she is free

Posted on May 7, 2012 by lbk

There is light in the wood, I can see through the trees. I still stand holding Deer Man’s hand. I am everywhere at once. The bear climbs a tall pine and makes it sway. I stretch all the way back to the river. The rush of the river far back behind me feeds straight into my spine. I am nourished by this and grounded.

I think that’s it, but Deer Man stays me. I stretch in other directions too. There is a cliff face, a drop-off, and in the ravine a bramble. A wide eyed girl is caught in the thicket, thorns snag her clothes, she cannot move.

I teach her to go liquid. I free her. She frees herself. She is free.

OOO

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Please don’t leave me

Posted on May 3, 2012 by lbk

We are deep in the wood still, far from the river, small pale breathers in a tight woven darkness. I turn to the Ferryman. “Do not leave me. Every moment has its crossing, its stillness and turbulence. Do not leave me. I need your buoyancy and your conviction.”

“I’ll not leave you,” he says.

The Deer Man is there ahead, almost hidden among the trees. His is an ancient power. As the Ferryman is ancient. And the Wellspring. I can feel in their ancientness a deep deep rootedness. How did I come to be in such company? How did I come to feel so completely at home here?

The Deer Man holds out his hand to me and I take it. We meld into the space between things. The air is suddenly bright with flickering leaves.

OOO

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Deer Man holds out his hand

Posted on May 1, 2012 by lbk

We are on the far shore, deep in the green, standing still. We have come to a place of not moving. There is no clear path ahead, the green is all a tangle. I sense the river behind me, but not close, only a knowing that it lies in the direction I’m facing away from. The Ferryman stands behind me, patient. He’s carrying all my baggage. My hands are free. He’s not the only one with me, Urs is there, golden at my shoulder, and Night Hawk and Audra, the bear, Grace at a little distance, almost invisible, but for the twitch of her tail. The Wellspring is a fountain of light in me. I am in good company.

We stand listening, waiting to know which direction to go. I am listening for my lost one. She is out there somewhere. The wood is still and dense and dark. A cramp takes me, I fold and cough up something warm and distended – my frog heart, but not well. Not well at all. I go to my knees beside him. “What do you need?”

Water.

We must find a spring, a source. The desire spoken is instantly answered. There is a spring bubbling out from the roots of a great tree, a damp dark place crowded round with young growth. My frog heart goes into the small brown pool and is content. I cup my hands and drink.

Looking up, I see him across the water, tall and still with small knobbed antlers and eyes rimmed in a jeweled blue. Deer Man. I am awed and honored by his appearance. I gift him with the water that drips from the tips of my fingers and the light caught in the dripping. He is pleased with the offering. He holds out his hand to me. I step across to him. I think he will lead me where I need to go, but we do not move. He folds me in an embrace, my face to his chest. He works his fingers over my scalp and through my hair. He is planting knowing in my hair. He gifts me with the way of being in the wood – a consciousness of the space between things and a way to move without breaking the stillness.

OOO

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April says: Walk with me

Posted on April 13, 2012 by lbk

April comes to me without hesitation. She is a cloud, a billow, the tender wafting scent of something not quite here.

And then there she is, standing before me in overalls and an old plaid shirt, her uncombed hair a dark nest for her sweet, pale face. She brushes my cheek with the back of her hand because her finger tips are muddy. “I’m glad you’ve come,” she says. “Walk with me.”

She sets off and I hurry after. Her feet are bare. The ground is soft, mud pushing up through the space between her toes and sometimes long and slender stalks of grass get caught up there and she carries them forward a bit before they fall away. She walks across fields and I follow. She takes me into the wood where it is damp, the light broken and glittery, the earth fragrant, contoured and cushioned.

I am holding on to the sleeve of April’s red plaid. “How do you cope with the overwhelm of abundance?” I ask.

She cocks her head at me, momentarily puzzled by my distress. And then she seems to understand. “Don’t try to pin it down,” she says. “Don’t try to contain it, as if you were bigger than it. Find your place in it. Pay attention all around. Let it wash over you like music. Join the dance.”

I am trying very hard to understand.

“Come my darling,” she laughs, “let’s get lost in the green together.”

We go into the trees. The sun highlights each new leaf. Each has a light side and a dark. The birds are singing in all directions. The path turns and loses itself in branches. There are so many choices. How can you know how to go?

“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” I say.

“Maybe it matters absolutely,” she counters. “Being makes the infinite one. There is both joy and sorrow in this. When a thing is this, and not that – music happens. There is healing in choice. Allow it.”

We choose the path that calls to us and follow it on through the shifting, dappled light.

