Here myths spill into the day

Mosswood dreaming

Here, if you tread very softly among the cedars

you may hear the low midday snores

of the soft secret race of big-footed beings

who grow pink hibiscus in their dreams.

You can’t miss the tree that is the portal
to the three worlds because it is more real
than the others. This is your One Tree,
that knows you before you know it.

When hungry spiders dressed as magic mushrooms
come skittering over your bed
you forget to be scared because you are hungrier
that they are. You gobble them up fast
and burp out webs of shining possibility

You stand before the bathroom mirror
squeezing toothpaste from the tube
and a giant boa rises to rhyme with you
wrapping itself round the tube of your body
squeezing your old dead stuff out.

You see that people have fire slumbering
in their bellies even when they are cold
and muddled and living on ashes
and you make it your pleasure
to turn on the pilot light of their souls.

Here you can walk through wild orchards
to a wild shore where the hard spray
off the whitecaps rouses every nerve ending.
You pick your way, barefoot, over the rocks
to the tide pool where the great sea turtle,
teacher of the deep, resumes your lessons
in going deep, and wearing armor
on your back that leaves your soft bits exposed
so you can’t hide from life in a hard shell
but must always be ready to fight or move fast.

Here you remember the power of naming.
You find the words that heal bodies,
pleasure spirits, and make worlds.
When you ask, “Where’s the rest of me?”
you create a conga line where you are joined

by the belly dancer and the golden child,

the red horse and the crocodile,
by Bigfoot,  the Empress and the Fool.

Here when you let love spill through your eyes
every blade of grass is in love with you.
You lie in the creek bed like a pebble
and the water rounds your hard edges.
In pilgrim hands you are carried to a stony place
to make an offering to mountain spirits.
You rest in a cairn for a thousand years
until you spread wings and fly to your truest lover.
You let the earth have you, under the warm sun.

The fire has been built for you.
You become cinnamon.
Rising again, you spread yourself.
As aurora, you color the world.

Here myths spill into the day
like ripe fruit falling into your hand.
The salmon that made Finn the first shaman
leaps from the deep pool of dreams
stuffed with the hazelnuts of wisdom
and explodes on your palate
and feeds the whole company
in a miracle of filberts and fishes.

- Mosswood Hollow, September 12, 2014

Photo by Nance Thacker