Listen

Here, at the Crossroads

I take time

To ask questions

I take time

To listen

I listen to the tall, ancient trees

I listen to the cool, trickling waters

I listen to the wind, swirling

I listen to the dreams

I listen to the old ones, the wise ones

The ones nestled for eons in my cells

I take time to ask questions

Even questions that may have no answers

I take time to listen

To the old ones, the wise ones

Who have been through it all

I listen to the cawing of the feathered

I listen to the scurrying fall foragers

I listen to the way the acorn drops on concrete

I listen to the sprout, growing in fall

I even

Listen

The

Humans

I take time

To ask questions

Even questions that may have no answers

I wait for the whispers

Oozing from the quiet

As I sit with this body, our body,

These eons in our bones

Sometimes I scream, sometimes I weep

Sometimes I build altars

And

After the release, after the honoring

I take time to listen

To the old ones, the wise ones

Inside and out

Who have been

Through it all

Here, at the Crossroads

Here, staring

Into the great and always uncertain Mystery

Here

I take time

To listen

Featured

Writing To The Man

An image of the former NOAA building n Pacific Grove, CA. Image originally from The Monterey Herald.

On the waves of elkskin drumbeat,

And circled in cedar’s smoke

Today the letter was sent

A response…

To The Man

He first spoke of democracy

From a distant throne

As if the answer would suffice

But here we are, again

Begging the conversation

Daring for involvement

Pushing

Please oh Mister Man

Oh, once Secretary of Defense

Oh, once Director of the CIA

Oh, once White House Chief of Staff

Now, you are resting as a small town chairman

On these very sands we are fighting for

Do you remember

Your commitment to the Bay

To those waters

To those peoples who first tended

Won’t you

Hear us?

Please Mister Man

Could you pay attention to

The myriad of the unheard

While their land once more gets raped

We wonder if your hands are tied

If, deep in your systemized heart

There is a yearning to connect

Whether the machinery of the System

Has clouded over your eyes

Once more, Mister Man

The treaty of Fort Laramie has been ignored

Decades and decades we spiral

That original promise of democracy and fellowship

Those wide-eyed original creatures

Human and non-human

Trampled underfoot

It’s happening now

Its happening

Again

Unseen complications of the ties that bind

We get that your distance may be necessary

But please, Mister Man

Can you at least

Hold a space for these eyes

These remnants

These sacred bones and artifacts

Threatened with destruction

Can you

Will you

Take them in and hold them

In the depths of your heart?

Please oh Mister Man

Oh, once Secretary of Defense

Oh, once Director of the CIA

Oh, once White House Chief of Staff

Now, you are resting as a small town chairman

On these very sands we are fighting for

Do you remember

Your commitment to the Bay

To those waters

To those peoples who first tended

Won’t you

Hear us?

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Desire

Photo by Maria Helena Mazuroski on Pexels.com

Sometimes I wake in the night

Terrified

Terrified that I’m throwing it all away

Terrified that because She is so quiet

Because I can barely hear Her

Because the waves and roars

Of unending possibility drown Her Majesty

Choiceless

Frozen

I am terrified

I am throwing it all away

Desire

I’ve gone back and forth about it my whole existence

Is it that there is too much inside of me

Or that there is too little

Is it that there lives a gargantuan backlog

Of unlived yearnings

That when touched, create maelstrom of woe

So threatening, so unapproachable

The consequences of choice

Too complicated

The result of this weight

A blankness, floating

That the only choice is to go back to the same?

Is it that

Deep in this Center

There is a wide, open vista

Free of any wanting

Free of any needing

Free of any seeking

Merged with Infinity

One that absolutely trusts

Where, when, how and why

She’s come to be

That this is all there is

The question of desire

Dropped into this Center

Doesn’t make any sense

It only makes laughter, hysterical

What does make sense

Is this need to create routines

And measurements

And patterns

To keep Her alive

Otherwise

Left to the following of “animal instinct”

She with no need

She with no hunger

She with no desire

Would disappear into the wind

What is true is not yet known

But still

Sometimes I wake in the night

Terrified

Terrified that I’m throwing it all away

Terrified that because She is so quiet

Because I can barely hear Her

Because I am not thrust by myself

To create and savor and lavish

In an obvious, enviable Dream

Choiceless, frozen

Or…empty vastness

I am terrified

I am throwing it all away

Featured

You. Listen.