“Oh!” she gives an exclamation and stops, her body leaning slightly forward, her head turned slightly to the side. I look in the direction she is looking to find the source of her delight. There is moss among the tree roots, tiny stalked yellow flowers. As I bend closer to see I realize suddenly that it isn’t just this patch of moss, she isn’t just looking forward, she is looking in all directions at once, it’s all the light and shadow and shade that floods her eyes, every angled scent she breathes, every bird call and whisper, the press of everything all around, it’s the all of it that holds her. When she says, “I just love this,” she means the all of it that is.

And then there are frogs at her feet, come out of the dark to greet her. She lifts one tenderly and holds him to my chest. My little frog heart, she returns him to me. He chirrups sweetly. “I know all about you,” she grins.

I think it must be true.

OOO

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we star the dark

Posted on April 6, 2012 by lbk

It is dark, the deep end of evening. I stand at the river’s edge, the garden lush and green around me. I can hear the breeze through leaves. I can smell the yearning into the air.

Suddenly, I hear the buffalo move across the plain behind me, a drum beat sound that surges through me like life itself. They are not there in the now. Whether I am hearing the past or the future makes little difference. They are there for me. Their power ignites me.

The Ferryman smiles as he approaches. He has a gift for me, a small thing he places in my palm. It is a small flame, a tongue of light. “You’re doing good with all this.” He nods toward the garden, the green promises.

“Thank you. Yes.”

Then quieter, “She’s still over there you know. The little lost one waiting for you to find her. She’s still out there.”

I look over to the dense dark that is the wood on the far shore. I raise the hand that holds the light so that it shines down over me, revealing me. In response, there in the impenetrable dark, countless other small flames rise, shining down on the shoulders and lifted faces of all the kindred spirits. We star the dark. We are none of us alone.

OOO

Posted in Buffalo Man, Ferryman | 3 Comments

March leaves messages

Posted on March 21, 2012 by lbk

I cannot begin to speak the broad and foaming madness that is March, hard certainties everywhere broken by slight green impossibilities.

He will not meet me. I plan ahead, arrange the time and place, and when I get there he has been and gone, as if I were the wolf and he the third little pig. I only want to talk to him. I’m only trying to understand.

He leaves me a message. It says: You can’t do it in words.

I stand alone in the foaming. Lost. These are the borderlands, not quite this thing or the other. Anything might happen. Everything is trying to happen, and all at once. I am stunned by the cacophony. I cannot find the rhythm of it.

I arrange another meeting. He leaves another message. It says: It’s not about plans or language or maps. You have to go there with your body. You have to show up. In the flesh. Be in the middle of it.

I don’t know how to stand in all the madness. I don’t know my lines. I don’t know my place or how to harmonize.

The message says: Let go of all the rest. It’s your own song that needs singing. Sing now. Sing. Sing your self into the mix.

OOO

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plenty

Posted on February 24, 2012 by lbk

The Ferryman is dancing a jig, high knees and fancy feet. He is flinging something out of his pockets into the river. “Plenty for everyone,” he sings. “Plenty, plenty.” He is attracting fish. He is attracting a crowd on the far shore. Curious, the people begin to climb into their boats to make their way over. “Get ready,” he sings. “The people are coming.”

I falter at the size of the crowd. I am afraid they will break over me like a wave.

“Make the garden ready to receive them,” the Ferryman urges, flicking his fingers at me.

The garden is the thing, with its paths and turnings and walls of green. The garden will channel the torrent into intimacy.

Welcome. Welcome.

OOO

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February is THIS

Posted on February 21, 2012 by lbk

I lie down. The world is full of crack and sparkle. The sound of laughter.

February is an imp, a trickster. She is dancing over my body with her tiny feet. “I cannot wait to open my presents,” she declares. “ I want them all NOW.”

February tears the covers off and laughs and claps and dances with delight. “Oh beauty. Oh riches.” Everything is a present to her. She opens everything.

“You,” she says, “sometimes you forget. Life is a celebration. But sometimes all you see is impossibility. Cold and gray. You stop. You forget to laugh and dance. You think: Oh I can’t. Oh it’s cold.” She is knocking me on my forehead, “Hey you in there – this is the party. This. This. THIS.”

OOO

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enthusiasm

Posted on February 17, 2012 by lbk

I go to the Wellspring. She sits golden and serene, the water of light flowing up through her and out the top of her head, falling back into itself, an endless return. She is in me, the Wellspring is, everything that flows through her, flows through me. She is showing me this. It is something I know, but don’t always remember. It is good to be reminded. She is always with me.

I lean in through the fall of water to kiss her. She hands me the golden bowl. I haven’t received the bowl from her in such a long time. I cradle it in my hands and gaze down into the brimming light. The bowl is primary. The bowl and the Wellspring both. They are the two elements that began this whole dream sequence. The bowl and the Wellspring and a small white butterfly. I think perhaps it is the bowl that is dreaming me. I lift and drink. The water of light suffuses me, shining out all over.

