To Offer Wholeness

Surrender

To Offer Wholeness

There have been times in my life

when without the strong anchor

of my own fierce embodiment,

I have felt like a leaf,

blown and buffeted by the wind,

slipping through cracks,

seeking respite in the shelter of quiet corners,

too afraid somehow and tentative

to come deeply down,

into the body, onto the Earth.

As though a good part of me

still dangled amongst the stars,

vast and unfixed,

blown so wide open

and so femininely fluid,

that when life has ask of me

to bring myself to bare,

it is such an almighty mustering

that must take place,

of all my disparate cells,

scattered through the cosmos,

to come in now, to come home,

to this moment, and to this body,

with it's broad feet,

it's curved circumference and furrowed brow,

to be someone and to belong, here,

solidly planted, with great twining roots

sinking deeply through the Earth’s crust,

exquisitely aware of the cradle of my pelvis,

the gravity of my bones

and the sweet whisper of my tomb.

Eyes and ears and heart and womb,

mind and soul awake

and entrained to the asking,

an offering of my wholeness

to this birthing of the moment.

Lucy Pierce © 2013

Blessings of Earth

Bear Woman                               Lucy Pierce

Blessings of Earth

May your love be a source of sustenance to the world,

May it continue to seed and flower and bare fruit

to nourish the life-blood of the soul,

the wellspring of the whole.

May your bodies be ever entwined

in the pleasures of this earthly garden of your love.

May you drink ever deeply from the cup of your own making.

May the moist and fertile soil of your own becoming

open to receive the seeds of your dreaming.

When it seems that that which lies between has withered,

may you return to the dark den of her womb

and reseed, restore, renew.

May you always walk together

to the rhythm

of the heartbeat

of the Mother.

Lucy Pierce © 2013

When my beautiful friends Simone Touissant and Andrew Darling were married at the beginning of the year it was such an honour to stand in ceremony with them, with my own beloved David beside me in the Earth element. This was my offering to them on their union. The Bear Mother finally fired all these moons later, and finally gifted so many years after she was first seeded. Thanks for your patience Simone! 

Check out Simone Touisant Darlings Cherokee Bodywork and Birth Keeper-Birth Support work at Wolf-Mother Healer. 

The Gravity of Darkness

Uncoiling the shadows                     Lucy Pierce    

    

The Gravity of Darkness

Oh dark one,

how long must I be apprenticed to you?

The cycle of your shadow’s descent

is sometimes like unto drowning to me,

as though all the world but me

held the privilege of holding its face up to the sun

and although I walk amongst them

my heart is shrouded by the dark side of the moon.

My most loyal mistress

you lure me in to see

the true depth of the unknown wound

while all the others are at play,

to gently lap at the edges of the pain

pretending that we are going somewhere.

And it is as though it were two lives that I lived

simultaneously trying to be in the world,

the desperation of this longing to be sleek and honed,

clear and simple,

basking in the light of all creation,

and then the deep inward turning eye,

scrupulous and brutal.

The part of me that longs for the sun

resists drowning completely

in the other gravitational fore 

of my own darkness.

But to compete in the sun

is to know so agonizingly

of my own aching shadow lands

pulling me away always from the brink of the world,

as I stand on the edge of things,

alone and somehow dually unlived,

a slave to both worlds

and a child of none.

And I beg of you Dark One,

birth me,

birth me whole,

that my being might be as wide

as the star studded sky,

and straddle the all of me,

without apology,

the inner and outer,

the light and the dark.

I feel your great pelvis shudder

with the weight of me,

and I feel your earth shattering contractions

like I did that first time around.

Deliver me wholly unto you Dark Mother,

that you may eat the after-birth of me

and be sated,

that I may no longer shy from your face

but drink deeply from your breast

the rich river of your stories,

that I might also carry you with me

into the light,

into the radiant shining

of the ancient Other,

She of the sun,

with her undulating pelt of pleasure,

and the celebration of who we are

when we have birthed ourselves home,

no longer caring for pretence,

but alive to life,

the life of the self

and the life of the world,

seamlessly met.


Lucy Pierce © 2013

Fragments of Light Returning

photo courtesy of Kylie 'Ma Bower'

Fragments of Light Returning

Such a gentle and holy reclamation

of power and birthright,

so exquisitely feminine and encompassing,

allowing the deep grief to gently swell and fall

knowing the futility of drowning in the depths

of the horror of withheld love,

only humbly touching the edges

of that unfathomable pain

of lives lived in such shadow.

So gently we danced,

like fragments of light

upon the surface of the well,

summoning that which longed to move

from that place beneath,

from the deep waters.

As we summoned our strength

from the wellsprings of memory,

through  the dappled sunlight of ancient green

forests of the heart,

seeking the seer,

reclaiming the word,

reforming the container,

stronger now and more true.

