The One who Heals

The Deep Within                                                 Lucy Pierce

The One who Heals

In my dreaming she comes to me,

as I stop and turn to face my back

and the shoulder numb with pain,

ceasing at last the tiresome searching,

ever overextending in an ingratiating attempt

to expunge the wound that festers there,

bitter and black, above my heart.

The cavernous crypt deep in the flesh gapes,

as though it were made by the deep plunge

of a broad blade eons past.

I stop and follow the thread deep inside,

and I find her there,

the one who heals,

forgotten and ancient,

she is waiting with a smile,

she does not judge,

just evenly measures the balm.

She is my innocence, my joy

and she dwells beneath the wound.

She urges me to bare that tenderest place,

and there to reclaim the innocence,
that most primal and primary impulse of purity,

that carries in it’s wake gratitude and grace

and belonging to life 

rather than the bitter stories

of my endless dying.

She scrapes the flesh of it’s festering matter,

she clears the wound of it’s betrayal and pride,

of it’s self-righteousness and greed.

She excavates the sickness within that holds me away 
from knowing the miracle that is this life,

that always wants more and never truly gives thanks,

that always complains and never truly listens,

that always blames and never truly receives,
that always asks and never really gives,

always reinforcing the wound,

the brutal self-scrutiny of relentlessly striving

to prove myself worthy of life

and simultaneously longing for death.

She bathes the site in clean, clear water,

anoints it with herbs.

She smudges me with the cleansing smoke of sage

and sings to me of healing and purification,

that I may heal beyond the wounds and the weakness,

that I may be awake to the purity of this gifted moment,

draped instead in the freedom to truly taste

and receive and rejoice in the miracle of sustenance,

seated in the emptiness that can truly meet the other

in gratitude for what is between,

forever at home in the unfolding mystery

of this vast God that is love.

Lucy Pierce © 2014

Sorrow and Her Embrace

Her Embrace                                                                                 Lucy Pierce

Sorrow

Today I have no strength to hide

and I give you the sorrow

that flowers in the garden of my soul.

Though I try to hide her face from you

she dances with me always

making my movements slow and cumbersome,

as though there were a full grown child

hiding beneath my skirts.

It hurts me to say I am ashamed of her,

longing to be the happiness the world asks of me.

"How are you?" you ask,

and "Good" I reply,

as I feed piecemeal morsels

to the rambunctious child of my suffering,

hoping you will not notice the far away look in my eye,

as though she did not breath with me in every breath,

as though she were not pulling me ever down,

down to the ocean floor of my being,

always asking more of me,

so that I am only ever partially present to this up-side life.

Always she breaks me, opens me,

smashing my tender skin on the brittle rocks of my history,

again and again she submerges me,

as "Enough!" I cry,

again and again she births me back to you,

with new eyes with which to see.

In hiding her face it is my own face I hide,

as with an anguish I hope that you do not notice

that I don't belong here amongst you,

hoping that you don't notice the bruises and welts,

the gashes and cuts,

of my dance with her.

How persistent her befriending,

how brutal my futile resistance.

Hidden from the world, I retreat,

allowing her out to dance her dance

of death and life within me,

and the eons pass in that place

of my grappling to learn her step.

We emerge, disheveled and bewildered

to see that all the world is changed,

moved on without me.

And down we dive again,

my heart her loyal mistress.

She wants me clean and clear and free,

she wants me stripped and pliant and awake,

she will take nothing less of me as we wrestle in the deep.

Her tears strip the plaque of my own deceit.

She would have me be nothing, if not something true.

“How are you?” You ask

and I say “I am sorrow.”

for I am the full-grown child beneath her skirts.

Lucy Pierce © 2014