors was easing.

The throbbings came further and further apart

And pulsed in less and less intensity,

And so I hoped maybe they had ceased,

But peering deep into the dusk,

The road looked like a pile of rough rubble after a bomb raid.

There was no way I would try

To navigate the hazards there in the dark.

I would wait until the morning,

And so I said a gutless prayer

And had a pack of crackers

That I’d just bought at the store.

I don’t know what time it was

When I drifted off there in a troubled sleep.

I know I slept enough to dream

A scattered vestige of something,

But just about the time when I

Perceived a message coming thru,

The theme was broken by a sound

Of many waters rushing.

“Oh MY GOD!” I cried as I woke

And wondering if I was still asleep?

I hoped I was for what I saw

Was darkness upon darkness.

A dam had surely broken somewhere,

And now the pent up waters,

Brooding and contemplating their escape

For a century or more,

Were free at last,

And with a victory roar in liberty and full power,

The anarchistic waves were wiping the landscape clean.

A blast of water came behind

My van and pushed it very far and fast.

I had now no real sense of measured time or space,

But the feeling of the distance and the spinning

Took me so off-guard right then,

And disoriented me even worse,

That in my dizzy, frightened state,

I couldn’t perceive life or death.

Everything I’d ever thought right

Seemed wrong now passing before my eyes.

I think it was all too much.

I think my mind went catatonic.

I don’t know how conscious I may have been

Or how unconscious,

But of a sudden a brilliant light

Shone into my broken heart and soul,

Exposing years of idle talk and deeds

And numb, disjointed living.

Something guttural in that Vital Beam

Woke me to the very core,

And I thought, “Cruel Wisdom!

Why have you granted your glorious streams

Now as I lay dying?

Why couldn’t you have woken me

Long ago when I was young,

When I had the power to choose

And to use this knowledge to thrive and prosper?”

But the virility of the Living Glow

Loved all of me and took my woe

And I rested somehow in its bosom.

Comfort and warmth and safety were there

And more than I ever had wanted.

I felt known and understood.

I felt no lack and nothing but good,

Tho I had been, and was, such a sinner.

And so I slept,

And dreamed of green fields of peace and golden flowers

And of wearing the laurel crown of the winner.

Chapter Three

When I awoke I saw that I was truly in a field of green.

My car was perched like a wobbly new bird just hatched

In the brushy branches of a non-bearing mulberry tree.

I was crumpled in a corner, a counter-balance to it all,

Helping create a virtual perpetual motion machine—

Rocking with the branches and the car,

Waiting for the boughs to break,

And thus, the baby would surely fall.

But in Reality the lines for me had fallen in good places;

My lot was fair, and I considered myself very fortunate,

For I was alive; I think I still am,

And I thought I saw a way to make an emergency exit route

From the side window of the van.

For somewhere deep within my being,

I faced the fact that the time would come

When I would also have to face the glaring day.

I would have to shake off the denial, the depression,

And get up and live.

And so I moved with the rhythmical swaying.

I danced to the great beat of the bushy drums

Banging there against my car.

I swayed in time and

In chorus with the swinging metronome,

And gracefully, blithely made it through

And out of the open window.

I was amazed at the strength I still had:

Grabbing a sturdy branch with both hands

And pulling myself up and out, over at my torso,

Then pushing my arms straight and taut to swing down.

It made me feel like a kid again.

I remembered hours spent in the big trees

Wrapped in the protective covering of make believe,

And then my feet would hit the ground.

A new kind of wind seemed to be blowing:

Stark, and real; harsh, yet fresh.

It slapped me a few times across my cheeks

Just to make sure I was fully awake.

And I was.

I surveyed my surreal surroundings

With eyebrows high, and big eyed,

Trying to take it all in at once and trying to get the bigger picture,

Trying to understand what had happened

And get a better perspective on it all, to know where to go from here.

For a long while I ambled without aim,

Exploring the little clearing there in the brush.

Then for hours, I guess, I paced across it back and forth,

With my thoughts haunting me, accusing me of being

Clueless as to what the right direction might be or the path,

And I pled “nolo contendere,” for Truth, I did not know,

In fact, which way was up.

Sometime late that afternoon

When the shadows began to grow,

I felt a rumble in the hollow of my flesh

And thought, “I’m hungry.”

I may never have felt that empty.

And so I scampered back up the tree

To where the van still swayed and rocked,

And looked in to see if there

Was anything edible therein

To nourish my new existence,

And thankfully there was.

Chapter Four

For a few days I rationed the
“Things I had needed from the store.”

I didn’t realize when I bought them

Just how I would really need them

Until I didn’t have them anymore,

But I hoped against hope,

“There must be rescue teams coming to save me—

To deliver me back to my home.”

I kept picturing it just the way I had left it

And could think of nothing better than finding a phone

And calling and telling them where I was now.

But that was a problem

For I didn’t know

Where I was,

Or at what point my home lay,

Or if anything anywhere was left

Untouched by the show

Of force that Nature

Had unleashed upon us,

Of the apocalyptic unveiling

That had leveled the high,

That had brought up the low,

And brought the far things, nigh.

But as time went on

And the quiet grew louder,

I knew my faith would need to shift.

No one was coming to save or deliver.

I was going to have to survive all this

On sheer will.

And so I began to scavenge and forage,

Eating the tops of briars and certain blossoms.

Sometimes a nest had an egg or two,

And occasionally I caught

A minnow in the little brook

Where I went to drink.

I didn’t know if I had the chutzpah

To kill any another type of creature—

To sacrifice it for my own sustenance,

But I was getting awfully famished

And began to think

Maybe I could.

Chapter Five

Each day, religiously, I tried to travel

At least some progression in the direction which I perceived

Must be South, which was the setting in my heart

That day Catastrophe had been thrust upon me.

But I came to a sudden halt that day

When I saw brightness through the scrub brush

And emerged from the dense thicket into the light of day.

I found myself on a sandy strand of shore

Encompassed all about to the right and to the left

By a massive fresh water sea!

I closed my eyes hard and shook my head

Trying to shake off the unfamiliar vision,

Trying to see what I wanted to see there,

But even then I didn’t know why.

Was it that I wanted things to appear to everyone else

To be “right?”

Why did I care?

Or was it just that I wanted to see what I wanted to see?

At any rate, I am trying to quit pretending,

And quit shaking my head,

And quit closing my eyes like a baby,

Thinking that when I close my eyes,

I am hidden from it all,

Or that when I open them things will be different.

I took a deep draught of the Reality into my lungs,

Filling them with the crisp, raw air

That swirled about there on the shore,

And I allowed my chin to be lifted up

And my eyes to run along the lines of the water

As far as Horizon would permit me

And then I said strongly,

“I love the beach!”

And so I pitched my camp there for a day and a half.

Chapter Six

Something seemed to be pulling and tugging at me.

But something in me seemed to be pulsing out,

Still emanating an unmet need and desire.

Deep was calling unto deep, and I was very stirred.

I listened to a homing call,

And felt a cry of longing on every incoming wave.

The sounds were large, so full it seemed, about to burst and overflow,

Coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once,

And I couldn’t discern the origin.

Uncertain, still trying to ascertain

Whether I should travel east or west?

I had always had a certain affinity—

A tendency toward the safe, abstract concepts

Found in Western Ways and Thought,

But now I wondered where that had gotten me?

The Deep seemed to call to my darkest curiosity;

Enigma calling me to understand

The Paradoxia of the mysterious Eastern Poets

Abiding in the Orient and Beyond.

And whether it was right of me

Of maybe it was just what was left,

But I headed north along the curving shoreline

Into the Eastern Wilds.

I may have walked for Forty Days,

And I can’t say that I ate or drank,

But humbling was that desert shore.

Relentless Wind blew sand at me—

Clouds of burning, gritty dust

Laughed at me to scorn.

Petty voices scoffed at me,

Questioned my identity—

Which I didn’t care anymore.

The sting of their insults tore at first,

But I began to know what was worse:

The pain of an empty gut.

I actually considered building a shelter there,

Thinking to construct a protective barrier,

But thankfully, thought better of it

And kept moving out to where

Perhaps the squall would cease.

And I am glad now that I kept journeying

For when finally I rounded a jagged bend

And the elevation dropped

And then dropped again,

I rested there in a peaceful cove.

Just inland from there a bit,

There grew a grove of dates and palms,

And I thanked my lucky stars above

And any alms I’d offered up before

That had brought me such good luck.

I ate my fill, and found a comfortable rock to be inclined on,

And as I sat, I thought I saw

Something different bobbing across the sea.

I watched it from afar off wondering at it.

It seemed that it was drifting along

But slowly I saw its destination was purposeful.

Drawing nearer and nearer,

At first a blur that blended sometimes in

With the white capped waves,

But slowly a form of beauty came to view,

And soon I perceived, and then I knew

That a sailboat was approaching,

And on it was a man,

And that man, my friend, was you.

Chapter Seven

The Beginning of Wisdom~?

The terror of seeing Pure Light

Shining into your darkened house,

Exposing the hypocrisy you’ve hated in others,

And the lies that you’ve told yourself there in your dimness,

For years and years and years.

The shock of hearing the real answers come out,

The ripping back of the curtain at Oz,

And allowing yourself to think the thoughts

That have really been dormant there all along.

And the freedom of speech?

The freedom to say

What is in your heart to utter,

What your mouth has longed to spit out

For years and years and years.

But no one has asked,

And you haven’t had the courage to speak.

I saw the sail, full blown

and lovely,

Free upon the open wave.

I saw you there

Inquisitive,

Yet confident, a bit of a surly knave,

And then the conversation began:

“Ahoy!”

“Yes—“I barely breathed,

“Ahoy!”

And when the boat was tied,

And we sat on the sand together,

And I gave you some of the dates and palms,

An egg and some nuts that I had found,

And we began to tell our tales

Of the things that we’d been through.

We talked as friends

Who hadn’t seen each other

For years and years and years.

And then we paused,

And breathed,

And looked out together at the waves

With the afternoon sun gleaming on

Their happy crests,

And you said,

“I love the beach!”

And so we went swimming.

Chapter Eight

Funny how refreshing and yet how exhausting

It is to swim all day.

I finally waded out of the water

And plopped on the wet, sunny sand.

My legs were shaky,

And I felt weak—

Utterly helpless to defend myself

If that need should arise.

I also felt guilty for having such a great time.

I could feel my puritan ancestors

Rolling quite over in their shallow graves,

Because I had probably had too much fun.

I probably shouldn’t allow myself to have any more

For a decade or three,

For I had clearly exceeded the quota!

But exerting my body against the strong waves,

And leaping to ride them over their peaks,

And you splashing me and me splashing you,

Had worn all the worries off of my face,

And watching you enjoying yourself there in the water—

The quick-silver spray,

The tan of your skin,

Had all helped me.

I noticed my reflection there in a mirrored pool

And barely recognized myself.

The things you would ask me!

The way you would say it!

The unpredictable juggling

That kept me up in the air.

It all brought my guard down;

My answers were honest ones,

And the light in your eyes breathed fire

Into my heart.

Then you got a little wrinkle in your brow

And touched your index finger to your lip,

And seemed puzzled

Wanting to figure the angles and how they went together,

And so we talked

A lot

For years and years and years.

But you made a place for yourself that night

On a flat worn stone,

And I covered it with palm leaves,

And you helped me pick up a mat and stretch it out

There on the shifting sands.

Together we formed a tuft

And covered it with soft willow

And that night we both slept very well

From the early dark of evening

Until the break of day.

And that is when I had gone out alone walking;

Thinking; praying; seeking;

Assessing where I’d been.

How things were.

How were they?

How things are.

How? How are they?

And that is when with up stretched arms

I was reaching,

Hoping, dreaming.

And that is exactly when

I spied, with just barely a corner of my eye,

That beautiful, falling star.

And that reminds me,

I haven’t made my wish on it yet.

Chapter Nine

For several days we continued together separately.

You in the water, wake disappearing behind like a desert mirage.

