It is said that

Love is patient,
Love is kind.
Love sees only the truth, and leaves the past behind.

Love is only in this moment,
only and always in this moment,
through and through,

Love is the light that shines through the brick wall between me and you.

Where are you hiding, Oh Lover?
Behind a pile of rubble and poetry.
But you know, deep down inside, you can never escape me -
Me -
holding a memory of the truth between us
the moment where you saw me, and I saw you
and we saw each other, together

and in that moment,
there was a Spark of Life.

And I fell in!
And I went blind.

And it could have been the best experience of all time.

And then afterwards, reveling in the memory
but you, in a daze,
returning to your old ways.

How long will I have to wait for you to remember the truth?

The truth, that is the light that shines THROUGH the wall between me and you

But all I know, as long as I have to wait,

Love is patient.
Love is kind.
Love only sees the truth, and leaves the past behind.

It's true that
Love is everywhere...

but She goes cold when you turn away from her.

When you recognize Her,
the answer is to embrace...
to lean in...
to let her pull the glow back into your eyes,
the rhythm back into your pulse,
the heartbeat into your neck,
your breath.

There is no other way but to slowly die again.

When she shows up, it is a gift.
What a cruelty to let the ultimate gift pass by...
What a cowardice.
Her Beauty splayed before you, and your answer...

"Let me think."
"I don't know what I want."

As if there is anything in the world at all to say yes to,
greater than Life Herself,
full force.

A million writhing snakes, eyes glowing red,
gather in the shadows of your lack of action.
Warmth can become cold. Dread. Anger.

It would be wrong to say "I am angry"
and more true to say "The Goddess is enraged."

I, human, can feel her growing her poisons
for a woman scorned can become a
weapon of great and swift teaching.

Love is not to be dealt with lightly.

She demands Bravery and Immediacy.

There is NO more important work than to face her honestly.
She, who gives you the Truth more plainly than a mirror.
She, who cuts through the false ideas of the mind
with cold clarity.

And I, simply a channel, opening.

Great Mother, how do I show him? How do I do my part to bare you to this world, not only the beauty but also the terror?
That thing that scares great men into little boys, yet inspires boys to become men.

I can only sense it. I wish not to hide.
That thing that fear tries to put in a cage,
suffocating the world.

The breath of the mountain fogs around her as she flows over mossy rock. I have to duck to enter the grove of manzanitas guarding her banks. Crouching, I enter a womb-like space of moss-covered rock beside her calming, swishing, gurgling banks. I climb the rock and sit, reaching my toes to the surface. Cold and clear and rushing by, the water touches me and sends shivers to my spine. I bend, bringing lips to the surface, and drink. Lie back.

Only five minutes' walk from home, this secret place quietly lives.
I haven't told my... partner.
It feels too sacred here. Like the inside of the womb. I feel that I can come here to escape, and to rest, if I carry reverence in my heart.

The creek refuses to take my loneliness, though. I offer my tears and she swallows them. I dream of becoming a river creature and diving into her, being carried away.

What is that perfect sound? How her water is shapeless yet becomes circular as it moves around the rocks, sending bubbles to the surface; somehow together the water and rocks ring out a sweet song. A softness that catches silence and invites listening.

The river is like the rhythm underneath my heartbeat. The song of my bones.

I can feel it, and a drumbeat dances out of my hand to my chest as I sing:


My body is the Earth
Mother, I can feel you crying
My body is the Earth
Mother, I can feel you dying


My voice has picked up the richness of the forest's dank soil, the mustiness of the moss and decaying manzanita leaves, and somehow too the clarity of the stream itself. Tears roll down my cheeks as I sing and drum to an audience of trees, moss, and creek, where my voice feels heard and safe and my heart is cracked open, one with the forest.

The hardest part is leaving, though I am more whole than before. I give my thanks to the water and crawl out of the mossy creekside womb, emerging at the edge of a gravel road in Southern Appalachia, North Georgia. Gravel crunches beneath my feet as I make my way homeward.

I never share my song with a human.

I bowed to Saturn, and took a long walk up to the edge of the world:
A special place that takes good old-fashioned ****** work to reach.

There, I met the ocean, raw and wild, where she engulfs the tip of the land with great glee,
throwing herself repeatedly in ecstasy at the rock.
Birds flock and all kinds of life burst with soul at their meeting.

And me, walking... I felt my own universe inside me, full of stars, pooling with the dark liquid of the womb. I felt your baby at my breast.

The next time you see me, will you see me fully for the woman that I am?

hopeless and exquisitely beautiful
the night is both demon and angel
for me, my aching eyes, staring too long
at the moon, thinking too hard my thoughts
swallowing too much the silence
to take it all in

I tire quickly, yet stay awake
alone with the night
the bugs sing to my spirit,
I am wandering out there somewhere,
somewhere I am in the forest,
somehow I am restful,
dying slowly, coming alive
My eyes are hollowed-out moons
My body is a fallen tree covered
in mushrooms and moss
One last sigh will let out my
soul to fly with the birds, and
the angel-song, and the sound
of solitary footsteps in the night,
footsteps on an overgrown path-
less-travelled

So much death and life
I might
tell the moon goodbye and say goodnight

you, teeth and laughter
blowing soap bubbles to my brain
and popping into dust
silken fingers, your cheekbones
are art, falling rain, blooming rose
I want to catch you
but you fall (like raindrops) through my fingers
eluding me

I would softly touch you if you let me
I would kiss your wrists and collarbone
and eyelids, I would tell you
talking is only necessary when comfortable,
I would tell you all my secrets
I would share my swiftly beating heart
with your strength, and my lonely evenings
with your meditative mornings
I want to muse with you, and
cook until our skin weeps for love,
or our minds take us elsewhere

I imagine I would fall asleep early and
easy with my ear over your heart
I wonder how fast it beats
and what the chances are
that you're thinking of me

Is it possible to be engulfed within yourself?

My insides are an ocean.


If I could, I would float away from all this nonsense
dancing to my heart's content on the cloud that flew me out of here
reclaiming my boldness, fueled by the bits of light scattered about,
rays of golden-ness spelling "forget, forget, forget it all"
dancing on my eyelids, sculpted sunrise, salty tears
"please, just feel this moment and be a part of it."

Please, just feed me back my feeling
Please... cry, wholeheartedly.
... What even is this beautiful world without the emotion that keeps it spinning?

Love is golden light on pine trees. Love is a clear river.
Love is your fiercely beating heart. Love is full immersion.
Love is rawness.

Please, tell me how to find that in this vending machine.

Tell me if you see rainbows when you're on the treadmill,
please teach me how to be human when so much of this world is telling me to be a machine.

Tell me how to forgive myself for choosing my brain over my heart?
For sitting still when my bones want to run and jump and dance and swim.
For forgetting how to play!

Forgive me for the woes of the world, for the things that I can't change but still feel the weight of. Forgive me for consuming. Forgive me for hurting. Forgive me for not giving homeless people money. Forgive me for my selfishness, for my biases, for the mistakes I make over and over again.

Forgive me for my humanness...
And most of all, help me reclaim my humanness.
For love is the most human thing I know, and I'm struggling to feel it.