Sharifa Oppenheimer

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Belonging

Turning Inward

 

We have passed the equinox and are firmly on the journey of Samhain, moving toward the darkest night.  Honoring this inward turning of the light, we too turn within.  It is typical in our current mythology to imagine this inward passage as moving away from the earth toward transcendence, a distant, detached sacredness.  But perhaps we can return to our more ancient sensibilities.  Just beneath our skin we find earth elements pulsing, breathing, flowing into us and moving onward through our pores and breath, bringing our blessings outward for our families and more than human cousins. We find the Sacred lives, moves, and expresses Her being within the sacredness of our body and the body of the earth.  This poem explores ways to turn inward and remain in breath-by-breath communion with all life. To finally discover we come from and belong within divine immanence.

 

Belonging

 

Plant medicine flows in our blood.

Our brains mirror Pliocene acacias

we have lived beneath.

 

Language leaps

through human synapses. 

Intelligence moves

through phloem and xylem.

 

I lean into the beech

resting against its

cool smooth skin.

Once I felt the sap

rising in subtle waves

pulsing against my forehead

pressed into its trunk.

 

I walk in forest’s light.

Plant remedies in my veins

surge in recognition

of living relatives,

foliate beings I brush against.

A celebration ensues;

blood and sap are hoop-dancers

whirling in autumn light.

 

Find starlight glinting in the mind

sunlight radiant in the heart. 

Fireflies flicker in each cell

as electrons jump orbital loops. 

 

Inhale lambent plant-light

 through the skin,

its lustrous telluric glow. 

Exhale radiant cosmic light

from the heart,

incandescent lucent beams.

 

These two,

terrestrial and empyrean:

 

light upon light,

they choreograph

resonant spheres

within the body

 and shine

into invisible worlds.

 

We are wedded light.

Walk a sacred circle.

Nest in fields of belonging.

 

 

From my book of poems A Litany of Wild Graces

https://bookshop.org/p/books/a-litany-of-wild-graces-meditations-on-sacred-ecology-sharifa-oppenheimer/18375938?ean=9781954744622

 

Photo John McCann  Unsplash

 

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