Me, stepping along, often barefoot on the muddy shore,

Still looking back at times to see my footprints vanishing in the tide.

Often I could see you up ahead

Scouting out the territory,

Glass to your eye, getting the bigger picture of the new horizon,

Mapping out in your mind its current landscape, and

Wondering if it might change again.

But always in the morning and again at dusk,

We would meet and share what our days poured forth.

Sometimes you had caught a fish,

And I had found some fruit or grain.

We would munch on the crisp, whole kernels

And speculate on the rest of the world.

I had wondered if other people

Had found each other and begun

To flock together to work to live,

Or else to gather to use and abuse each other as before.

I had also tried to think what I would do if I found such a cluster—

If I should hide myself away

Until I could discern if their motives were pure?

Of if they might be base and crude?

I considered long and hard

Should I come across such congregation,

Just how my true compass inside might point me then to go,

For I had grown wary of the former systems and associations.

I had seen much corruption and pain

In the politics and power struggles

Of the world before the quake.

What affect had the cataclysm had, if any,

On the personalities and priorities of the “post-post-modern” man?

And so it was with some suspicion, I guarded my heart and mind,

But as the strands of your days and mine

Braided a loose cord of partnership and charity,

I found myself dropping my shield.

I saw you standing there by the sail—

Feet in the water, reflecting on the images there in your heart,

Deeply searching yourself

For an answer to a bottomless question.

I realized there that someday you would

Discover some solution,

For I perceived that you would keep on seeking

Until your answer came—however the resolution might look.

I could see the resolve within you

Was much deeper than the limitless quest that held your gaze.

And as I began to trust his heart—

The sojourner of Reality—

I felt an old curiosity awake in me.

As I noted his discoveries,

I felt the questions which he asked himself

Reverberate in me,

And I found myself dismissing

My initial answers,

To probe my own mind and consciousness on every level

For the more honest reality

And allowed my thoughts to explore new possibilities

And broader spectrums.

My Self was flooded like the land before me.

Ordinances I had built upon

Were washing away, and I couldn’t think for a while

Without the ancient markers there

To keep my thoughts in line.

For now the way lay out before me everywhere.

Many narrow winding paths lay out in front for me to choose.

My journey would be strange and yet, full of beauty and challenge,

But sometimes I was overwhelmed at choosing only one,

And had no signs to point me in the direction I should go,

Or just how far I ought to move down any particular one,

Before I might cross some proverbial line

And not even realize it.

But slowly I left off worrying,

And simply began to enjoy whatever path

My feet would choose.

And if I was tired, I rested a bit.

And if I hungered, food was found.

And if I was quiet, silence then.

And if I felt the need to talk,

I wrote a letter to my own heart

And answered it in time.

And sometimes I would talk to him.

And sometimes he would be there.

And sometimes I would only imagine that he was,

But even as I walked alone,

I knew that he was out there somewhere

Just ahead.

And I took comfort in knowing that there was at least

One other extant similar species.

Chapter Ten

I woke this morning early and hungry,

And feeling light headed from a partially fasted condition,

I rose long before first light

To walk along the shore,

Hoping to be rewarded with food

Along with the early bird.

The nights were dark and quiet now

Without the glare and hum

Of all the modern ways,

For technology had been all but lost

Erased by the groundbreaking surge.

But O how the stars would entertain!

Their brightness and turning so unfathomable!

I spotted the Big Dipper

And lined up the back two stars,

Drawing an imaginary line

Down to the great Polaris.

Wondering if north was even north anymore.

Then shoop! A glimmering streak in the night!

Another falling star!

Oh! How it scolded me!

I hadn’t even wished on the other one yet!

But just as I felt my conscience start to prick—

Shoop! Another falling star!

Oh! I couldn’t help but laugh!

Guilt was vanishing as actualization set in:

My greedy heart was hoarding my dreams—

Waiting for some rainy day!

I’d even considered childishly

Using my one wish for three more wishes.

Shoop! Another!

Well, there was my third one!

Had I wished for three more wishes?

Before I could wonder what I had done—

Shoop! Shoop! That was five now!

Shoop! Shoop! Two MORE! A perfect 7!

Now all of my life, I’d only seen

Two or three at the most.

Other lucky people with less myopia

Seemed to spot them all the time.

But I had never seen such a shower

Of stardust and fire,

And my heart was ablaze.

I felt a cosmic abundance of hope:

That delights and dreams and wishes

Could come true, after all.

And as I stopped to ponder,

I looked down shaking my head

And there was an egg on the bank of the stream.

I laughed again, and picked it up thankfully.

I held it high toward the heavens,

And as I was looking at it there in the starlight—

Shoop!

I saw another!

Eight falling stars—the number of a new beginning.

Chapter 11

The medicine man was searching.

It seemed long past the time when

Someone should have been revealed.

Someone should have appeared by now

And been seen as the one to become the apprentice,

Someone who could follow him and learn the ways

Of the healing plants and gall of fish and willow smoke.

And time was short.

He tried to turn his eyes away

From the picture in his mind.

His river of life had run its course,

And was not far from reaching its destination—

The Great Sea—

Where, like a drink offering, the libation of his life

Would pour itself into the many waters.

And so it was he walked the woods alone.

He peered ahead into the open past,

Tracking his own footsteps, trying to understand.

Had he missed something somewhere?

Had disciples appeared along the way

And he’d been unable to recognize

The hidden potential they had held?

“It might be hard to discern it in the young people of today,” he thought.

Or had the obvious been too bold,

And doubt and disbelief distracted him from committing

The sacred knowledge into the life of someone else?

He had made a quiet exit in his moccasins.

The village camp had not known for weeks that he was gone.

Only when Ailment had crouched in their midst and pounced,

Did they look this way and that

For help from the old medicine maker.

But he had gone on a special mission.

Nothing else held any importance—

Only finding the Great Spirit’s trail of gifts

And the Learner who would know how to use them.

He had thought that perhaps his son

Would be the one born to take his mantle,

But his son seemed nothing like him,

And had gone outside the tribe in search of something.

The old man had never understood

Just what the younger man thought himself missing,

And he could not interpret the language of even the body

Of his own dear son,

And so their miscommunications

Multiplied, and exacerbated.

The differing perspectives that they had

And the confusion of each one trying to convince

The other to see things in their “right” order

Had pushed them apart.

He hadn’t seen his son in years,

And now that the earth had shaken and stirred,

He wondered if he would ever see

Any good thing, any future, any hope of posterity.

Chapter 12

I sat down on the sand of the beach.

I looked out at the waves coming in.

I took my finger and doodled a design in the earth:

A spiral starting out and going in and going in,

A giant snail like conch, within infinity,

Yet infinitely eternal, going in and going in,

And searching my whole self I sat for hours as the waves crashed,

The never ending waves of life going in and going in,

“And what was coming out,” I wondered.

For as the waves came inland,

Riptides unseen and undertows flow back against the grain,

And the waters return back to the deep,

And swell, and gain momentum,

And curl themselves up and force their way back in and in and in.

And I thought about how most of my life’s work seemed like the undertow,

Hidden service and unseen giving and offering the flow of my essence,

But where were the waves that were coming back in?

I couldn’t seem to see them?

Where was the return of love’s passion?

Where the reckoning of beauty for ashes?

Where had all the hours gone? And would time ever be redeemed for me?

And then I thought about the meteor shower I had seen.

Did my witness to its dying urges make me an heir to wishes?

Or not? “It’s time,” I decided, either way, “that I need to discover the dreams inside,

And I will delight myself in the Great Giver of desires and pronounce my longings.

I have the amplitude of the ages, and so I will not worry one little bit

If the first request I make be not the greatest or most important,

But that in simply making a wish for myself at all

The floodgates of understanding will raise their mighty heads

And I will learn how to aspire.”

Introspectively gazing into the depths of my spirit,

I thought I saw my deepest need.

I perceived that truly I had lived in the times of the end

When “cold love” had prevailed,

For I detected no wisdom at all, no inner experiential knowledge

Of how it felt to be warmly loved without fear of difference or shortcoming.

I yearned for the revelation of passionate love,

Of affectionately being noticed, and being interesting to someone,

Without having to pretend I was something that clearly I was not.

I had heard a saying long ago that God himself was love,

And so I spoke, “God, if you are real, and if you are really this essence called Love,

Show me then what Love truly is.”

And so I boldly declared,

“I wish for Love to capture me.”

That was wish number one.

This wishing was exhausting work!

And so I stretched out on my back,

Pressing myself down into the sand.

I closed my eyes and breathed a heavy sigh

And fell into a dreamy state of resting.

Chapter 13

This afternoon I sat up on the shore.

The day had brought forth everything

I needed for existence.

I was satisfied today.

The energies of the day were spent up to that very moment,

And so I restored body, soul, and mind.

No worries held any power over me;

No evil forebodings dared to try

And enter into that rest.

I meditated on the peace found there

In the rhythms of nature,

No hurried fretting,

No impending thoughts of action or of doom,

Just the gentle song of the waves breaking upon the shore.

And as I based myself on a peace filled soul,

My vision focused in on something borne upon the waves.

It appeared to be a good sized jar.

I waded out into the water,

Angling out to intercept it.

It was larger than I’d figured and got heavier

And harder to budge, the closer I got it to the shore.

And so its motion came to a close, lodged in the muddy brim

Where the water is shallow and the sand is thick,

And I chuckled at its oddness,

And wondered what contents might remain.

It seemed to be earthen.

It seemed to me, ancient, yet a brand new thing,

For I had never in real life seen

Such a color or texture of pottery,

Such a simple pattern,

But such meaningful design.

And I stood there holding its neck in both hands,

Wondering how I should open it,

For it was sealed there very tight,

Neither the water, nor the sand,

Nor probably even any air

Had penetrated the jar, the seal, or the lid.

And so I tried the handle on top,

Attempting to pull and twist and turn.

With all my heart and mind and strength

I wrestled the ancient urn.

I spied a stick and took its sharper end

Trying to jam it under the seal,

Thinking to prize the lid from the jar,

Wanting to hear that wonderful “pop”

As I would uncork the cap,

But the seal was solid

And stayed true to its duty,

Keeping it all intact.

And so I took my blunted flint

That I had found and put to much use

In opening random pecans and walnuts,

And with some reservation

I held it up,

Hating to disturb the fine terra cotta,

But hating worse to never know

What was really there inside,

And so I brought great force upon the side of the neck

Where the seals were firm and shattered the head

Completely off of the ancient earthen jug.

Instantly a fragrant puff of incensed air!

I detected ancient cassias, cinnamon, and healing aloes came to mind!

The refreshing aromas invigorated me—

My thoughts, my body even,

Were stimulated with an energy to continue and to renew.

I peered into the dark hollowed belly of the jug lying there beside me.

Something was folded up in there

And I couldn’t tell just what.

I stretched my hand and then my arm

Down in to try and reach it,

But just as I was able to feel the thing,

I winced at a bite like pain.

I had cut the upper side of my breast

On a piece of its broken shard.

But I pressed in anyway just a bit more

Until my grip was firmer,

And I grasped the material rolled up in there

And removed it from the jar.

I brought it out into the light,

Then turned for just a second

To my wound just pooling with blood between

My left clavicle and my heart.

I shifted my gaze immediately back to my

Perplexing, mysterious find,

And felt the soft material, rubbing it between my fingers,

Experiencing its felty, solid cloth.

“It feels like an old, old animal skin,” I thought,

And then remembered how ancient peoples had used such skins

For writing their sacred scrolls.

I untied the tasseled knot

That kept the binding there together,

And as I unrolled it

Saw a drop of my blood

Fall on its outer layer.

Chapter 14

As I unrolled the yellowed parchment,

My eyes beheld an ancient script:

Pictographic ideograms,

Oriental hieroglyphs

And I could not blink out the wonder

From my marveling questioning sight,

And considered the lettering with critical thinking,

“Should I read from left to right

Or does the sentence move from right to left

Or up and down?”

Could I come close to decoding the grammar

To interpret the message

On the scroll I’d found?

This was one thing at which I’d excelled:

Languages, semantics, linguistics, and codes.

