Where Myths Spill into the Day

 

A recent dream of finding a 232 diamond in the rough led me back to my journals to see what was going on in my imaginal life around the time a diamond of precisely that size was found in September 2014. I discovered a poem I wrote in the midst of one of the adventures I lead at a magical place is a red cedar forest in the foothills of the Cascades.

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 at night
you forget to be scared because you are hungrier
than 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 around 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.
You turn on the pilot light of their souls.

Here you can walk through wild orchards
to a wild shore. You pick your way to the tide pool
where sea turtle resumes your lessons in going deep
and wearing armor that leaves your soft bits exposed
so you can’t hide from life in a hard shell.

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 a creek bed like a pebble
and the water rounds your hard edges.

In pilgrim hands you are carried to a stony place
as an offering to mountain spirits.
You rest in a cairn for a thousand years
until you spread wings and fly to your truest lover
and let the earth have you, under 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 hazel nuts of wisdom
and explodes on your palate
and feeds the whole company
in a miracle of filberts and fishes.

 

-    - Mosswood Hollow, September 12, 2014