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POETRY BLOG

STRAIGHT FROM THE DESK

EYE-TO-EYE WITH THE SHE-EARTH

Matthew Gardner

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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