A radiant gathering of pilgrims we were,

with brimming hearts and a myriad of colours

displayed in our feathers,

in the twinkling eye 
and the joy of our togetherness,

the sweetness of it a flame 
so artfully tended

by that Lady of the Swan,

she of the water and the word,

awakening.

We journeyed deep, deep into the past

and returned ancient and wise

and more free than we had been when we left,

we returned with animal companions,

a wild menagerie in our midst,

and with us the wise ones of our blood-lines,

all gathering, strong and open,

to aid the passage of the women and children
of the Magdalene Laundries.

With a raucous reverence we walked,

we drummed and we rattled,

we danced and we sang.
Beloved sister the beacon 
and shepherd of our song.

Our bejeweled feet thumping their love

through the foundations

to caress the bones that lay below.

Gathering into the heart of our mighty sound

the lost and the silent,

the trapped and forgotten ones,

the ululation of our feelingness

enlivening the air

awakening the unseen

and calling them to return

as we wind our way back now,

to the ancient river, sparkling.

The trees bending close to hear,

swaying and dancing with the glistening sunlight,

their celebration and resonance

with this timely passage of freedom.

Our voices still entwining,

weaving the warp and the weft of the basket

that would be their boat.

And by the waters edge,

our taproots entwining with the roots

of that vast and ancient tree of life

in the heart of the Earth, our Mother.

Silent now, deep in the medicine of this mystery,

the sole voice, so intimately sweet,

the song resounding from she

who is so strong to be so soft and still be heard.

And we feel them finding their own way now,
the one's that would come,

the Magdalenes, the forgotten ones,

home to the Waiting One’s,

the air alive with the subtle vibrations of their release,

the bindings falling free,

the light returning to that which has dwelt

so long in the shadow.

Wordless now and feeling the fine filaments of love,

entraining the universe,

as though there was suddenly more room

for sunlight and love,

more room for forgiveness

and fearless becoming.

Lucy Pierce © 2013

This poem is a reflection on an amazing day spent at the Abbottsford Convent with Julia Inglis at her workshop Swan Blessing: Femmina Unbound- Return of the Medicine Woman. I have abounding gratitude for the experience and can't recommend her work more highly. You can find out more about Julia's work at www.sacredfamiliar.com

Ancient Rhythm

Blood Bowl                      Lucy Pierce

Ancient Rhythm

Nested so precisely in the crux of the invisible moon,

my womb spills forth her crimson elixir

and I delight in my body’s having come

finally to rest in this ancient rhythm.

The inward eye of the blood

reflected in the hidden face of the moon,

the treasure of the darkness two-fold,

the inner and the outer

and I know without a doubt

that She is my timepiece and my compass,

and that though I am Earth bound

my being spans the cosmos,

the workings of my womb

mirrored in the vast workings of the universe

and that I am a part of the plan,

so much bigger on the inside.

My blood is a fertile gifting from the stars

where the Grandmothers wait, watching.

It’s slick and pendulous flow

the caress that calls me home

to the molten heart of the earth

and to the mercurial mysteries of the universe

fathomed from within.

Lucy Pierce © 2013

The Life Giving Terrain

The Life Giving Terrain

Breasts full and pendulous,

belly soft and beseeching,

sweeping down as though to hear more deeply

the Earth’s listening Heart.

The body of woman that holds and transmutes,

the body of woman as the body of the Earth

whole and bountiful,

it exudes it’s own gravitational pull

as you occupy the continent of your skin

with your sensual pleasure,

embodying the delight of a plump and juicy heart.

You remind me that the pieces of myself

that I feel are too much

are really the abundance of being

the body of the earth

in the body of woman,

with hill and dale and mossy outcrops,

the life-giving terrain,

textured and curvaceous and full.

You pull me in and down

with your embodied invitation

to inhabit the space so tenderly given

that is this body of love and of life

and of the undulating She-scape.

Lucy Pierce © 2013

You Beneath my Wings

Together

You Beneath my Wings

Everything I do is done with you beneath my wings,

nested in the curve of my feathered heart.

My two small ones, divine and outrageously human,

sticky handed and thick lashed,

smooth and bellied and infinitely soft,

with your powerful primal forces,

one minute a lullaby the next a storm,

as you ride the furious currents of your own becomings,

human, embodied , relational.

When I am humble,

I am gifted the chance of learning the universe anew,

seeing with eyes reclaimed by your innocence,

 I am gifted awe and the most tender workings of truth

in my innermost heart,

as you birth me back to wholeness.

What could be more pressing than this?

Nothing more true than this fierce intent to care,

to indwell the peaceful solution in each and every moment,

the way you unwittingly call me on my own withholding,

the way your innocence and expression

illuminates in me my own artifice,

my own investment in the outcome

that may not always be of service

to the asking of the moment.