My little frog heart is sunning on the stone edge of the fountain. He looks up and jumps into the water. I think there is no happier sound than the plop of a frog into water.

Urs is sitting nearby in reverent contemplation, his face lifted to the Wellspring. I rest my hand on his shoulder. “Do you want to come with me?” I’m not sure where I’m going, but somewhere, somewhere. I want to be out in the woods.

“You go on without me,” he grins. Meditating by the Wellspring is recharging him. I will need him when I leave here, but for this foray, I do not.

NH is standing a little ways off. I go to him laughing. Seeing NH fuels me. Touching the deep expansive darkness of him brightens me. I let myself lean into him. “I want to give you something.” I open my hand around a small clear smooth crystal, full of light. I press it to his chest. It’s a connection between us, a direct connection, a port. No matter the distance between us, we will be able to contact each other through this little bit of brilliance. He smiles his pain-melting smile at me.

“I am beloved,” I say, remembering.

“You are beloved.”

“And you are beloved.”

He steps closer, breathes into my ear. “There are tiny bells in your hair. When you move you make music. The music feeds the flowers. Wherever you go things flourish.”

These are the words he sends me off with. This is the blessing that launches me into the woods.

I climb the steep western slope of the mountain. The trees are thick and close here, the grass sweet and long. I find the Mountain Man in a crouch, gazing into the woods. Before I can call out to him, he lifts his hand to signal quiet, stillness. I stop. I stand still watching him watch a place where a small path passes between two bushes. I do not know what he is watching for or what he hopes to learn. I watch with him to find out.

I stand so still watching that I turn into a tree. I am an aspen among aspen. My roots twine in the thin dirt, skimming and skirting rock, weaving me together with my sister trees. My trunk is tall and gleaming. My leaves love the sunlight, and flirt with the wind. And still I am watching this small patch of green in the green. The Mountain Man holds so still he turns into a rock resting in the dappled light under the trees.

When I have become tree and he has become rock and nothing but the breeze has moved in the grass for some time, a small mouse steps out from under a bush and into the path. The mouse’s cheeks are fat with the seed she carries. She stops in the path and turns her black eyes in our direction. We watch each other. And then she is gone back under the cover of the other bush and out of sight. Somewhere in the grass a snake unfurls, sensed but not seen. Again nothing moves but the wind.

And then, something big is approaching. I do not hear it, or see it. I feel it. I know it is coming. And then, there he is, a stag with a full celebration of antlers. He stops and regards us. “You’re not fooling anyone, you know,” he says.

“The intention is not to fool,” the Mountain Man replies, “but to show respect.”

We three breathe together a long moment before the stag responds, “Respect accepted.” turns and is gone.

The spell is broken then. I am no longer tree and he is no longer rock. I sit beside him in the grass. “I wanted to ask you about enthusiasm,” I say.

“Hm,” he says.

“I’ve been tasked with raising enthusiasm, you know. And only just the other day I realized that I can’t sustain enthusiasm. It wears me out. And then I have to get quiet and rest and build my strength back. So I don’t really know how to approach this task. I thought you might have some guidance for me.”

“This is enthusiasm,” he says. “This quiet focused attention. It doesn’t have to be loud. It can fuel you.”

“Being a tree counts as enthusiasm?”

“Being a tree counts.”

“This is very good news. Thank you.”

“Glad to help.”

I leave the Mountain Man contemplating the green and head back to the Wellspring to say my goodbyes. NH sings me over, “There is starlight in your hair, it rings like tiny bells. The music feeds the flowers. Wherever you go, life flourishes.”

Not a bad way to start the day.

OOO

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my provider

Posted on February 12, 2012 by lbk

I’m still standing in the river, singing. Birds fly from my fingers. The wind blooms flowers in my hair, my arms and hands, and carries the perfumed petals away into the deep wood. Birds rise from the canopy and descend. The forest is teaming with unseen life.

The river brings me a baby, swaddled in a reed basket, bobbing on the current. I lift the baby in my arms, cradling him to me, cooing and singing and rocking him. I want to rock him forever, but he grows quick quick into a lithe young man who stands beside me, raises his arms and laughs. Then quick quick he crosses the river and runs into the wood. I lose sight of him but know that he is busy, running here and there collecting and finding and rejoicing.

By evening he is home again with me. He has brought dinner which he cooks over a fire. We eat and sit together watching the stars come into the gathering dark, sharing quiet, sharing content.

“Don’t worry Mama,” he says. “I’ll look after you.”

He is my provider.

OOO

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