The Death of Our Island

Someday, this island will explode

And its ancient knowledge will evaporate into myth

Explorers will look for signs of our origins- evidence of our ending-

How it was that the land was struck in half, and then collapsed back into itself.

But no one will truly know what I saw as I witnessed the ending:

How the light spiked upward, and everything that had been covered was exposed.

The sky opened up, and the stars were pulled through like twine.

For a moment there was no time. Nothing felt significant- but every moment was. Each second was a blue glow in the darkness.

I will find the meaning in it, even if I end by lying on a grave of shells and pebbles.

The sun will wipe away the mist

The rain will wash away the old

Memories of the past will drown in visions of the future

The stones bend down to the river, the ground swells:

Someday, this island will explode.

Emerging

I am emerging

From every life I lived before

Each one a single stream of sunlight

Poking through a wall of stones

And each beam hitting me sheds away a filmy skin

Falling away from each nerve fiber to reveal clear visions.

I dry out, peel back, flake away where it clings-

I shake it off with shivers.

The chills move through each bone, marrow and muscle

Starting at the tail and working each frozen tissue back to water.

I am squeezed out like a sponge.

I am grated against by shark teeth.

I am pulsated by universal energy into the top of my brain.

I am ready

To reveal

To release

Through my life times I clear the way

And emerge

Channeling Gods

When she wants to speak to me she makes my head buzz.

I want to surrender to it- I try to open myself.

I tell her: let me see what you have to show me.

But my knees get weak and my hips shake, so I pull away instinctively,

Like I was touched with the white hot embers of electrical fire.

It makes my spine glow- it makes my skin feel thin.

Like there is nothing to stop me from diffusing into a thousand pieces across the universe.

I am afraid if this end- of my mind exploding into infinity if I am taken too far-

I fear the taste of her tongue, as if the touch of her fingers will burst open all of my cells,

And I will be lost in distended limbo forever.

But as long as she wants me to hear her she will find me. I will feel a sudden need for stillness;

And I find myself begging for her, for the sensations she brings me.

And truly she will come whether I am ready or not- all I can do is open- accept the intensity- the agony. She has only given me tastes of her power.

Her hand is pressed against my face and all I can see is light hitting me like a jolt of awakening- from the darkness of infinity into pure existence.

Becoming alive is pain. It is a stripping down. A separation from the whole.

She forces me to stumble. Bends me forward. Lets me stumble.

But this is what I wanted. She only gives me what I asked for- by allowing myself to be born.

The Tragic Womb

This is the thing I have avoided the longest

The healing of my own womb.

The tug of warm membranes tell me

That there was once something ripped away.

In my next life I will be a mother-

But in this one I am not ready. I cannot face the push and pull of another life on my heart.

I cannot face the connection to my own inside body- raw and red, a passageway swollen with deep and painful intimacy.

The tenderness I need to heal this- the gentleness necessary-

it is like shades of pastel. Swirls of pink and amethyst. Shining this light on myself with my own fingertips.

Such delicacy is required to open these tightly clamped tissues. And I am not ready for it.

So in this life, my womb will stay a tragedy.

Anchoring

I get swept up in my own life like dust in a pail- and when I sit in the future this way all my spirits are silent.

They are patient and silent as statues, waiting for my mind to come back, waiting for me to let go, snuffed out like a candle by my need to plan, to predict, to perform.

I come back to the daily choices. Recalling the things that reconnect me to spirit:

Licking my soil covered fingertips

Letting my body flow through familiar movements

Watching birds gather in their favorite dead tree.

Some things are constant: here I can anchor without having the think:

The cat leaves every morning and comes home every night.

Some plants will poison me. Some will gift me sweet medicine.

The clouds will contract and then spread wide again as they swim overhead.

The squirrels steal bites out of the garden squash every fall.

There will always be something new to learn- there will always be old knowledge to come back to.

So I re remember. My mind flies away. And I anchor it back to my body, to the earth. Over and over again.

I am a conduit

I let the wildflowers paint my eyes,

And anoint my face with moss and river water.

I know there are things happening around me, inside me, always,

Whether invisible or seen.

The universe has given us a sing a along to do together,

And I spread my fingers apart to hold loose my humility,

Letting it go as I open my palms in a stream of water,

And the water reads each wrinkle and line of my fingertips.