Yet it is true I sometimes struggle

against the smallness that you ask of me,

with each step to stay small with you,

with the eye that will see the bug in the blossom

or the hole in your sock

or the answer to the riddles that you pose.

You call upon the part of me

that is happy for the washing of dishes to take an hour

and that by the end, the floor will be drenched

and two new dry outfits required.

The part that values the quality of the moment

over what is achieved,

the part that must accept

that often nothing gets done

except the growing of our inner lives.

Sometimes I feel your wings

stretching out above me as you soar out

into a future without me in it

and I grasp the magnitude of this work,

that with my body I have created something,

alive and vital that blessed be will outlive me,

that I birthed you into being

and that with each breath

I must bring my will to bear

in the task of your care.

That you ask of me always to find

a deeper resource of love within me,

that you ask me always to be more patient,

aware, present and awake

than I would ever have felt possible

in the moment before your asking.

As through my own inertia,

I enact my love,

as you ask of me in every moment

to overcome myself,

as you, my flesh and blood,

move beyond the edges of me,

and call for me to come after.

The potent weight of your hand in mine,

the wild tangle of your hair

when I have looked away from it too long,

the hungry clutch of you awake in the night,

the desperation of your need for comfort

and the fact that you will accept no less

than the all of me.

As you grow I grow.

And then there are the days when I look out at the world,

twinkling so brightly and moving so fast

and it is as though we live in a different universe,

ours the time of the turning planet

and the growing seed in the dark Earth,

the creeping season and the creaking forest....

The time span in which it appears

that despite a constant business,

nothing ever happens,

just this imperceptible transmutation,

amidst all the minute and unseen tasks

that ask for me to be like unto nothing.

Sometimes I forget that you are both so tender still,

tucked beneath my skirts,

so wholly dependent on me

in a way that I still sometimes find unimaginable,

the ask of that much surrender.

Sometimes I stride out into my life with bold abandon

and then am left with the quandary

of how to be more than one thing at once.

And sometimes I hear the great whispering Mother

telling me to be still, rest deep

and be the great mountain on whom my children can climb,

themselves oblivious to the possibility

that it could be any other way,

than this vast deep holding of the mother love,

as I wrestle beneath, in the constant dance of surrender,

to grow my heart, to grow my capacity to love

so that I can hold true to you,

the precious fruits of my womb,

my gifting to life

and the unfolding of our tomorrow.

Lucy Pierce © 2013

Still and Gently Listening

 Flowering woman         Lucy Pierce © 2013

Still and gently listening deeply within

to the tender turning of the tide,

the fine filaments swaying in the release

of an anciently withheld current,

announcing ripples of exquisitely infinitesimal

and unforetold change

through the landscape of the feeling field.

Condensing into clusters of exquisite agony,

grand crescendos of unlovedness within,

building only to find the place that yields,

bursting banks of the long held stories of separation,

surrendering the pain of who I thought I was

for something else,

equally unknowable and tenderly awkward,

and becoming the path to another forbearance

and yet another pooling of dark matter within.

Still, and darkly listening,

following the thread that is leading me home.

The brittle disintegration of paper-like encasements

deep in the body,

breaking through that which held energies separate,

that fragile membrane enough to withhold

the pulsing tides of life until now.

I dream of empty, untended rooms of my psyche,

newly discovered, dusty and barren

from a lifetime’s disinhabitance.

Thunderous, trembling transmutation,

blasting through the whimpering fear,

the trembling earthquake transfiguring

the landscape in its wake.

Staying awake in that which is numb

until that small constellation opens

and shaking off the drowsy unfeelingness,

aligns with that which is fully felt.

Feeling through the sheathes of that which I have denied,

shrouding my within,

like a mantle of protection that no longer serves.

I am re-mantling the body,

bringing myself home to the alter

of my own cellular inheritance,

restoring it’s abandoned places

it’s misused and neglected sanctuaries.

I am coming home,

hungry for wholeness and the task eternal.

Infinitely nuanced this seeking to reinstill

the nerve beneath the wound.

And yet the question sings,

rising like an air bubble through the deep and cloying mud,

displaced by my footstep on the riverbed of my being,

How can I come to lay my burden down?

My bones and muscles aching under the load of my darkness,

how can I unhitch the boulder that I wear

always on my shoulder, and be free?

And so I do as I have always done,

seek the space beneath,

tend the place between,

open on the inside,

as wide and as infinitely small as can be,

still, and gently listening,

least the answer to my question

be whispered softly in the night.

The tentative exploring of that space

where grace might dwell within me,

where God might sing within me.

Each hungry cell awake with the hunger

to be remembereded by love,

skin alert like a new-born babe,

or a body embalmed.

Lucy Pierce © 2013

Recent Sculptures

Newborn Mother by Lucy Pierce © 2013

      Little Mother  by Lucy Pierce © 2013