we thought they were wasted, those words we had spoken to the darkness, tracing shapes of light in slow-tongued syllables – holding names the wind taught us in our cheeks until we could speak the words of love that taste of earth and longing and tree to the silence, unheard. those words we thought discarded…
it is the ocean who speaks these long days, horizon to horizon, thundering her song across the hills. summoning the tides that course our veins to live enlivened by the salt prayers that shape us amniotic in the ocean of our own remembering, form us pulse of light from the dark waters of our longing.
in the dark of the water deep among shards of light i swim the softing tide – thrum of river quenching my skin, playing my bones deer flute to the forest sky.
it is he who waits silent on forest edge – twitch of muscle under dapple tree light, horns curved like the sickle moon. there is no seeing him until on an exhale he lowers his head, looks at you as though he sees the galaxies within, shifts his weight to the other hoof and under…
if i pause a moment hard breath to the forest quiet untangle the brambles that are snagging my skin – pull my hair from the cat-thorn that begs me to wait – if i stop here a moment on this path barely marked by the feet of those who walked it before, will my heart…
all seeing and unseen, leopard walked our morning prayers – silent feet on the forest floor. all hearing and unheard, leopard walked our morning prayers – carried our words down deep forest paths where human feet might falter – tasted our words on that other wind where only truth might live.
i want to ache with this beauty, taste the flow with my feet, have my breath stolen by this gorge ripped deep with its own undoing until seed and bird claimed it in the name of She who lives – shaped it alluvial green and tall with tree. i want to sit on this precipice…
i went to look for the moon last night walked up the road torchless and quiet through darkness only my feet could see by, following spills of faint moonlight between trees. i found her there halfway up the hill veiled and gentle in the curved branches of a tree and stood a while moon spilled…
long before this moon rose we crone-walked this cusp world and waited for change, planted seeds while the babies slept, danced giddy to the falling leaves – and when darkness came, as darkness does, untethered from the light that lives and those around us fell, kindling wood to altar fires of the new gods of…