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