I’ve begun to record my wonderings with musical backgrounds. Take a listen to my recent poem, “You.”

I am feeling to record more of what’s already been written…perhaps chapters from my memoir…let me know what you think, or stay tuned if you so desire :}

~raVen

Featured

Secrets

Just a passing comment

As the family bible splayed across your lap

Whispered secrets between women

While he was in the bathroom

So quiet it’s as if I never heard it

Like my memories, evanescent

Did you say that?

Did it happen?

Was it

Just

Imagination?

Still, evidence, and pain

Persistent, throbbing at these roots daily

Fills out all the details

Of what I thought I heard you speak

Hush hush

Before he returns

The prisoner, that child

Is trying to reach you

She knows, below

She wants you

To know

Something, like then

Didn’t let me ask

And you went away

Dropping this hint and leaving

Me holding, waiting

A pandora’s box that trembled

Wondering again

If I’m just mad

But finally

I called you, and he was there

Funny, another projection wronged

He was a part of the conversation

I thought you were hiding away

No, he verified

Indeed I heard you right

And it wasn’t only me

It was also He

These secrets

Beginning to be told

Ones that hung Her

Ones that starved Her

Ones that stuck a needle in Her arm

Ones that kept Her hanging

Screaming

Alone

And ones

That made Him go away

We talk, almost giddy

Revealing what we know

Revealing what we don’t

Just glad, like these words feel it

Finally they can live and breathe

Those with certain knowing

Now lay as ash or corpse

All we can do is release

These words

These secrets

And try to put all the pieces, together

That explain

These secrets

Beginning to be told

Ones that hung Her

Ones that starved Her

Ones that stuck a needle in Her arm

Ones that kept Her

Hanging

Screaming

Terrified

Alone

And ones

That made him go away

Secrets

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The Mystery

~cards from Tarot of The Spirit, by Pamela and Joyce Eakins

11:11

Stargate Portal

The Rainbow Bridge

Here, the door to the other realms

The Mystery

The Midwife

The Abyss She Balances Over

The Abyss She Has Fallen Into

Over and over

The Abysss

That She Is

She knows the way out:

To feel Her shadowed walls for footholds

And to not collapse

Into illusion that the Fall is the End

Yet She, as Midwife of Mystery,

Also knows that it is,

The End

Just an End into a New Beginning

In the Dark that She’s travelled

Over and over again

She is always both The Midwife

And the one being midwifed

Eventually Forgetting

Eventually Wandering

And hopefully Re-membering

As she hangs

In the deep, naked caverns of Below

The footholds

The footholds!

She cries out

Where are the footholds?

She may not remember how she got here

Or for that matter, who She is

But the footholds

She remembers to feel for them

Running her palm’s eyes across

These cold, smooth, dark walls

And as the first grasp finally finds one

She sees the ladder, it starts to appear

And at some point She’s rising

Spectral hands guiding

And at some point She’s looking

Over the precipice

Into the Abyss once again

There are others

Down there

This Mystery

She stands, teetering on The Bridge looking into

Hoping She’ll remember

When She falls

Because She will fall

Again

Hoping She’ll remember

That there are footholds

So She can both find them

And place another’s frightened palm

Against the splintering rung

And shout for the both of them

Blessed be the Dark!

Blessed be the Fall!

Blessed be this End

We find ourselves in!

Hoping for the ascending

Together

Reaching for the Way Out

And in finding that treasured plateau

Resting, Together

A Spiral Traveller

She cannot wait long

To remember the need of preparing

To do it all again

The point

What exactly is the point?