I’d studied literature from every culture,

Their prose, their religions, the rhetoric, the odes.

And so I tried to unravel the mystery

Of whence this text had thus appeared,

And just how lucky I was to discover it.

Scientists might have sought this for years!

But maybe the earth itself had been the vessel

That had contained it til the seal of the ground

Had been split in the quake,

And now the message in the bottle

Lay here at arm’s length for me to take,

And to decipher,

And to enjoy,

And to know.

This was a treasure meant just for me.

And yet I took a hard unsentimental look at the scroll,

Considering its source—

Its origin,

And I thought it to be very ancient—

The writing, more symbolic, proto-picto-drawings, each letter,

Rather than abstract Phoenician alphabet.

And so I began to see

The desert as a backdrop to the symbols there,

With the dark inky blottings representing the things

Necessary to exist in the barren wastelands.

This was a wilderness text.

This, a roadmap for a deserted journey—

This, a signpost pointing out the ancient ways—

A survival manual for weary, yet resolute wayfarers

Who wanted both to know the good destination

And be revived to reach it.

Staring at the entire block of the writing

On the first piece of the puzzling scroll,

I realized that I would be able to come

To some level of understanding of it,

For this would be no vague abstraction

With meaningless tenses and conjugations.

Concrete pictures would tell me the story.

I was already starting to visualize the ancient markings

And the life that sprang out from the page—

Horses with their nostrils flaring;

Homes with oxen strength to plow,

Furrowed fields,

Planting tomorrows

With strong milk and seeds of

Healthy, nourishing foods.

This was a timeless text connecting

All humanity by the things we share—

The tears and laughter of birth and death,

Sweaty perspiration of work and sexuality, and breathing,

Urine, and excrement, and blood—

And then I noticed that I had somehow already changed the sacred text,

For there on the first few unrolled segments,

My own bloody fingerprints mingled into the lettering,

Decoupaging the script with my very DNA.

I had been so thrilled with the treasure of the jar,

I had not seen what a gash was pouring forth,

And when I took the time to look and see the problem,

Triage was immediately needed.

Without hesitation I took the sash like strip that had held the scroll

And stuck the tassels to my wound to blot the cut and pressure

Was applied, and then I remembered seeing a calvatia gigantea,

Or giant puffball mushroom just a little in the brush.

The spores of these were said to be a natural coagulant,

And so I walked up to where I’d seen it and pressed it hard against my skin.

Then I thought to take the sash and tie it round the puffball,

And almost instantaneously the bleeding and aching stopped.

It was getting dark, and I felt the chill of night to be approaching,

And with my arm tied in the sash, I pictured the challenge of building a fire.

But I had the ancient scroll in my good arm, and made my way back toward my campsite

And when I reached my little lean-to shelter I crawled up there inside,

And without really thinking, I unrolled the entire velum

And I wrapped myself up in it, and it kept me very warm.

That night there was a heavy dew and soaked the leather here and there,

Leaving inky tattoos in random places on my skin,

Ancient hieroglyphic stories on my most tender places.

Chapter 15

Today when I saw you,

I really saw you

With eyes that had never seen anything before,

Like someone had taken the filter off the sun

And the brightest and best rays finally made it to the earth.

They shone on you.

They illuminated you to me

As the brightest and best that the world or heaven could offer.

I felt a sensation of deep intrigue,

Wanting to know you inside and out

And wondered what had made me ever let you out of my sight.

As you sailed up that morning,

I saw you looking at me—

Squinting some to try and figure something out.

And then as you got closer

You threw back your head and laughed and said,

“What do you have all over you?”

And took the tail of your shirt still wet from wading in

And wiped the traces of the ink stains off.

Then you put your thumb into the corner of your mouth

And brought it out damp and erased a smudged mark from my cheek,

And then you touched my shoulder with three fingers from your hand

And asked me what I had done to myself to be in such condition.

“Do tell,” you said,

But I couldn’t speak.

I couldn’t tell you anything at all;

I thought I had been overcome by living electricity.

A stream of awakening shot thru me in warmth and strength and power

The moment your hand touched my body.

Nothing else was present.

Just a tremor of passion in my soul

And a quaking in my heart.

It seemed to me that every glance my way,

Each kind word, the inquisitive queries,

The interested attempts to figure me out

That you had intermittently sent along our recent journey

Had gone completely thru me,

Like a cosmic ray of energy,

And travelled to the farthest point away,

To the very edge of the universe,

Gathering momentum as they went,

And when they finally hit the place

Where they could be returned,

The inertia pushing them back to me

Was so intense that words will not describe.

But at that moment of your touch

Those forces hit together,

And every cell and every atom within my soul

Dissolved.

I felt a complete surrender in the arrangement of my atoms,

A loosening, unraveling, completely to my core.

My head was spinning, and I could feel my heart moving,

Rearranging.

I felt there was not a thing in the world

That I wouldn’t do for you,

And it terrified me.

You were chatty that morning,

And I loved it—

Telling me things that you had seen

And the thoughts you’d had about them.

I stared at you, doe-eyed,

Deer in the head lights startled,

And listened to your morning song

While I thought beside I heard

The chorus of the first streaks of sunlight streaming forth,

And harmony of the stars that sang in deep basses unintelligible,

The rhythmic clicks and chips and taps of universal percussion,

And horns and harps and timeless music all backing you up,

You—there in the spotlight!

What was this rolling tide of power surging thru me

I had felt a slight familiar trace of feelings,

But nothing quite like this.

This was no small, petty, jealous, greedy hoarding, one person of another—

This was large.

Chapter 16

Suddenly you turned to me strongly

With your steele gray eyes looking thru

And asked matter of factly, “So,

What’s been going on with you?”

And I was still unable to form a coherent thought.

“Are you ok?” you asked.

“Did you lose consciousness or something?”

“I don’t know,” I tried to say,

But it may have sounded more like

A cavewoman’s grunt, or some other primeval utterance.

I could only point to the lean-to.

So you came alongside me,

And with your arm around my shoulder,

We walked together til I could point again,

And you saw there the ancient scroll.

“What is this?” you began,

As you picked it up and started stringing it out

Across the topmost points of my shelter

I would feed the slack up to you and you kept lining it out,

And finally it all hung there out to dry.

You didn’t seem that interested

In where it had come from

Or how it had come to be in my possession,

But we stood together enjoying it,

Reading it, trying to understand it,

And when we got tired of standing,

We sat together and continued pouring over it—

Kept watching its movements and personifications

Coming to life on the giant page.

And the sun would dance on it, and the breeze blew it,

Waving it, and its billows would take the sentences and

Rearrange them, and mix the plots and characters all up

To make new stories out of the old ones,

And we would laugh together

To finally understand a meaning,

And we would stun with gaping mouths

At some of the tragic scenes.

We came to see the text as an ancient quilted patchwork,

Telling the stories of the families of earth—

The lives that had been lived out.

Shakespeare was there,

The epic of Hamlet,

The questions of choosing to live or to die,

The fact that that, in itself, is a choice,

The comic relief of a “louse” or a “flea,”

Of Robert Burns, or a Chaucer Tale,

The rhetorical questions of Socrates,

And all that day we sat and read,

And cried, and laughed,

And your hand was on me—

Around my waist,

Or at my shoulder,

Or pulling back a wisp of hair.

And even as I enjoyed and relished the day and its unfolding,

A hollow emptiness echoed inside

Until I thought I might cave in

If you would but touch me once again,

But I didn’t know either what

Result would be, and possibly even more catastrophic,

If you didn’t touch me again.

And so I rode out the waves of my passion—

The highs and the lows, the gentle lulls,

The breaking crashes against the rocks,

Til finally you stood and stretched and said, “Let’s find some food,”

And I rose with you,

And, maybe the scroll had taught me to speak again, or a new language,

Or maybe some part of my voice had returned,

But I spoke a simple, “Yes.”

And then in the process of standing and breathing deeply

And exhaling and feeling the blood and the pheromones

And the stardust particles of ancient days coursing thru,

My spirit was moved to intercede for me:

“She wants to know the meanings of the symbols in the writing,

And not in a cerebral,

Academic sort of way,

But in living the vibrant life

Which, the best of any literature,

Tries so hard to capture

And yet quite can’t.”

And thus my second wish was made.

Chapter 17

Together we built a campfire

And I continued finding sticks,

While you checked a net that you’d lain out.

And sure enough there was a catch,

So you brought it up and laid it out there on the coals.

It smelled so good broiling there, sizzling as it browned,

And as the sun began to set

We broke fish together.

And after we had eaten and were fully satisfied,

Something on my upper thigh caught your mind’s attention.

You put your index finger in the cuff of my ragged shorts

And pulled the material up,

And there between my hip and a tender spot just above my knee

Was more writing,

But this was not from any ancient scroll.

This was written out in a more modern type of alphabet,

And so you pulled my body out straight,

And with your eyes very close to my skin,

You began to read the poetry that you found there.

That night we lay together by the fire that we rekindled,

And you pulled the ancient scroll down

And tucked us up in it for warmth.

We slept wrapped up together,

Waking some along night’s journey,

To see the canopy of the stars turning gently overhead.

And I dreamed myself into dramas and lives that I had never

Fully understood or accurately grasped,

But suddenly I found that I was the desperate Bathsheba

Caught in a mighty snare of love for a king who was not mine.

I was Samson, without a care, divulging all my secrets

Of my strength and life force to one who had the power to blind.

I was Isaac working indentured 7 years for a “Leah,”

Willing to work a fortnight of years for the one I truly loved.

In a flash, I apprehended Emerson in his enigmatic verses,

Allowing Love, the god to have its scope, refusing nothing—

Giving all to Love, trying to heartily know

That “when half-gods go, the gods arrive.”

Where I had marveled before that one could merely so abandon

Life and children. For what? I couldn’t see; I couldn’t guess?

But now I knew exactly—

I knew exactly to the core,

What terrible passion could lie dormant in one.

“Thy name is Montague,” I muttered in my sleep,

And as some outer part of me relaxed in my dreaming state

The Truth of Love was able to break down

The hard fast prison walls of morality and ethics which polite society had erected,

And so Love came and rescued me from myself.

It dug me up out of a grave like existence

Yes! It brought me up and out of a cold barren ground.

It shined a blazing life light

Into my own deepest realness

Glaring out the people and things

That I had mutely hated,

Killing the things for me in myself and, too, in others

That I had long wished dead,

Then resurrecting for me the good, the real, the salty,

The earthy, guttural, honest Life

That had been waiting to be lived—

Waiting for light to shine on its seeds and bring it forth.

The Force of Love was humbling.

It plowed my heart and thinking—

Crumbling the hard clods of things I thought I understood.

I only hoped that it would also

Water the ground of my Soul-Self,

And that someday, something better

There might surely grow.

Chapter 18

The mornings always opened in Peace

The giant wheel began its span turning ever so slowly

The first rays of the daybreak were long and tall

And made themselves at home around my hearth

Elongating for me the precious moments of meditation and thought

But as the Day would rise up closer

Scrutinizing my decisions and making critical remarks

My shadow grew shorter and shorter

And there seemed less and less of me

The Sun hovered anxiously over my shoulder

Hurrying me along

“Better find some food, now.”

“You ought to prepare yourself for the night.”

“In just a little while, I won’t be here to protect and keep you,

And remind you of what is right.”

And so for that part of the diurnal course

I would be in a work release panic

Rushing superficially to get everything taken care of

Trying to prove myself to the Sun

That I was not a neglecting derelict

And that I had sufficiently equipped myself

For what usually turned out to be something for which

I could never have been prepared anyway

But along about late afternoon

I would feel the Great Ball of Fire

Begin to relax in his chariot

His wearying eyes focusing in on

Some other far horizon

And I would ease and take deep breaths again

I would feel that I had done enough for the Day

And so I would rest on the sandy shore

And wait for the wonderful Moon.

I gradually realized that my Self

Needed no preparation for the Night

For the Moon was kinder to me than the Sun.

