TO WRESTLE AND CHURN
I wrestle and churn,
hungering for the primordial and the unmediated,
hankering for the meaning-made-manifest
through relationship to land and plant,
animal and bird,
elemental primacy,
enmeshed belonging to the maternal matrix of Gaia,
to embedded cosmic ecology,
to tribe and custom and craft and way,
the free flowing conduit between body and earth
unsevered and pure,
the great ear of my heart bent close
to the cascading current of co-creative arrising,
weaving the vibrational threads of existence
into harmony through the undulations of my vocal chords
and the pulsation of my muscles,
the ululating of my sinews,
the earthquakes of my pleasure,
as they are moved by the great dance
of love’s living moment in cell and bone,
flesh and organ,
dancing, toning, undulating,
partnering in a unified improvisation
with the primordial web of creation,
honing myself to source,
stilling my mind so that the plants and the earth
and the menagerie of living beings
and the planets may speak to me
of the wisdom they carry
and the hungering at the heart of Earth
to be received by us,
to be reciprocated with co-mingling communion,
receiving the magnificent bounty of wealth
that lies at our feet in every moment,
the vast and glorious treasures
of fresh air and clean water,
of fertile earth and life-giving fire.
Even on this stolen land,
my heart knows she is indigenous,
that I belong here, on this Earth body,
that Her breast is generous enough to offer me
and my broken heart succour,
to awaken me, enliven me,
compost my separation into fecund belonging.
May the rigid grids and sticky membranes
of dominator culture decay,
may the fear of persecution fall away,
may the separation of my shame dissolve,
may the illusion of my imprisoned inferiority erode,
that I may be homed to the unified consciousness of Gaia,
to the great cosmic web of creation.
For so long I have been held captive in a colonised mind,
from the cages of this linear perception,
the wisdom ways of my people buried and lost so far back,
in another land, a far distant time,
I am orphaned from my power.
I have not been taught the language
of the ways and the medicines,
the stories and dreams and songs and dances
of this country upon which my body abides.
I have lost the songs and the stories
and the language and the lore
that held me in the tapestry of my own ancestral cohesion.
And yet in the great cyclic dreamweave
my soul knows beyond a shadow of a doubt,
She remembers,
that my body belongs to a cosmic weave of love
more vast and magnificent than any shallow trinket
promised by my culture,
than any trauma my personhood can endure.
I was there at the beginning of all of this
and I will be there at the end,
so much bigger and more exquisite than I could ever imagine,
unified and vast,
eternally nourishing,
eternally receiving.
Was I born here, on this Earth at this time,
misplaced and cast adrift in a culture
of brutal rape and devouring avarice,
of plastic and hunger,
colonised and dismembered,
to endlessly drown in the wave upon wave
of my own lostness and despair?
Or can I weave my way home to belonging and to cohesion,
to song and to story,
to dance and to vibrational integrity?
Can I leave the words of separation and division
and brutal ownership that are a part of my cultural inheritance,
out of my mouth?
May they cease to move my tongue?
May I create new words that bind and attune,
that embrace and send out roots and shoots
to mend and to heal,
to connect and to re-member?
Can I allow myself to be re-membered?
Can I surrender the need to be seen
as something seperate and special,
to know myself as something vastly insignificant
and deeply connected?
Can I recall how to be in relationship
with the microbiome of soil
and the cadence of soul?
Can I allow myself to be moved by the tide
and rustled by the breeze,
my boundaries thrown wide open
to let the sunlight in and the mosquito,
the owl and the star,
the pulse and the spark?
Can I be born again,
wild and instinctual,
primal and alive,
tender and pure,
listening and receptive,
courageous and co-creative,
to this Earth that is my home,
this body that is my nest and my deepest rest,
to this womb that carries the universe within it,
to this heart that is born to sing in gratitude
for the rain of blessings life bestows,
to this mind that has been undone and remade
across the vast stretches of time,
that whilst holding a leaden understanding
of the atrocities of humanity,
also holds within it the hologram of my own divinity
and the birth rite of my ancient belonging
in the ever-present ecstasy of the now.
© Lucy Pierce 2019