Gazing downward

She knows

The point

Of all the climbing

Of all the falling

Of all the resting

Of all the dissolving,

Of all the sweat-laced

Blood-drenched

Agony of re-membering

The point

Is never the plateau

The point

Is never the resting

The point

Is always the entirety

And forever

Forever

The point

Is the Mystery

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Blessed Lammas/Lughnasadh

a lovely tarot spread for the season’s shift. image by bujo witchcraft

from stem, to bud, to flower, to berry…mountain jewels return

interesting that hypericum gathered and tinctured at midsummer is ready for use exactly on this day

Blessed Be

Featured

Four Roads Out of Hell

Just as I was about to quit

They delivered, directly

The Four Roads Out of Hell

The Mothers, the Mothers

They came en force

Pleading for my attention

The problem, they said

Is that of the Spinning Mother

Intelligent, She has tendrils

In every world

But this one

Star-born, learned of that which cannot be spoken

She is a teacher

With no earthly rooting

Just as I was about to quit

The Mothers showed me the first Road

And peering down the long balancing girder

I saw Her face

Mother Earth

Playing her drum

Feet buried in moist soil

Her message traveled vibrations

This body, she said

Feel Her! The wisdom, the wisdom

And Strength

Is gathered here

Body, the solid ground

Before, during and after chaos

Weave Her into your practice

Let her ground the worlds attempting contact

Let her center be a portal

Sky rod to Earth

Feel Her!

And study how the chaos heals

A miraging steam waffles

And Mother Earth

Disappears

Her voice, trailing

Leads me to the next Road

And looking down its great distance

She whispers to me

About the Road of Sacred Law

And a vision appears from blinding Light

Great ships arriving

And I, watching, rooted, needing only to receive

Stay on the path, my love

She whispers

From Fear to Faith

She whispers

Although all may feel in confusion

The blessings, they come

On this road of Law

But you must stay

Shimmering, vessel-laden oceans

Absorb back into Light

And her voice, trailing my thought

Opens another path

From Chaos to the Ancestors

You must call to the Field for help

The Spinning Mother cannot work alone

Although her sword is mighty

Look past the Abyss

And into Her Sisters

Mothers of Water

See how they rest

Deep in the turbulent sea

Holding lotus

Unfolding, unfolding

She is you are Her are They

She asks you to remember

She asks you to let her grab the reins

Let Her hold your Wounding

Rest

In Her

The Mothers

They now become a chorus, leading my eyes

Down the Road of The Cocoon

Hanging, letting it go,

Releasing all I think is true

They whisper me into the womb

They urge my sinking, dissolving

Metamorphosis

How to wait into Naming

And of course, they concluded

There is the Dweller in the Ruins

The Prayerful One

Learning dance in the charnel grounds

You could

They laughed

In the midst of where you are

Learn

To shake your bones

Just when I was about to give up

They came

Whispering the Roads

The Mothers

I hold them

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Unicorn

Exorcise the Mormons from her loins!

The elder ancestors who conjugated on the plural

Often hierarchal, and in shadow

Many queens around a king

Not in their skin, or time, she judges not

She only seeks

Release

Exorcise the Mistress

A secret, hidden

To ease the pain and discomfort

Of two tender, fraying hearts needing True Attention

Not in their skin, or time, she judges not

She only seeks

Release

Exorcise the Unicorn, brought in hopefully

To save the day

The shimmer of greener grass in their gaze

But never, never fully facing

Play, ease, distraction

Maybe even some healing

But always, in the end

The Unicorn stands alone

Not in their skin, or time, she judges not

She only seeks

Release

Exorcise this raw and screaming

Fear of intimacy

All these patterns

And stories

And mirrors

And explorations

Keeping her distracted

From the terror she feels inside

Upon fully facing

The eyes that choose

The eyes that see

The eyes that stay

In her skin, in this time, she judges not

She only seeks

Release

To let the Unicorn run free

To let the trepidation ripple

Old ghosts rising

Arms holding

Arms staying

Spirit landing

Voice speaking

Exponential energies meeting

Choosing

Healing

Screaming

Growing

Reflecting

Like tidal waves crashing

Finely tuned, these vehicles

Center

Fully facing

Staying

Choosing

As the Unicorn, shimmering,

Gallops back

Into the vale

Forevermore

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Solstice Glow

“The young maid stole through the cottage door,
And blushed as she sought the plant of power.
‘Thou silver glow-worm, oh! lend me thy light,
I must gather the mystic St. John’s Wort to-night…'”

~Translated from German, author unknown