The silvery orb didn’t glare and condescend

Its beams melted out into everywhere

Casting a blissful glow

The Moon never told me what I “ought” to do

And in its dusty impressionistic light

My imperfections became barely perceptible if not lovely

And if the luminous glimmers did detect some flaws

I trusted he would never tell

But rather he lived to inspire my vivid dreams

And so it was this afternoon,

That I perceived the shadows growing longer

And so I sat content, relaxing as the waves eased in and out

I noticed how trim my legs had become and how tan

They seemed indistinguishable from the incandescent colors of the beach

I thought surely this must be the exact place

Where I had been conceived

This very shoreline the place where the great creative force of Love

Had scooped me up—glittering, glassy minerals and mud

And formed the human shell of skin I wear

And then taken the sea air and the verdant green of the mysterious forest

And breathed the fire of life into me

For I could not have felt more at home

Than if I’d been reposing on the front porch

Of the house where I was raised

And perhaps today the Sun had grown jealous of the way I responded

To the Moon’s honeyed treatment

But about then its golden light shone just so on the water

And I reflected on the image I saw in the gentle rocking waves

My body was supple and strong from the months of foraging

My muscles were toned from hiking and combing the beach

And while the world had beckoned for years

With its deceitful promise of beauty from this expensive regimen or that

The sunshine and original air and crisp fresh water baths

Had put a ruddy blush upon my cheeks

And had done a professional highlighting job on my usually mousy hair

Now long and wispy from not being cut in months

I noticed my bare toes enjoying the wet sand

Wiggling freely and digging in and being

Washed and caressed by an occasional wave

The last trace of nail polish had finally been worn off

But what a pedicure it had been

Months of sanding and mud baths and cold water

Warm rocks and soaking and

Strolling through virgin grasses and untouched lavenders

Had softened the calluses and bunions thoroughly

And worn them completely away

These months of surviving had taught me truly

How to enjoy living

They had purified my life

Body, soul, and spirit,

And I had been distilled into a brand-new essence

I had never ever considered myself at all an attractive person

But as I looked deeply inside the contemplation

Of the idea that the waving reflection validated

I stopped and muttered,

“I am very beautiful.”

Chapter 19

I had sometimes wondered in my former life’s existence

Why we as shallow parents scurried our children away.

We would shell out thousands to has-beens and young wanna-be’s,

But could these joyless tutors with no singing in their hearts—

Could they really choreograph our daughters’ inner dancers?

Could hopeless metronomers inspire our sons

To discover the beats of their very own drums?

What would the tweedy walls of grey edifice arouse in our fair maidens?

What good had come of us packing our young men off

To the army or the university?

What could really be learned from a lecture,

Or what instruction from brainwashing?

Most of anything worth knowing about life

Was already encoded, the kingdom was there within us,

Lying right there deep in our souls, and the strands of our DNA.

And then there was the great ethereal ephemera that surrounds us,

Which we rarely seemed aware of,

But it tried to speak forth mysteries to us, and translate the wisdom within.

Children knew inherently how to dance!

They had the rhythm of the galaxies swirling.

We are intrinsic fighters and lovers—

Clawing and grasping and unfolding ourselves.

But it seemed to me that most institutions

Had stifled the great humanity of man and womankind,

Telling us “this” was a proper arabesque;

“This” an acceptable grand plie;

“That” an adequate or inferior grammatical construction,

But who is to say what makes a song “good,”

Or a painting “real art,” or who to determine:

“Now THIS is a poem.”

Who got to draw the lines and classify?

“Here is a great boxing match,

But this, a mere jealous brawl.”

I was glad that all the critics of the world

Now had more important things to do.

I could just picture them all huddled around a fire.

“Should we have an egg, then?”

“No! NO! Too much cholesterol,”

The others would say.

So they must be sitting around starving themselves,

Just as they had done before by being so fussy.

And so I laughed,

And then came the full moon bounding into my view,

Leaping over the hedge of trees on the other side of the sea,

I rose, too, and took his hand and up to his open arms.

I waltzed there with him, blithely swinging,

And as the night music modulated, he sat back on a cloud,

And I moved and swayed in a slow sexy samba,

Teasing him with a hula flaunt.

I heard a venerable ukulele

Ringing out a romantic lovers’ tale.

My arms wanted to billow up through my hair.

My hips felt the need to grind and jerk.

My breasts and shoulders shifting seductively

Saying, “Come, come to me.”

And so I danced an ancient dance of Love

To the cadence of the waves, to the melody of the cooing whippoorwill,

To the rhythm of the night’s soulful refrain.

So uninhabited was I in movement of every limb and sinew—

My shadow etching an umbric narrative

Against the cloudless sky,

But suddenly I felt a presence.

Someone somewhere was watching.

But the dance could not be stopped.

I couldn’t help it;

I “must finish,”

It kept calling.

And so into the motion

And the feel of freedom

And of purity,

I allowed the waves of the primal dance to

Have their way with me.

Chapter 20

The medicine man was still searching, still walking thru the forest,

Now following trails that lay behind him, obscure, he could not see.

He did not know what each next step would bring, but still he wandered,

Hoping every quiet footfall would help bring out that which should be.

Dusk was slowly setting as he stepped into the clearing,

Just on the other side the trees were large, but further apart,

And he could see the big water thru them and he saw a giant moon,

And there on the shore—a woman. He stopped and grabbed his heart.

Silently he crept up to the trees there on the shoreline.

Mute, he watched her dancing there by the water’s edge so bold.

His insides froze as he saw the ancient rain dance of his mothers,

And the forgotten words suddenly he remembered which he hadn’t heard since old,

Old times in which his ancestors would sing and drum and chant them,

Archaic now, the prayers and dancing, the timbrels, lutes, and lyres.

But they all came flooding back to him as fresh as today’s tomorrow,

And with the voice of his inner child, he joined the dance with the song:

            “Oh! The luscious flowers swaying,

Thirsty for your Love, O Rain!

Oh! How they open furtively,

Wanting your life giving sperm.

Seeds of progeny, thriving survival,

O Rain, come down and make us wet.

Make us live to love again;

Let our posterity never forget!

Never forget the nourishing moisture!

Never forget the primal dew!

That pooled and gave us milk as babies!

That washed and created us all anew!

Messy Love! Messy Rain!

Wonderful splashing, chaotic Love!

Rain down on us! Burst with thunder!

Come down upon us from Sky above!”

Oh! the medicine man cried as he sang!

Strange huge drops of salty release blooping out of his eyes.

Thrilled at the sight,

Yet grieved at the many years of passing

Since he had seen his true people.

But suddenly, he felt tears rolling cold,

Down from the crown of his white temples?

He felt them chill on his leathery wrists,

And dripping icy down the neck of his buckskin jacket—

He tilted his head back to see.

It was actually raining!

Chapter 21

Just as my dancing seemed to peak

Into a frenzied climax,

Just as I felt an internal shimmy within me catch ablaze,

Every muscle, every tendon jerked at once together,

And I fell in an exhausted, aching heap

On the sand by the stones of my fire.

And in the darkness, I heard thunder,

And a crash of piercing lightning,

And I lay there weak, barely aware of anything,

I faintly smelled an earthy rain soaked breeze,

And then I felt the dampness gathering,

Pooling up and dripping down.

I felt the tiny droplets so tender on my skin,

Like a newborn’s finger tips touching the ribs

Just under the breast as he nurses,

And I breathed it all in,

And regained a dimension of conscious Reality,

And bolted to my shelter to get out of the pouring rain.

I wondered how the downpour had come up of such a sudden

For there had been hardly a trace of a cloud

Till a wisp at the setting sun—

But that was not a rain cloud, yet this, a gully washer,

So I huddled giggling, still giddy from my dance, and then the bold awakening.

I was still euphoric and the rain made me ecstatic.

It laughed right there along with me,

And somehow steadied my shaking arms and legs.

And as I watched the shoreline

And the silhouette of raindrops,

I saw a shadow outlined at the lean-to’s makeshift door

I gasped and watched his white braids falling down around his shoulders

As he took his beaded head gear off and bowed his head and knee.

Chapter 22

We sat without speaking for ages

We couldn’t have heard the words that might have been said anyway

For the rain was pouring straight down in thundering pelts

Stomping out the need or the efficiency of utterance

Sometime in the middle of the darkness

The drops relaxed and quieted to a silent sprinkle

Still, the old man and I sat without talking.

I stared at him without fear or tension;

I was not afraid of him in any way,

Nor was there any judgment toward him;

I felt no need to size him up.

And yet, I tried to study his rugged clothing,

I wanted to understand the significance of

The beading, the fringes, the leather strap about his neck

With what appeared to be a bear tooth hanging down from it,

The faded, well worn breeches

That looked soft as a newborn fawn,

Yet I somehow I thought they must have been protecting him on his journeys

For a long time, maybe longer than I had been on the planet.

I wanted, not to stereotype him, though his clothing made it difficult,

But to see within the mountain man,

To understood how he’d survived on the land long

Even before it had became necessary for all of us to do so.

And I knew deep within a spiritual part of myself

That there was much more to him.

He had a very humbled look.

He would not look directly at me.

I would catch him cutting a glance my way

But if he saw that I was looking back

He would cast his eyes back hard

Down to the well-packed, smooth dirt of the floor of my lean-to.

About dawn the rain gave way to a saffron sunrise,

The morning was abloom with color,

The dewy drops on the grasses, and even the weeds

Shone like a million diamonds all at once.

I went to where I usually could find a duck egg, and there were three,

So I brought them back toward my hearth on the beach

Where the old man had already gotten a good fire going.

He took the eggs from me and put a large stone right on one of the flaming coals.

He spoke some words in his language.

It seemed to me about as long as the Lord’s Prayer, and reminded me of it,

And when the prayer was over, he tilted the stone

And let the eggs roll thru the ashes,

He stood and raised his hands slowly to the east,

And then made a wide round motion, one arm at a time,

Like a giant grandfather clock engaging its gears into the rest of the universe.

Then he stooped and scooped the eggs out of the ashes

And handed them to me.

I handed him the eggs back.

He smiled.

Then he kept one, and returned two into my hands.

I laughed, and sat down by the fire, amused at our little game.

I peeled one egg, and watched him peel his,

I held my egg to him, and said, “Cheers!”

He had his peeled about then, and mimicked my hail,

Then we ate our eggs together.

After we finished those two eggs,

I took the third one and peeled it.

I broke it into two pieces,

And it split almost exactly in half.

I gave him his choice of the two, and, of course,

He took the smaller portion,

And so again we raised our eggs to one another,

And he spoke to me in my language thru his ears,

“Tseers,” he said,

And we both laughed as we shared the third egg.

Chapter 23

“I am Tsa'ra-gi',” the old man said,

With an air that was both proud and yet trusting.

“I am a dying breed, for I am a healer,

And there is much in the land that needs resolution.

I have been on a long journey

Searching for one who will do what I do

For time is short for me,

But the Supreme Being has woven long strands

For the children of Kana'ti and Selu,

But there will be many more days of wandering for them,

And in those times of broken pieces,

They will need to look to the ancient wisdom,

The Sacred Formulas of medicine.”

He continued to inform me of the many prayers—

The kinds one should say before specific hunts,

So that sickness would not come,

And of the fact that he knew methods

To scourge Ailment if it found its way through the walls of the camp

He made his story go so far back into the history of his kind

That I beheld the vision of a people, living in Purity

With the Supreme Being, so that no third party was needed.

No guilt had yet plagued them or bent their heads down.

They lived without waste or lack.

Every man was a chief of his own dwelling and of his family.

Every woman a princess.

Every child beloved,

And love and mutual respect for one another

Flowed from grateful living.

But slowly, some had thought certain others

To have more powerful medicine and had questioned their own standing,

So they would ask these more knowledgeable ones

To say their prayers for them, standing in their place.

These qualities were handed down in families, until

Finally, the culture of the modern world had erased much of the old ways,

Or intermingled into theirs, and the language had been all but lost

And the medicine, too.

Then he turned to me

And said,

“I saw you dancing there last night.”

