I’ve been quiet this past year, soaking in teachings and contemplation of path…how best my writing serves my vision and service in the world as a warrior, a dancer, a poet, a muse. I’ve become a servant to the love letter in the meantime, writing in volumes… but less visible to all of us.
But today the light is different. Perhaps now, as September dawns, and the rains are returning to Portland, and the sky seems to be just that perfect shade of sterling gray, perhaps these are just the right ingredients for me to miss that sense of contact I get when I reach out across wider space. Perhaps someone in particular feels far away, or the stage upon which I dance and play feels a little more groundless, a little more like spreading my wings without hope or fear of landing.
Today I want to share a love poem–part of a series I have been creating–that taps into a certain quality we all have inherently, that which defies convention without even trying. This points to the type of love born when strangers meet and as each looks into the other, they leap. This points to the type of love that we create as we navigate each day, when the most familiar beloved becomes fresh once more, and we fall…without hope or fear of landing. xx S
Lover, you
are the breath of freshest air.
The wind that is my ground,
the space that is home—
it’s everything.
Meeting can be touching
a golden leaf falling across your face.
It’s the end of sumer and I wish to stretch
against the world.
I press my belly to the sky as blue as your eyes,
and arch my back.
I feel the points of my hips
and the spaces between my ribs stretch.
I feel how wide my heart can be—
We are all part of the same anatomy.
Sometimes we caress the truth with our bare hands.
Sometimes we need a pen, or
a knife.
We are also survivors and refugees.
Repetition can be a tragedy—we’ve seen it
crumble dignity.
Yet it is also the key to becoming.
Be here with me.
Let’s be brave, and I promise we’ll discover who we are.
Lovers and warriors make a habit of toasting
because we feel the fortune of having bodies.
We feel the breeze against our skin.
History has created us, just as we create it,
which is why, my love,
I will drink to your journey a thousand times and more.
The sun climbs higher in the sky,
and we follow it.
