Where soul was kept safe

Roused by birdsong in the soft Cascades morning:
Western tanagers, small glories of red and gold
in this green world. Soul birds, sized for the heart.
or to sing of what is past or passing or to come.

Where was I, just now, in my second body?
Out in a hot desert of snakes, in another skin.
A big man praised me for going out and returning
but I think the soul birds sang me back here

So: After the dragon gave a girl the six of hearts
and the Daughter of Wind blew us clean
we found, by objective chance, the universal key
that opens every high school locker.

All of us left something in those school lockers.
Dirty socks, old secrets, movie star idols, fright masks,
yearbooks, catcher's gloves, tampons, first loves,
shame we couldn't tell, sneakers, soles we forgot.

Here, take the key. It can open any locker
but in your hand it will open only the locket of your heart.
Follow your footprints backwards. No, the other ones,
the tracks of your night-traveling self

who crosses time, forwards, backwards or sideways,
as you cross a parking lot. He knows - she knows -
what you need to bring back from the place
where soul you've been missing has been kept safe.

drawing by RM

The Journey to the High School Locker

Poems should not be explained but sometimes it may be appropriate to speak of origins and context. This poem streamed from a deep experience of group shamanic journeying in the cause of soul recovery in one of my workshops at a lovely private retreat center in the foothills of the Cascades.
    In a dream that was shared, one of our participants found herself back in high school, at her present age, looking for something precious she had left in a locker. We agreed that we would support her, as family, as she reentered the dream - with the help of shamanic drumming - with the intention of finding the key to the locker and recovering whatever was waiting for her there. We also agreed that all of us would be free to visit our own version of the school locker and claim whatever was there for us.
    The result was beautiful and rich soul recovery healing, for the original dreamer and for many others: bringing home the energy of that teen self who locked herself away when life was too painful, as a survival mechanism. Once again, dream recovery can be soul recovery.