He pointed to the shoreline:

“I saw that you have the strong medicine,

For you made it rain all night with the ancient dance.

I want to know

What your lineage is,

And how you came to be in possession

Of the formula of this mystical, archaic, dance.”

I had been caught up in the rhythm of his language

And the picture he was painting there of his people’s golden age,

But I was a few lines behind him as he spoke it,

So his last stanza caught me off guard and completely by surprise.

I was still wondering if there had really been a time when

The simplicity of the people was as pure and real as he said,

Or if the nature of all mankind was to imagine that there were such ages past.

But now he was thinking that I was a medicine woman?

He was believing that I, with my moon dance, had made it rain?

“Oh no.” I said

Shaking my head.

“I am not that powerful.

Oh no,” I reiterated,

“No, I am not the one you are seeking.

I have no lineage.

I have no people.

I am nothing—

No one—

And don’t know anything!

I am powerless to help myself,

Or change myself in anyway. I cannot even pray

For myself or even wish!”

I thought of the many falling stars of late that I had seen,

And how I had barely used up any of them

So I didn’t see how I could be a purveyor of any hope

To an entire people, when I couldn’t muster much for myself.

Tsa'ra-gi' sat without expression,

Unconvinced by anything I’d said.

“I know what I saw,” he said.

“There was no mistaking

That you made every ancient step

And move of the medicine dance,

And if you are not the one to come

And help the people,

Then why did you know these magic movements,

And why did you make it rain?”

“I don’t know,” I said with both hands up,

Palms outstretched toward him

Pushing his offer back to him, and shaking my head firmly, “No.”

I was intrigued that maybe I was a descendent of his people,

But I couldn’t get it through my head that a dance could make it rain,

And yet it was very true that the rain had come from no where.

I couldn’t explain that one either, but I continued to deny.

Chapter 24

“Come with me,” said the medicine man,

As he rose and began toward the water,

“And I will show you where the mussels hide.

You will need to know so you can make the winter,”

And he kept walking in front of me, leading me to the shore.

I got up and followed him, for that did sound like something

That, in fact, would be beneficial for me to comprehend.

He showed me little places where the rocks came in together,

Just the way that mussels like it, and so they make their homes.

We gathered 8 or 10 of them, which I put in my pockets,

And then he took a stick and stuck it down into a muddy hole.

He came out with a crawfish, and he hung it on his neck strap.

He found a few more of these and we were on our way.

He stepped then slow, but surely back, beyond my hearth to the big trees,

And there he showed me some plants that he said were very good to eat.

He told me which specific parts are good in the various seasons—

When to eat the petals, when the roots were good.

He took some leaves into his hands and held them to his face,

He smelled them deeply and smiled, and then he held them up to me.

I took them and breathed also their aromatic treasure,

He told me how to make some tea, and what a good poultice they make.

I was fascinated by the wealth of his great knowledge.

I was truly thankful for the wisdom I had gleaned.

We took the things we’d gathered and headed back up to the campsite,

Rekindled the fire with some driftwood, and then he took his stone.

He placed the mussels on it, until we heard the shells crack.

He skewered the crawdads and held them out directly over the flame.

We boiled some water in a tin he had and steeped the fragrant leaves there.

My eyes were wide with amazement at how elegantly we dined.

The tasty foods so warm and filling and the delicate soothing tea!

I looked at my friend and thanked him; I thanked him for the banquet!

And he just threw his head back and chuckled and said that it was nothing!

About then I saw the old chief “relax a bit in his chariot,”

I recognized the peace in his eyes like the ease of the setting sun,

And so I asked him why it was that people of many races

Felt that only certain gifted ones could mediate the medicine?

He bristled at my question for just a visible second,

But then he cocked his head, and looked very far away.

“That is a good question,” he mused as he chewed upon the tea leaf.

He reclined back on a rock and stared into the oncoming waves.

“I guess at one time, some of us got lazy, or maybe some were jealous,

Or we second-guessed ourselves.

But the work of medicine was left up to certain individuals.

Maybe we who took on the roles should never have taken them on.

Maybe no one should stand between anyone else and the Spirit.

Maybe the work of the medicine man does more harm than good.

Maybe that is the reason that no one wants to follow

And learn the ancient ways anymore, or be the medicine man.

I have seen the numbers of our kind dwindle down to nothing.

I have seen my people quit holding the sacred truths.

Maybe it is partly because the roles of the reputed shamans

Grew bigger and bigger and bigger than life

While my people’s lives seemed dim.

They put medicine up on pedestals,

But we cannot live up to that,

And many have failed and others see

The chasm there between.

So maybe this is part of the quest for which I journey,

To understand my parting part

And, if any way I can,

Bridge the reality of wholeness and true healing,

And be a repairer of the breach

I would do just that.”

“You told me today that I had a strong medicine,” I wondered,

“But I have never learned it or had knowledge of such a thing?

Maybe there are things we have inside that we don’t know are there?

Maybe there are ways in which we can un-layer the wisdom?

Maybe the great things that lie within us can be seen and be revealed?”

I saw a tear fall from the old man’s eye, which he wiped away so quickly,

He shook his head, and again he looked far over the waves.

“I do not know how you were able to do the dance, the dance of the great loving mothers,

I cannot grasp the feelings that my heart beheld last night,

But the proof is this: it rained did it not?

For we sat all night and beheld it,

And that is the ancient rain dance,

And that is just what it does.”

Chapter 25

That night I slept again wrapped up in the ancient velum.

The old man made a pallet out by the hearth under the gleaming stars.

I was tired from being up most all of the night previous,

And fell hard asleep just after dusk and fast was engrossed in a dream.

Suddenly I felt a warm hand? In the middle of my back?

My breathing stopped and my heart pounded as I wondered what it was?

Then a hand cupped around my mouth to keep me from screaming or speaking,

And I heard a hushed whisper, “Shhhhhhhhh…”

The hand was still over my mouth, but now I felt a body.

I turned to see you straddling me, peeking out of the lean-to’s branches,

Looking out toward the glowing coals where the shaman lay asleep.

“Who is that?” you said, not liking it already,

I couldn’t help but smile to see your rugged face again.

“Oh, that,” I answered sleepily, “is just the old medicine man on his blanket.”

And in my drowsy dreamy state I reached my hands up your chest.

“Just how old is he, then?” you said without really waiting.

“Old enough to be your dad,” I said and tried to pull you down.

I could feel your body, hard and sinewy upon me;

I could feel the strength you possessed rushing there in your veins.

I knew then that you were born to be a king upon the new earth,

And perceived that truly you someday, if not right then, would reign.

You wrapped your legs around mine, and then pulled yourself down beside me.

Your eyes looked deeply into mine, searching, for what I don’t know,

But they must have seen something there to reassure them

For your arms slipped tightly around my waist and you pulled my body close.

You pressed your lips to mine as if you had never kissed another,

And I couldn’t breathe for the rush of love that coursed within my soul.

We lay there like that for hours upon hours,

Tangled together safely, two, complete and whole and warm.

And finally we slept and woke when the sun was already up and breaking,

And we looked out by the smoking hearth

But the medicine man was gone.

Chapter 26

And so we continued to lay there together,

And you began to speak to me.

I saw your mouth, so perfect, moving,

And sound was coming out.

But I could not, for the life of me,

Understand a word you said.

So I simply lay there and watched you while you talked.

I felt you pull away a bit, and rest upon one elbow,

I refocused in on your symmetrical face,

The cleft there in your chin.

I stared deeply into your regal eyes,

The “windows of the soul,” they say,

And there, I began to get a vision

Of what you were seeing as you spoke.

You had been out into the depths of the freshwater sea that day,

But with your glass you had spied me, as I came to rest on the sand,

And something about me had terrified you,

Though your words would have never told me this,

And that you wanted to sail still further out away.

And yet something else had floated your boat, moving you closer in.

 Just at dark, you had seen me there,

Engaged in my dance with the moon,

And as you kept watching me, something spoke hard inside your reins.

Most of your body, and part of your soul, was pulled toward the shore to be with me,

Lulled by the freeness of the dancing, drawn in by the promise of something intangible.

But when your mind was about made up that it was actually good

That the tide was bringing us together,

You saw another person lurking in the forest,

And you saw me fall into a heap upon the sand.

Then, an urgency in your eyes and in your loins,

Caused you to take your oars and try to row to where I was,

Just about then the squall of pelting rain hit the bay and

Pushed you back toward the deep parts.

For a while you fought it, trying to keep paddling against the winds,

But none of this was matching up exactly with your philosophy,

And so finally you quit, because you could see no end to the raining darkness.

Yet sometime in the middle of the early morning the storm did let up,

And something deep inside your spirit

Had made you

Come for me.

I had heard an ancient legend

About an eastern tribal remnant,

That once, at one of their festivals,

A miracle occurred.

A mighty wind had come

And blown a fire upon them,

And they were able to speak to each other,

And were able to understand.

Mmmmmm…I made a wish right there

That I could understand you,

That I could speak your language,

That I would always hear

Your true heart,

Your Reality,

The sincere meaning of your speaking,

For already my love was forever yours,

I just wanted you to know it,

And I wanted desperately to become someone

That was constant there for you,

And that you might see and know this was my heart.

Then as the light was dawning on you,

It slowly dawned on me.

I could see that Life had tried very hard to kill you.

I hadn’t previously noted all the battle scars on you,

But they were there from the crown of your head down even to the tips of your toenails.

Suddenly I could feel pain in my own belly, from places deep within you,

Where wounds had been inflicted, dating way back to your childhood.

Then I began to see where there were traces of fresh blood.

“People are always trying to do away with the king,” I thought.

And now the world had gone berserk,

And though this would prove to be a good thing

For you, for your kingdom would, because of this, be manifested,

Yet much healing was needed in the earth; I knew I needed it too.

But the love that I had wished for

Had captured me entirely,

And so I kept looking deep inside to see the things that were real,

And so I kept listening, and loving you intently,

And waiting for all the pieces to find a place at last.

Then we walked over to where the medicine man had slept,

The form of his body still left a visible impression in the soft earth,

And there was a rolled up leather still lying there,

So I went and picked it up. Had he forgotten it?

I looked beside it and saw some markings

In the damp sand just below it, and so I began to read,

“Take this robe. Winter is coming.

I can make another, but I want you to have this one.

I will return. My journey will bring me

Back across this path of yours.”

I rolled out the long soft hide of the ancient leather.

I held it up to look at the simple, yet striking, bead work.

Then I looked you up and down, and seeing the size of the duster,

I laid it gently over your broad shoulders,

And you slipped your arms right in.

It looked wonderful on you,

And was a perfect fit.

Chapter 27

What a powerful gift—this love

For as it continued to hold me captive

I found that my enslavement to it, inexplicably,

Emancipated me, setting me more and more free.

I discovered that it was both, truly terrifying,

And yet, it was evicting for me

Loitering emptiness, and petty fears

Which had mendicated me for too long.

My soul had gone bankrupt from their mooching,

But by inutterable methods, my return was coming a hundred fold,

For the desire for love, and the wish to understand

Rose up together like smoke from two fires,

Whirling together to form a lively pillar of fragrant incense.

Surrendering myself entirely to Love

Had really conceived the other desires,

And the humbling effect produced a spirit

That said, “I have nothing to lose,

And All to gain.”

Greater and greater the understanding spread with in me,

Interpreting for me old conversations and new,

And if someone may have said some trifling word,

Or had fired off a bitter arrow, or a fiery consternation,

And I had been hurt,

The Living Enlightenment shone now through Love,

And it rushed through every layer of my consciousness

To expose the wounds and attach itself to them

So that Wisdom could come and heal them.

I would suddenly feel fresh interpretation,

Unmasking the incomplete sentences, and the run-ons,

Then fixing the grammar of it,

So I could see that the message of intent behind the fearful theme

Was, in fact, a poetic draft of deep abiding love and care.

Critical remarks covered abysmal concern—

A fear that I wouldn’t be seen as “smart.”

Insulting jabs belied a heart saying,

“I really love you, and don’t want you to be hurt again.”

