September 14, 2020

The Sub-terrain


More than anything else, 

I feel we are missing roots, 

deep roots. 

Roots into body and feeling, 

roots into the deep self that transcends time and space, 

embedded in earth. 

Roots into story and song. 

Roots into myth and archetype, 

symbol and image. 

That eternal subterranean map of morality 

that binds a people to their place, 

a heart to it's truest purpose.

Roots and bones and stones of earth, 

digging into the before and beyond 

to bring the deep nourishing waters up through the subterrain, 

to the radiant light of day. 

Tap root latching on, 

pushing in, through the bedrock, 

ballast and nutrient, 

succulent and dark. 

Drinking from the deep dark earth, 

drinking of the wisdom of bloodlines 

and mythic templates forged across ages. 

Sensing the wild primordial seeds of creation 

singing by our side as we seek a deeper hold, 

as we labour in the chthonic soil 

of our annihilating undoing 

and our emergent becoming. 

The reverberations of the gods 

undulating the dark field of our endeavour.

This is not something known but rather sensed,

like the amputee of a limb long gone.

And yet we drift, severed, rootless, 

cultureless, orphaned, 

exiled. 

This is not by chance, 

there has been deep violence in the severance, 

meticulous intent in the brutal disconnection 

and the dross that replaced the first truth 

of our innate belonging. 

I long for my body to learn 

how to send it’s succours down 

through this hard, fertile, stolen ground 

and to know myself home. 

Down through the substrate 

to the wellspring of story and dream

that would teach me how to live true.

How do we grow roots worthy of the profound privilege, 

of being the embodied faces of our ancestors, 

miraculously alive in the now?



Text and image © Lucy Pierce 2020


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