The river, the rocks, the otter, the strings of algae all know that I am here, that I am finally claiming my place.

My service is to be a conduit. A live wire.

A string of energy that runs from the deepest chasm to the highest star.

So that the earth may speak to itself through me.

So that the earth may speak to the sky.

Have you ever felt divine fingers pulling your skin apart to feel what is inside?

Have you ever felt the stroke of resonating strings covering against your spine like the piercing note of a violin?

I have felt the sand and stone orgasm when the rainfall splash against it in autumn.

I have heard it moan as it soaks up each drop of wetness.

I am a herd animal

The restless herd animal inside me is always seeking the next pasture. The next mountain range. The next spring.

I tell my hurried brain to soften: there is nothing but now. Nothing but rocks and worms and clouds and sun.

But my nerves buzz incessantly: what else- what else- what else. The answers come only in the form of soil shifting, of gravel and pebbles, of worms and rot.

November clouds. February sun. The seasons keep cycling no matter what.

Calm feels like a crime, but the busy days devastate me.

I want the wide sky stretching out ahead. I yearn for water, for rolling hills, for tree lines opening into unexpected meadows.

What could I be, if I spent my days doing nothing but living? I would watch the trees. Dig my fingers into dirt. Cook my food. Clean my pan. See the wind moving. Feel the temperature shift over the day.

There is nothing more I want. There is nothing more I need. But my mind always turns to something else. The next thing. Tomorrow.

So again I pull myself back. To the rocks. To the worms. To the clouds. To the procession of bees in summer and the dark birds in winter.

Alone

Alone sitting in the cafe- high on a steep trail- swept along in a crowd.

It’s like everyone else has become just a little more. Distant. Than they were before.

The world has gone quiet. The edges have softened.

I am lonely. But I am peaceful.

I watch people move around me like I’m seeing a movie from the back row. Not sure if I even still belong here. But knowing there is no where else to go.

There are the signs of it everywhere: they all point to how I did it: how I broke the cycle of my old lives.

And I have emerged enlightened. But lost.

My soul walks unfamiliar ground.

I’m teaching myself again how to be human. How to find my place here again.

I’m teaching myself how to bow low, how to stand tall, how to be humble, how to be proud, how to reach out, how to clasp close, how to love another.

Relearning it all again.

But I feel no distress at my ignorance. I have no doubts.

Each piece of my time here unfolds into the next in a way that takes no work but a deep discipline.

And the lessons come flowing into me like big gulps of water.

Diligence

I am tired of everything the universe asks of me

I am tired of patience, or diligence, of seeing the higher purpose

Of opening my arms to catch the bricks of every falling tower

Only to have them crumble in my hands and return to the earth, covering my toes in dust

I am spread across the ground like this leftover rubble

Dirty with regret

My best years are gone

And my future is hidden behind giant clouds and lightning

Yet the universe asks for more patience. More gratitude. More discipline.

I have nothing left and there is another leap to take. So I must tumble myself into the next phase.

I am told: this is greater than the individual course of your fate. But there is so much I don’t understand.

How do I know what to do next if I have never lived this before?

And over and over the answer comes:

Patience. Diligence. You must wait. You must continue.

The last brick falls. The earth swallows every last crumbling stone.

I stand in a bare field, and the universe asks me for faith. She asks me for trust.

I am as angry as a bare root. I am as hardy as a seedling. I am as grieved as a stump. I am as small as a twig.

But in the emptiness I plant my feet

And root

My New Life

This is how it feels to come back to myself

Finally

A valley away from where I started out

And I have found home within myself

At last

My soul flickered tenuously, life time to life time

Uncomfortable in my body, carrying a deep knowing of what was to come

Living was like walking a terrible tightrope

But when I finally fell

Somehow I landed on my hands and feet

Hips square to the ground, my nose to the dirt

And I found my place in it all

No more circling

No more agonizing

No more waiting to hear the terrible ending

The only way out of this cycle was through

How in this lifetime did I finally learn discipline and surrender?

How did all the lessons line up this way?

The way my feet press down into the ground is different now

The pattern has ended

I can return to myself

It is over

At last