Sarcastic bites, mere children’s notes, asking,

“Do you love me? Check the box.”

Masqueraded as barbed-wire,

But when the heavy layers of the costume were removed,

The affectation projected obstreperously by the actor,

Barely whispered with the lights off and the curtain down,

“I am afraid that I will hurt you,” or was

Silent, cowering at the thought of itself being hurt again.

And so even the past could be resolved?

Time was relative, after all,

And my soul’s foundation was being girted up

So it could stand, and further, so that it could have

Something new and wonderful built upon it.

I could see it going back together in a better, sturdier way,

Reaching back thru my history,

And then the restoration kept moving

Stretching out into the realm of creation

To prepare a better future,

Not just for me, but for anyone connected

In any way to me.

Chapter 28

I watched as you stood there in the duster

You smiled and shook your head,

“I never thought that I would be a cowboy

Or an Indian, but look at me, I’ve become both!”

We chuckled at that one!

It was warm that day, but you went ahead

And wore the leather into the woods to forage,

And I saw you walking; you seemed a bit taller,

Standing up very straight, with your head up

As you disappeared into the trees.

I got the fire rekindled, then walked down

To the water’s edge. I found the place where the rocks

Come together just so, and sure enough,

There were some mussels.

I smiled, thinking about the old medicine man.

I could almost picture him, wandering, trying to come to grips

With the picture in his head, and the picture of how things were.

I thought too of how it seemed that religion of all kinds had failed.

Even the medicine man was telling that same story—

Diminishing returns, these formulae, and rituals

Unless some foundational Truth was imparted, and internalized

And worked out until it became a part of our everyday lives.

I walked over to the nest, and there were three duck eggs.

I tried to imagine you and I playing the little game that the medicine man

And I had played, giving the eggs back and forth

In self effacing silliness!

It was fun that one time, but it seemed to me that it would grow old.

I laughed as I thought of trying that ritual out on you

To see how you would react. I thought I would!

And so I took my finds back to the hearth

And set the mussels out on the rock, like the medicine man had done,

And took the flat stone out and thought to try his method of roasting eggs as well.

Some of the rituals were okay I guessed, as long as they worked!

And so I tried to remember his prayer. I wondered if it had become something trite

To the people, like a glorified egg timer,

So that the words went in one ear and out the other,

But the eggs would come out perfectly roasted.

I had tried to memorize his words,

And the love and respect I had for the person

Behind the beads and the outfit

Mixed together and I truly prayed:

“Great Being of Supremity,

Right now, your name is Sovereign and Completeness,

Your world of wholeness with nothing lacking or broken must come right now.

You must now supply for us everything necessary for our sustenance.

Your essence cannot but forgive us as we have crossed the lines,

Even as we let go of everyone and every line they have crossed with us.

You must not lure us into the Trial,

But carry us out of the camp of our enemy,

For this is your character, this is Who you are,

And it is not within you to be any other way.”

This prayer settled deeply into my spirit

And I thought how much more bold it was

Than many prayers I had deigned to pray,

And I wondered at the authors of it,

And what wisdom they may have had,

Or what desperate condition may have evoked

Such language to a god.

I got so engrossed in following this trail in my mind

That I almost forgot to tip the eggs off thru the ashes,

But I quickly did that, and looked up to see you

Returning successfully from your hunt.

You did have the look of a rugged individual,

And you smiled at me happily.

When you got down beside me at the hearth,

I stood on tip toe to give you a quick kiss.

Then I took the three eggs, and I handed them to you,

And then I watched interestedly to see.

You wrinkled your brow a bit and said,

“You want me to peel them all today, Hon?”

And I just laughed and said, “No, my king,

I will peel them for us.”

And so, I thought, the game is not a natural one,

For one wouldn't spontaneously hand back all the eggs."

But, then, I hadn't kissed the medicine man.

Maybe that had changed the rules?

Chapter 29

(the tsunami)

Today, about mid-morning

I was in the bushy tree line,

Walking about, seeing what I could find to eat

And keeping one eye open for any materials I could use,

When suddenly, I felt a chill in the atmosphere.

It felt like the bottom dropped out of the entire universe,

And I couldn’t tell,

Was it literal barometric pressure plummeting?

Or was it something else?

About the same time I heard a strange sound within the sea,

And so I came crashing out of the thicket to discover

What was going on.

To say the tide was going out

Would be an understatement,

For more appropriately I tell you,

The sea had disappeared.

Completely dry, the bed there,

For miles and miles across,

All the way to the other side

Where the opposite shoreline lay.

My first inclination, universal human curiosity, I suppose,

Was to follow the sea and wander out

To view the mysteries and treasures and even the filth

Usually hidden by the murky depth,

But I had witnessed too much footage

From far away places like Hawaii,

Bangladesh, and more recently, Japan,

And when the sea goes rushing out after its forbidden lover,

It’s gone but just a little while

And in scornful rejection returns,

Visiting the naïve shoreline with a vengeance,

Forcing itself beyond the agreed upon boundaries

In aggression and resentful hate.

And so my thoughts said, Go to higher ground.

I needed a safe place and maybe fast.

I had noticed at the edge of the thicket,

A little place there in the forest

Where the elevation seemed to rise a little bit,

And so I gathered just a few essentials

And wrapped them in the velum,

Tying up the corners of it

And heading hurriedly in that way.

Twenty minutes later I was there

And spotted a jagged deer trail.

It disappeared up into the woods

And up the mountainside.

And so I began my trek toward new unknowns.

As I was winding up the path,

I soon began to feel the grade

Of the hike in my legs, but just kept stepping,

My head bent down to find each place secure.

As my hamstrings and calves felt the strain,

Sweat beaded up on my face and arms,

But I finally made it to a little clearing.

I stopped there a minute to catch my breath

And to look back from where I’d come.

Numbed by the strangeness of this perspective,

Physically tired, and emotionally spent,

I wasn’t sure if even this height

Would be safe from the mighty sea,

So without hesitation, or any further thought about it,

Self-preservation instincts took over,

And I turn and plod again,

Marching to the cadence

Of the force that kept pushing me along

Chanting,

“Live, Live, Live, Dammit!”

Maybe looking back had not been such a good thing?

Maybe it never is.

Maybe I fell victim to the same lot

As Lot’s wife.

For as I continued my trudge,

I slowly began to taste the salty tears

Of this unknown trail that led upward and on,

And then a torrent of sadness and grief came pouring out of my eyes.

I hadn’t allowed myself to think

Much, or at all, about the past.

I hadn’t permitted myself to wonder about my old home,

My husband, my children, my brothers, my parents.

Where were they now?

How had they changed?

Were they even alive?

But thoughts of them came rushing headlong into my consciousness,

And I wondered if or what they thought of me?

My next thoughts were for you.

Somehow my feelings were more intense toward you

Than even those I had for the babies I’d carried in my very womb

And nursed at my own breasts.

A flashing question blinked at me, “Is that normal?”

I didn’t know.

I didn’t care.

Intense grief settled in on me

Like a big fat bully.

I had felt its mini twinges many times before,

Every time you’d left me

To go and do this or that,

Every time we’d said goodbye,

I would wonder if we would ever be together again.

For everything in this realm was so foreign and uncertain,

But this time

I had too many pressing questions running thru my mind.

Had you been on land or sea

When the sea had vanished?

If you had been sailing right then

What effect would such an event of nature

Have on a vessel such as yours?

I was too concerned about you; I knew that.

I had many questions, but nary an answer,

But the will to live had taken me captive now,

And kept sticking something hard in the middle of my back,

And kept forcing me up along the trail,

Relocating me to a place where I might be reserved.

So I kept moving up as the tears kept pouring down.

Time meant nothing to me now,

In fact, it never had.

I couldn’t tell if it had been a day or just an hour,

But I came to a place in my journey where

The tears had all subsided.

The trail widened out before me

To a restful grassy Platte,

Up on the side of the rocky mountain.

A big rock was sitting in the edge of the shade there,

And I needed a rock about then.

I lay my hobo’s knapsack down,

And myself, I sat upon the sturdy granite.

Flickers of light came thru the shadows of the leaves

Making the minerals in the stone glimmer

And appear almost liquid,

But something restored my soul,

Sitting alone there in the clearing,

And I knew how solid that was.

I breathed deeply.

I could smell a pungent faintness

Of cedars and fir here.

It smelled good.

The aroma-therapy cleared a little patch in my head

Enough so I could see again.

I spotted a rocky outcropping that looked

Just right to make my hearth for the night,

So I rearranged the rocks just a little there,

And fetched some dry moss and sticks.

I had a fire going before too long

And the smoke from the flaming sticks and branches

Was like a long lost friend that night.

I watched it in pure silence, but Old Smokey didn’t mind.

I watched him as he danced up into the night.

He didn’t say a word either,

And as the night fell quickly there on the east side of the point,

I saw the dark creep across the eerie stillness of the sea’s barren bed,

And I wondered what tomorrow would bring.

Chapter 30

There was a spring fed brook close by

And in the morning light it sparkled,

Clean and fresh and unpolluted by anything upstream,

For I found that the source of it was lying right beside me,

And the cold clear stream poured silently out

From between two rugged stones.

I had a couple of eggs I’d roasted

Down on the beach the night before,

And I added some water from the spring

Into a pouch of acorn meal.

I made myself a little biscuit

And cooked it over the flames.

Then I turned and looked down hill.

I could see so far from my high perch.

I watched a rosy aurora now spread out across the dried sea bed.

I figured the other shoe would have surely dropped by now,

But I’d never heard how long it took for a tidal wave to hit,

And with all the weirdness and catastrophic things of late,

What if the old knowledge was no good anyway, anymore?

What if the entire cosmology had changed

And even the laws of physics had been repealed?

I finally decided that I should stay

At least a couple of days on the mountain,

Then I could try to discern what to do from there.

I wished that I were smart,

And that I could have real wisdom,

To know the right things to think,

And to make the decisions that would keep me safe

And lead me to happiness and true peace and serenity.

Then I thought, “Oh, I guess that

I just made another wish.”

I knew I still had at least a few left,

But I had just lost track of the exact accounting.

That night just as the shadows fell again,

I sat on my rock looking out to the east,

And as I was thinking about you

And sitting so still,

I heard a branch crack.

I inhaled deeply, hoping it would be you.

I turned my head, quick but silently,

And there was a tawny white-tailed doe

Approaching the spring fed brook.

I froze, not wanting to frighten or hinder

And watched her tip toe timidly up.

She couldn’t see me there in her blind spot

And covered by the dark of the trees.

She made it to the waters’ edge

And nibbled on the rivulet there,

Until her thirst was quenched and sated.

I saw her belly was big. Maybe she was pregnant?

Then suddenly she turned and jumped

And disappeared into the mountain.

For the three days which had apparently been set apart for me,

I found hunger to be a stranger.

I didn’t want much food to eat,

But the water tasted so good.

And I thought a lot,

And understood many mistakes that I had made,

But I came to peace with them

And learned so many things.

Slowly I made gains in resting from worry

There on my mountain respite.

I found a spring of peace within my own soul.

My vision was more farsighted now

And clearing was the cloudiness.

The fear which usually kept its hand

So firm around my throat

Had apparently not made the climb,

So I was free to breathe and think,

And to be more sure of how to act,

And of what was really me.

Without the worry crowding me,

I saw new solutions present themselves—

Possibilities as probabilities.

Understanding promised me

That whatever agreement I would choose,

Peace was a better partner

Than contracting out of fear.

I tried to be patient with myself,

And took the time to allow

Any creative resolution to manifest itself,

And enjoyed the refreshing brook

And my days and nights in the mountain camp.

The third day, late in the afternoon

Before I’d kindled the evening fire,

I heard the branches snapping again

And turned to see the doe.

I was very close to her,

But she hadn’t even seen me.

I could have reached my hand out

And touched her velvet fur,

But I sat still and watched her

Lean her graceful head to the brooklet,

And noticed her belly was slim and firm now,

But her teats were hanging full.

Chapter 31

So now I sat,

And tried to understand

What I really knew thus far.

