Into Dark Solstice - A Poem

We have walked down this way before.

Along trails hooved by deer’s morphing ancestors,

where light-loving leaves give way to moist stone.

We crossed these lands an orbit ago,

the constellations just a little different,

herding us into this shadow valley

where day’s inbreath grows short, and nights outbreath long,

where old calendars exhale completely,

dissolving into dream around us.

A valley of deepest shadow and reverence for light,

when the bright one with whom we brew time is furthest from us,

our fingertips barely brushing across the expanse.

But now, let us pause in this descent,

though we may already yearn to be passing through the valley

and climbing the far slope

and our fingertips to be clasping the bright one’s,

then our palms

and on into union.

Now, let us make a hearth here on this slope,

circle round and share glimpses into the nests of our travel pouches

into dust-cloaked treasures

given, gleamed, borrowed, birthed.

From across oceans, home grown,

from across constellations, sprouted in soil.

As dust riding these treasures gives way to their tastes,

may the biome of our heart-minds find creatures there

to wriggle and enrich us,

tickle our consciousness.

A pause, a breath,

then a passing round of the embers who heard all this.

For each a gentle red pulse.

For each a lantern.

May we then tread down into the valley

to join other circles,

feel other embers and dusty treasures,

and then to be in silence

and let the embers

go out.

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Here we are.

You. Me. I in my body, you in yours, they in theirs.

I with my personality, upbringing, influences, opinions. You with yours, they with theirs.

Yet here are ways we are more than ourselves. We overlap not only with each other, but with other species, and those in other times, and more.

Wandering time and place, ancestry and other lives, from love’s dissolving of boundaries to the intelligence of species, here are explorations of of ways we are vast.

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I was cast out from my home. Or maybe I ran away.

To dry lands. I’m hungry. I need to become something more, to shed a part of me that seemed intrinsic.

And the waters are rising.

A slow, meditative and moody song.Lyrics: I ran from all l've known

to a dry land where now

seeking, seeking, seeking home

Fortnights passed aplenty, & was living hungry

learning from the serpents who hunted with the moon.

One vast & star-pierced midnight, a man emerged from darkness

Said ‘These lands you love shall leave us soon.’

He told me, ‘Floods they will course all across these creatures

These creatures know it rightly, see them climbing from the sands

He said ‘I dwell in stony ridges, high above the waters.

Come dwell with me as we wait for land.’

One dawn we were together, above the flooded badlands

He said, ‘Watch the sun trail crossing the waters down below.’

Long I sat there seeking, slowly growing patient

’Til I had nowhere else to go.

Stone to gold & gold to sky

Bones broke & scattered, once more & again

Stars who circle still long after they die

Guides guide still once they are slain

Floods seeped downward & flowed on to the ocean

Stone arounds on the ground was all I could see

The old man passed… & plenty joined me with his passing

All he lived now lives in me.

Now walk across these badlands, still learning from the serpents

finding forlorn singers, cast out from their homes

by instigating elders, wise as troubled waters

I come to them in their time alone.

I sing to them from heaven, deep within the waters

I sing to them as air deep within the stone

with a voice of slither serpents, wise as desert daughters,

where I wander is where I'm home.

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It’s time to die, old man. Past time.

You’ve fucked things up. I don’t even want to see you.

Damn, and you’re afraid. What dignity will you be able to die with?

Alright, old man, here’s a song to help.Subscribe & Support

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Do gifts leave gaps?

If I’m good at one thing, does it leave me floundering in another area?

And here’s a big thoughts, on the level of our whole human species, perhaps our gifts leave holes.

Here’s a meditation on self-awareness and our relationship with our living home.

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If you’re working with stories and you’re not crazy, don’t worry, it won’t take long.

Turkey vultures circle overhead. They’re not waiting until I die, though they wouldn’t turn down the meat. No, they have a message for me.

Who’s speaking to you?

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Imagine a map with no cities, no provincial or national borders, no names of colonisers claiming land.

Instead, this map is dotted with mythic sites. It is a record of story-sites rooted in land, and webbed together.

Hear more, in this melodic meditation, quoting Sean Kane’s excellent book, Wisdom of the Mythtellers, with a passage from a Haida origin myth.Subscribe & Support

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As a young man, with my fabric of my life dealt a sudden and grave wound, when I most needed culture, India took me in.

But my relationship with Indian culture and myth is complicated.

I traversed story paths walked by sages for thousands of years, heard the tales sprouting from those places, found culture and community and meaning.

And there is hierarchy, racism, sexism, caste, and other violences woven in.

And it’s complicated.

And it’s beautiful.

After years of turning away from the myths and practices that once shaped my life, I was recently invited to tell a story from the Ramayan at a Bhakti festival here on Turtle Island.

This live telling moves through love, exile, and betrayal; forest hermitages and monkey kingdoms; floating bridges and secret reasons behind the prince’s banishment.

Along the way, we wonder at the villains in this story, and how they may be the story’s greatest servants.

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Overwhelmed by rapid change in my life, inside and outside, I walked a beach in South India, my head spinning between continents. A fellow pilgrim’s rambling advice saved me. As did potatoes. As did a slug, years later, in a very different scenario.

Intrigued? Confused? Have a listen to increase both of those.

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A tribute-song to two supernovas—Joanna Macy and Andrea Gibson—who in their passing away are spreading life-building gifts.

A story-song. A metaphor.

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