“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.”

― Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

I know that there are so many hearts and bodies besieged by the world’s many mad conflagrations who would not be consoled by those words of Isak Denisen. And I begin this post acknowledging with revitalized gratitude the privilege inherent in this post; that even as an empath who feels like a living antenna for all that seethes in the ethers, this body, so far, is safe today.

 The preceding weeks had been Deep SEE Diving Blind in the Karmic Cauldron that has been this Saturn Return.  Silly to keep banging my head against the walls and right angles of buildings, when I know home is found in wall-less wilds…and in Circle.  

Wednesday, feeling pressurized as coal squeezed of any hope of diamond-hood, I left it behind, drove dervish-ward, climbed into the pines for some days of whirling service at the first October Wazifa Dance of Universal Peace camp since 2019.

The hills were aflame with Autumn’s answer to sunshine; a Gold Rush for the eyes, as medicinal as anything I know. Along the vast pin-cushion of burn scar that overlooks the Valle Caldera, the ground was glad and giddy with the fire of young Aspens.

Still it took almost the whole week to recover; yet by the second morning, I could again see beauty, hear the river, know truth and hope among the trees, know that I might eventually among people!

Second Sunrise

Breath visible for the first time this season

Tumbles in gold frosted celebration

catching in its billows the resounding miracle

Look! I’m Alive.

Droplets dolphin tumbling

Look! I’m Alive!

Second Sunrise

Melting down the lip of facing cliffs

a long Cheshire Cat smile

vaulting upward from the deep heart of Gaia

Alive, Child. Alive.

Second Sunrise

The crust of city clutter, collective clatter blown free

Soul re-suffusing with her native song.

What once took two hours has taken two days

But all complaints, including that one, can only careen around like the season’s last flies

Cannot alight for long, slighted by the cold shoulder of a cool head,

and dwarfed now by trees and stone, truth and solace.

ML. October 13, 2023, Hummingbird, Jemez Springs

The camp near always coincides with my mother’s birthday. This was no exception. Monday, I took some time to recline on a bed of pine needles and remember her.

Today you would have been 89.

As I lie under these pines along a road we drove together just that once

I hope you would be proud.

I know you would be worried; but I hope you would also be happy

that here among my brethren of bark and skin, my kin with wings visible and invisible

I have found my song.

I may carry in my mind-field still your parsimony, but I carry always in my heart Rosemary…

and also Sage….And in this body, I carry all time.

Today I also carry rosemary under my armpits

in honor of a woman whom I don’t remember seeing sweat; fret yes, often, but not sweat.

You must have, but being from Mississippi, perhaps, you got it out of your system early.

You once said, much later in life, that you had no tears left.

Perhaps your elixir of life was spent early in sweat and tears, and this is why you required so many transfusions near the end; your blood and skin so thin.

But you, beloved Rosemary, were more beautiful than I knew how to see or say.

I can scarcely see or say it now. But, knowing that better now, I leave space for it in this silence

and let it flow in my own blood and tears,

and even, occasionally, sweat with the good old family frets.