There had been no tsunami—yet.

I had worried and fled, and abandoned

My familiar beach for nothing so it appeared.

Or had I?

Because now I could see that the mountain clearing

Could easily be my home as well,

Maybe even a better one.

I had survived the huge catastrophe,

I could survive a “potential” one,

If it ever happened.

Yes, I had lost everything once or twice,

But the sun still came up the next morning,

And so far, so had I.

I thought of all the people in my life

That had come and gone, or been taken away,

Or that I had run off,

And I decided that the Serenity of Soul

Which I had so often sought

Had been the most secure

When it had come from within myself.

I had seen great peace in times of plenty,

And I had also amazingly been full

And glowing with its power

In times when broken pieces of shattered hope

Were all I held in my bleeding hands.

I liked it here,

And so I thought

That I would set about

To explore the mountain.

This would be good for me to do

On many different levels.

First, it would give me more time

In a place where I felt safe,

Because I still had a feeling

That the water just might come back.

Second, there might be a broader variety

Of food and material here for shelter,

And third, from this higher vantage point,

My perspective would naturally change,

And that just might be good for me, too.

So first thing the next morning,

I rolled up my little bed roll

And headed into the woods again

On another upward trail.

A part of me just wanted to go

As far as the mountain would let me,

To reach the top and to prove to my destiny

That it could still be done.

And still another part of me

Just wanted to know

Whatever could be known of the region,

By standing on the summit

And looking out in every way.

Right now I couldn’t really see the forest for the trees,

But knew if I kept climbing

I would eventually make the top.

However, I wanted to enjoy my journey this time,

Without any pressure or urgency pushing me along,

And so I walked a little slower,

And I stopped more along the way.

I walked more with my head up,

Trusting my feet with the footing.

I noticed the different kinds of trees

All growing there together,

And I spotted some of the edible plants

That the medicine man had shown me,

So I grazed on them along my trail.

The woods were still so dense here

That I really couldn’t figure

Just how far a journey it would be

All the way to the top.

But I had a sense of how quickly

Night fell on the mountain,

So I found a place to bed down

And camp out for the night.

Next morning I was up at dawn

And had a hearty breakfast—

Some pecans and pinion nuts from

The lower clearing site.

Then I rolled the ancient velum

And shouldered it to begin my journey up,

For the path was there a waiting, calling me.

I’d only gone a little way,

Humming a little tune now,

When I happened to see some faded boards

Vaguely thru the trees.

It looked like an old barn,

But I couldn’t quite see all of it.

It peaked my curiosity

Enough to cause me to change my course.

I veered from up to sideways,

Cutting across the main path,

But making my way on a lesser traveled one.

Sometimes I lost sight of whatever it was that I had seen,

But continued that direction

Until I came to the meadow’s edge,

And could finally see it all.

It was a barn! A big one!

With an old shed built on the side of it,

And so I called out suddenly,

“Is anybody there?”

I then continued quietly,

Maybe somewhat furtively,

For this looked like the kind of mountain place

Where strangers are simply shot.

So reaching the barn,

And finding the door,

And peering in to abandonment,

I stepped in and felt myself

Go 50 years back in time.

The old style machinery

And rusted tools and implements

Had not been touched in a long, long time

Judging by the rust.

There was a loft up in the back,

And I climbed a creaky ladder.

Old dry straw was piled in the corner

And strewn across the floor.

I was already thinking about

What a wonderful bedroom this would be,

When I strolled over to its window,

And there I saw the house!

Chapter 32

I froze stock still in my barn perch,

Like a hawk that just spotted a catch,

Or either like a gazelle that just heard a lion roar.

I couldn’t tell if I were predator or prey.

One side of me wanted to collapse

From the weight of living like an ape girl for so many months.

A house!

Oh God, how good a house looked!

But my other side wondered what strings would be attached?

There were always strings, weren’t there?

My eyes were not accustomed to seeing such domesticity anymore.

I could even see faded gingham hanging in the windows there.

To have a room! To have a door that would shut!

But, what if there were someone already living there?

I had grown accustomed to being alone,

And that would be “their” house.

It had taken me this long

And this much painful unveiling

To get to know myself,

And to begin to understand myself,

And to feel love for myself for once.

Was I strong enough to maintain the gains I’d made

If anyone else were there to challenge them?

I had come to terms with a lot of things I believed,

And a lot of things I didn’t,

And I didn’t know how I would handle mixing in together right now

With someone who might not see things the way I had come to see them.

But I guess I could always leave.

I had survived all this time on my own,

And I could do it again,

But I wanted that house.

I really did,

I hoped that I did not want it so much

That I would sell my soul to have a part of it.

And so I went quietly, but excitedly, down the ladder,

And crept up to the windows there on the side.

I tip-toed to peek in a high window, like that of a kitchen or bathroom.

It was a kitchen. I could see cabinets, but not much else from my angle.

I sidled around to the porch in the front, and walked up the weathered stairs.

The porch was nice and roomy, and I looked in one of the two windows there

That rested on either side of the front door.

There was nothing going on in this house, I could just tell.

I stood in front of the door, and I knocked.

What else should one do to a door that was closed?

But of course no one answered, so I tried the knob.

It swung in to a little country den that lay open to the kitchen.

There were just a couple of bedrooms beside the living area.

 I walked nervously through the rest of the place.

Here was an enclosed back porch; and there was a bathroom!

A toilet! A tub!

Oh! how long had it been since I’d had such promise of privacy!

A nice bath in a tub with the door shut!

I was almost giddy at the thought of it!

The place was clean as a whistle

Except for a layer of fine dust covering everything in the little home

Which told me that no one had been there in a very long time.

I went to the spigot

And turned the handle.

Nothing.

Well rats, I thought

There goes my bath.

Oh well! Not to worry!

No one cared if stunk anyway!

I wandered around,

Feeling like a little snoop.

Looking in drawers and cupboards and shelves!

I was a kid in a candy store!

I had STUFF, now!

Even if it was “borrowed.”

The kitchen had a few things that I thought

Might still be edible!

I was hoping for a twinkie! They have a shelf life of thrity years!

No such luck!

But there was some oil that didn’t smell rancid,

And a little airtight cupboard had some stuff in it that looked okay,

Even tho I didn’t know what it was or what to do with it!

There was an old woodstove in the living area,

And I thought it would be nice to build a fire in there for the night,

And maybe to be able to cook something on it.

Then I went in to the front bedroom.

There was a big dresser in there with old lady clothes in it.

I held a smocky-looking blouse up in front of myself.

It was too big for me now.

It might have fit months ago, before all my hiking and the “forage/catastrophe diet”

Had melted away most of my chub.

But it was something, and I could cinch it up with a belt or a sash.

I hadn’t changed clothes in all this time, and a fresh shirt would be really nice.

There was also a big, old-timey bedpost bed.

I cut my eyes around,

Feeling a little weird to sit on some stranger’s bed,

But sit I did!

And it was a fluffy down filled feather bed!

Oh my!

The door to the other bedroom went right out this one,

And so I opened it and peeked in.

It was a more masculine looking room,

And sure enough, had manly underwear in the dresser,

And a large, oaken bookcase in the corner.

There were some really old books, there.

Some I had read long ago

And loved,

And some I had never read,

And a few I had read, and thought were boring,

But I like books, too!

Very strange being here—

Being in a strange house—

Strange feelings—

Strange—

I went back out on the front porch and sat

On the old wooden glider and rocked back and forth.

I hadn’t sat on a real chair like thing

Since I had been in the driver’s seat of my van

That fateful day.

But, I just couldn’t relax.

So I went back into the edge of the woods

And I watched the house suspiciously,

Like it might grow legs and get up like a spider and creep away.

But it just sat there so strangely.

I cut my eyes this way and that,

And wondered…

Maybe I liked being an ape girl?

Hmmmmmm…..

Finally a realization kicked in,

And I heard a familiar voice say, “Night is coming.”

It was the Sun, relaxing in his chariot a bit,

And then I suddenly remembered that I had

Inadvertently left my pack up in the loft of the barn.

So, I stealthfully trotted back up and into it.

I creaked back up the stairs of the loft

And went back over to the high window

And looked at the house again.

“I don’t suppose it would hurt anything

To bunk in here, in the barn, for the night,” I thought.

So I unrolled the old velum,

Stretching it out over the soft, worn-out straw

And made myself a mat to sleep on.

I saw the duster lying there.

It made me think of you.

I missed you.

You had insisted that I should keep it,

Even though it fit you so much better.

It was way too huge for me,

But you said the medicine man had given it to me,

And much like the little game the medicine man

And I had played with the eggs…

You and I played with the duster.

You won for the moment and I took it,

Although I figured at some point

I would give it back to you, and maybe you would accept it.

I had been using it as a pillow.

It made me rest easy, like you were there.

Of course, I had turned it inside out,

So the beaded designs wouldn’t stick in my head

And leave painful pillow lines on my face by morning,

But I did notice that I had vibrant dreams again,

Ever since I’d slept with the duster lying close to me,

Vivid colors and explicit scenes that I seldom understood.

And so I fluffed my leather comforter up under me,

And lay there in the barn, munching on pecans, and then drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 33

That night I dreamed.

It was a dream I had been caught up in

Many times before.

Even as a child

I would search for the door to that dream,

And dream it.

I loved that dream.

I would go to the closet—

The one in the south bedroom

Where the breeze blew in over acres and acres of green wheat growing,

And pick up the living-ness of the blades of damp earthy life,

And bring their fresh scent into the ancient gray boards of our old farmhouse

And right thru the windows there on the south

To me

Lying asleep in my bed.

And I would rise in the night

And go, and open the door to the closet

And look up.

I would bend my knees down, just a little bit,

And then spring up and grab the closet rod

Like an Olympic champion,

And gracefully, with strength and beauty,

Pull myself up and over the bar and hold myself there.

Then putting one foot on the clothes rod, and vaulting myself up

Through the small square opening that led to the attic,

I would find myself in another world

Just above, and yet so far removed from the drab, colorless

Existence that we seemed to be living.

The attic realm was brightly lit,

And I saw colors there that I had never seen below.

The hues and shades were more noticeable and happier,

If a color can be happier?

And more abundant somehow?

And there were boxes and boxes of stuff in there,

And it was stuff that our family surely could have used—

Big, fluffy, soft, comforting towels,

Not like the scratchy, threadbare ones we used everyday.

There were richly patterned quilts, heavy and warm,

And there were lots of them!

No one should have to fight a cover hog all night

When here was this pile of comforting softness waiting to be unfolded.

There were beautiful items of antique furniture,

Heavy and sturdy, and so much nicer looking,

And more effective, less broken down,

Than what we had in our house.

There were dishes, ornate and decorative, yet hearty.

There were hot pot holders and pans, and big bowls and spoons,

And there were clothes—piles and piles of them,

Rugged denims and eyelet laces, wooly warm coats and scarves and hats,

And they all looked like something out of a classic magazine

That never went out of style—

Like something the Kennedys would have worn,

(If my family would have liked the Kennedys.)

Well, maybe more something the Emerson’s would have worn, then,

Or the Henry David Thoreau’s.

But these were paradigm-less treasures

That Any Human would have loved

Whatever they might semantically call it!

However the dividers might try to divide it,

This was indivisible!

This was liberty! This was justice for all!

The challenge always came in the actualization,

Because usually I would wake up from this dream

Before I could get some of the stuff and bring it down

Into my other world.

A few times I willed myself to stay dreaming,

Far after the dream had tried to shoo me back,

And I grabbed some of the things, like the quilts and the towels,

That I knew, wouldn’t be just merely selfish of me to bring down,

But as I got back to the small square opening,

I found it too hard to come back through,

And I discovered that whatever I had in my hand would vanish,

Like a rope of sand,

And I would have nothing—

As I found my feet back on the lower level—again.

