There comes a time
in every life
when the She-Earth
grabs you by the back of your neck
and pulls you right up close to her.
Looking into her lava-ocean eyes,
forced to finally breathe in her sea salt perfume,
and consumed by the sheer weight of her presence,
you’ll squirm or try to look away,
or do anything to not acknowledge her,
to not remember her,
to not truly take her in,
and know her.
But, like the seasons,
compelled by destiny,
or moved over months
by those fern frond fingers on your chin,
you’ll turn back to her.
Age after age,
you always turn back,
eventually.
SHE is the original dakini,
the first temple,
who worshipped herself
by simply being alive
and enlivened.
She has always been that wild wind
that touches all places you hold holy.
The breeze that blesses all parts of your being
that you reject and shame and deny.
In those rare moments
when you cough and splutter
and come back to life,
those moments where you remember
like a torrent of lightning-eternity
all that you’d forgot,
she is there,
with her seven sister necklace
and whale bone whistle hanging
between bare breasts.
She is there
dripping milk and life
onto babes and seeds and saplings,
and holy water
onto the frozen hearts
and sucken c*cks of all fallen angels,
numbed by that distant grief
they cannot touch.
Ripening all river waters
with the dark red dreaming
that turns Autumn fruits
into living gods;
tadpoles swim between her toes,
and full bellied fox cubs
paw her ear lobes.
She hums the song that spins us all,
and as she falls,
she dreams.
And as she dreams,
she dances,
And as she dances,
she takes the life from all things
and draws them back into her body
and after an age
after the most sacred of all humblings
she feeds them form
and brings them back to life.
She is the singer of the bone-song in your spine,
the placer of flame-stones at your feet,
the dreaming-cooking-cauldron
that lives between your hips.
When you follow your belly button
back to the beginning of it all,
you will find only her
AND the first dream
that filled her.
Meet her in the late Autumn,
and she will caress
all your sore parts,
all your sleeping parts,
all the tired gods
forged into your form.
She will dig your winter grave
on your behalf,
if you find yourself so busy
you forget.
As you age,
she will shapeshift
right in front of you
into everything
you didn’t know she was.
Eventually,
as your shoulders sag from holding on
to everything you’d been before,
to everything you thought you knew,
as your eyes slowly close
from the exhaustion of fighting the life
that wants to wake in you…
She’ll take her final form,
but only for a moment.
And your eyes, just slithers now,
will cry heavy tears
as you behold your own face
looking back at you
from a body made of dark soil and stone,
and everything you’ve ever loved,
decayed and turned to earth.
She’ll look back at you with
ocean eyes
and lava veins
and tectonic-organs
and a mycelium skin-coat
covered in all kinds of holy-weeds
and trees
and vines.
She’ll look back at you,
and you’ll know her,
and you won’t ever be able to look away again.
~ Matthew Liam Gardner
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