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
Photo John McCann Unsplash
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