Then before I knew it

Another dream laid hold of me

The part of myself that understands

Was high in the black night

Upheld by a streaming current of real force

Like an all-seeing eye,

I beheld the entire forest where I was

And the beach where I had been

I could see my “ape-girl” self

Scurrying in and out fearfully

Amongst the trees

Nothing I did seemed to make much sense

To the Greater Part of my own consciousness

The vision offered no solution

But only an honest critique

Of my current existence

There seemed to be no purpose

No attempt to look beyond the day

To a greater destination

And it seemed that without this more meaningful

Aim at something significant

All my essence would be lost

Squandered by the ape girl part of me

On scurrying here and there

I woke up with a startled cold shiver

I didn’t know where I was

After a few seconds my eyes adjusted to the darkness

And I remembered that I was in the old barn

And all the changes in the earth

I fluffed the duster a bit, and pulled it in as close as possible

To the curves of my body

Then I pulled the velum around me tight

And faded back to sleep.

Chapter 34

This morning my brain woke up

Early, right before the sun,

And I made a conscious effort to think

Before even the sun could start influencing me

With his heavy handed cajoling

There were things I wanted to do

Weren’t there?

Things I needed to do for myself

I was going to the top of that mountain.

Period.

I was so close to it now, that I could hardly see it

But it seemed to be maybe a half day’s journey from here

So that was it

I could come back and camp here later, maybe

Or continue to explore

But I wanted to know what lay all around me

And get a better perspective

On the time and the place of my existence

So I figured I would find some breakfast

And outfit myself best I could

And go

About then, I thought I heard a rooster crow

I hurriedly wrapped up my bedroll

And got down and out the barn door to see

A rather gallant looking Americauna rooster,

Perching on the old wooden gate of the corral attached to the barn

Then I looked and there in the edge of the woods

I saw his little harem

Five hens scratching up some breakfast for themselves

If their nest was nearby, I might find a pretty good breakfast too,

So I went out looking, and sure enough, I found six nice large hen eggs.

I decided I would cook these the old fashioned way

On the woodstove in the house,

So I went inside and got a fire going.

I found a pan and went to the little brook and filled it with water

Hauled it back into the house and boiled my eggs.

I ate my breakfast at the little kitchen table

And thought, “I think I like them roasted in the ashes better.”

I spent a while cleaning up my little mess,

And then got to snooping around a bit more,

And reading some of the books I found there in the man’s room

And before I knew it

It was mid-day,

I decided I better get going

If I was going to get to the top of the mountain

So I packed the rest of my eggs, and grabbed my bedroll and took off

I walked up and up and up

Enjoying every step

Until finally I was tired

It was evening

I didn’t even bother making a fire

Tonight I just sat out late

Until long after dusk

Leaning back on the soft fresh green

My head nestled in the lap of the hillside

In silence I gazed even

Into the velvet midnight

Where the stars in their vaulted canopy shone

They flickered joyfully as they turned

A bow, a curtsy

And their dance went on

Some of them stopped to tip their hats my way

Several even winked at me

As if to say

You just wait Love

The best is yet to come for you

You have no idea of

The glory that awaits

Your second life

It brought me no great

Feelings of grandeur

No giddy feelings of joy

But peace fell down

On me like a heavy dew

And blanketed me

With a secure heart

I had no worry

No sadness

I felt heavy,

But in a good way

Like a pregnant pause in life

Where a good offer has been made

And considered

And accepted

I think I want to be born again, again

And this time

I want to reinvent myself

According to the open skies of pure love and grace

I want the entire universe to be my father

The gentle starry night—my mother

I don’t want any fears to foster

My developing formation

Only the unlocked doors of possibility and hope

So I can hear and see the things that signal to me

Who I really am

The things I really love in life

Not imprisoned by the chains of things

That I have been tormented into believing,

Or the fetters of doing things that I think I’m supposed to like

I was going to the top of the mountain

Tomorrow

My journey would take me there I knew

The only other thing I wanted in the world

Was him

The heaviness exhaled now

I stared into the night, and could swear

I saw your face there in the glimmer

I pulled in another deep cool breath

From the dark pure air of the mountain at night

I wanted him to be all right

But so much more

Now out again, the breath was gone

I wanted to taste his silver kisses

In again, deep inspiration

Filling my empty breasts to the full

I wanted to feel his heart against mine

Out again, outpouring spirit breath

I just wanted him

In again

I breathed

Slowly deliberately

I could hear the peaceful rhythm

Of my heart beating

And my respirations in and out

Easing me to rest

Out there under the open sky

Chapter 35

Long before daylight I arose,

And without eating or thinking or anything else,

I turned my face up toward the rising side of the mountain.

Sleepily I began my trek

With heavy feet that were still not awake,

And my bed rolled up and over my shoulder.

The first rays of rosy amber fell

Upon my footprints leaving the glen

And finally caught up to me,

Still making my way.

At least I knew now, which way was up.

It had taken me months to lay hold of that one.

But in realizing that, the vertigo had gone,

And many other realizations had made their way to my heart

And settled old scores for me.

And whatever now might be or might not,

I was going to transcend my circumstances,

At least for a day.

But that small gain might just be the doorway

To overcoming the smallness I saw in myself,

Once, and for all, and Forever.

And so I struggled.

The way grew rockier and chunkier

And harder to navigate,

And I would stop and look to see how much further.

And I would ponder this trail or that,

And choose one, and continue,

And as my body and my soul awakened,

I felt the Sun beating down on me—

Madder than ever today,

Burning through the thinness of the atmosphere there

And stinging my skin at times.

I could feel his adversity wanting me to quit

And stay below,

Scurrying in the trees and “preparing for the winter.”

I could sense his disapproval of my very quest.

I was a damn fool for leaving the safety of “down”

In his glaring eyes.

I didn’t care anymore.

I didn’t care if I burned.

I was going up and beyond and through the veil,

And I was going to see what lie beyond

The tear in Reality’s majestic, pious robe.

Its phylacteries were so wide that few dared

To question or even guess,

But I was going to rip that ostentatious garment

Off its back and strip it of all its dignity,

And see what it was really made of.

What was this life really worth living,

If I didn’t realize the blood and the guts

And the marrow of my own soul’s existence?

Suddenly I came to a wear in the mountain,

A place where the water would run down when it rained.

I surmised that the gully would also take me up,

And so I went against the grain of it.

And so I made my glorious ascent,

Knowing the summit was too close now!

My heart raced with adrenalin and encouragement!

I was already feeling a fresh current of air

Coming from the gusty crest,

And it cooled the grieving nicks and blisters—

The scathing stigma that the Sun’s dishonor had left on me.

Only a stone’s throw from the zenith!

Only 6 more paces,

Only one!

And NOW!

Here I AM!

Chapter 36

I stepped up onto the threshold of the rim

And took that final foothold up and over.

I felt the entire world revolving right that moment,

And panning the future before my very eyes.

I held my arms and hands up over my head in a V and spun,

Celebrating the sheer victory of the moment,

Then had the incredible urge to just rip the raggy, old clothes

Right off my body, and stand bare, and without pretense before the universe.

And so my hands went down to my waist and caught the tails

Of my faded shirt and the grimy bra beneath it,

And I pulled the whole thing right up and over my head

And threw it all down, inside-out, on the rocks lying there.

Then I pushed my shorts and panties, so baggy now and loose,

Right down over my hips, without undoing them, and let them hit the ground.

And then I began to dance.

I had my arms spread open wide, grabbing the sun himself,

And the swirling mountain air, and bending the rays, and redirecting the wind,

And looping my hands through the current,

And running, and leaping, and lunging, and pirouetting all about—

A high kick, and then a bow, tipping my non-existent hat,

Then dancing off around and back for another encore.

The breezes began to adjust to the movements of my fluidity,

Slowly surrounding me and whirling around

Until a vortex formed, and I in the middle.

And I felt the power of it and the ecstasy!

Then a sudden clap of thunder, and now a torrential flood of rain,

Falling down hard on the mountain, soaking my uncovered self,

Washing me from head to toe, and refreshing even my hidden elements.

I stood in the midst of it all and let it shower me—

My face toward the Sun, still shining as it poured,

The enormous drops saturating my dry dusty skin

And invigorating every part of me.

And then the deluge turned quickly to a drizzle

I opened my eyes to see the fresh, clean slate,

And there you are, standing incredulous before me,

Yourself also soaked, smiling playfully.

I ran into your arms, and as our dripping bodies pressed together,

Your lips touched my wet hair and you whispered,

“Darling, what have you done with your clothes?”

Chapter 37

Well, I knew your question was hypothetical, the way you grinned.

I knew it anyway, but especially when I saw your clothes coming off as well.

You shucked your tattered shirt and worn out pants,

And I looked at you in awe, such contrast your design—

Strong and state of the art.

Dazzling, like the newness of the returning dawn.

We stood together in the drizzling rain

Au natural, and unashamed.

We danced together, slowly and with form,

Moving together and apart,

Our fingers entwined,

A spin, a low dip,

And then you picked me up in your arms and carried me,

And gently laid me down on the mossy grass.

We rolled and played together.

We kissed each other tenderly,

Caressing each other lovingly,

And became one together, there on the mountain.

We lay there together into the night,

Watching the clouds dissolve away,

And the stars come gleaming into our sight.

We talked for hours about our dreams—

Sharing the things we had discovered—

The precepts that seemed right to us now

In this crazy new world,

What had fallen away?

What had unfurled

In a brand new light?

And I told you about the house down the way,

And I wondered if you wanted to go there and stay

For a little while, til we did something else,

And so the next morning we set ourselves to go.

And so we did.

We just left our clothes right there, up on the mountain,

And began our new chapter,

Me, wrapped loosely in the velum, and you, in the medicine man’s duster.

We found the little place, and I showed you the old barn.

Then we headed for the farm house.

On the way, you saw something, and took a close look at it.

It was a water valve, and you took the metal rod and turned it open.

When we got in the house, you tried the sink,

And there was water, pouring out of the faucet!

We roamed all over the house together,

Then you said, “I wonder what’s in the attic?”

And you pulled down a door that folded out into stairs,

And I followed you up into the loft.

There were quilts in there,

And boxes and boxes of clothes—

Denims and eyelets, and classic cuts

Of apparel fit for a king and a queen

(Or at least for a Kennedy!)

I told you about my recurring dream,

And we laughed to see it coming true then,

And we thought of what power the unseen realm

Has to create things into the physical,

And we marveled that we had, after all,

Met again on the mountain on such a day,

And we pondered what it all might mean,

Plopping down together on the feather bed.

Chapter 38

How silly I was, to wish on stars!

To think the Universe so greedy

That it only had 8 good desires to grant me!

How small minded I had been to try to lock

The Power of Being up with a simple key,

And to go on thinking that only a trickle of essence

Was dripping into the bloodstream of my Life.

There was vitality all around me which was capable

Of flooding my whole self with sentience.

Anything I could imagine was possible!

Unlimited wishes!

How could I have known?

But best of all to me was seeing the fulfillment

Of the primal urge that I had apperceived—

The desire for Love, Itself.

I had wanted to be the object of love.

I ached to be chosen in life as a cherished delight,

But my wish had come true in a very different way.

Yes, the force of love had chosen me

As a vessel to house itself for a moment,

Then flow through me to the heart of another

And devote myself to pouring love into him.

But the power of the great creative force

Rushing through my body and soul

Healed me, on its way through,

And brought me great wisdom and peace,

And transcended my mortal will.

But now I knew

That in passion’s rapture

Was exactly where the power dwelt—

The power to conceive;

The power to believe again;

The strength to conquer any foe,

Especially my greatest enemy, my smaller self,

The one unwilling to change.

There should be no obstacle now that would keep me

From seeing my good future become a real part of my soul,

For I had felt Love return to me through you,

And it was sweeter yet, having flowed also in and out

Of your body, intelligence, and soul.

So now I will relish my new life.

I will enjoy its elegance and its finesse,

And to continue to delight in the Life that is in me to live,

And keep myself open to the fervor and passion of Love

And its creative currents and the desires that it sets before me.

And without superstition, or worrying in the least

If I think I might have a wish coming or

Wonder if I deserve it or don’t in any way,

I will continue to wish my heart out.

 -jenn long