Peeking From Behind the Trees

9/4/2019

Peeking from behind the trees
Backs to the land of real magic
Where languages between species and lines between worlds
blur
Where dreams and imagination are inseparable from what we
see.

They told us it would be hard
when we stepped from the naked grass
Into the shoes whose soulless rubber soles
Protect us from the poison our people have spilled

You’d think it was an accident.

That they wedged a sensory mile of a middle finger
Between me and home

I cry at the thought of it

That with each footstep
I could be blowing kisses to the land
But coming back means sacrificing such an enticing love affair
So that I may look similar enough to the rest
To do my work in the world

OH! The horror at what is lost
in a soulless sole
Because it is not just my butterfly feet and crow claws
That are lost

Oh! The horror at what is lost
When we sterilize our skin in dead water
In place of the holy baptism
Of living water that tumbles and sings down mountains
And is pulled and rocked to sleep and life
By grandmother moon herself

What an honor!
What a horror.
To step out from behind the trees
Into clothes that are too tight
So that I cannot see my own nipples
Responding to the tickling wind
The cold and sunshine

So tight that I cannot feel the desperate hunger
of mosquitos that beg for blood

Because now my blood is burning too hot to feed an insect

Too hot to stay behind the trees
Too hot to bathe in creeks icy from the snowmelt
Too hot to gaze timelessly at the games played
Between flower and bee, doe and stag.

In these clothes, I am hungry.
For the land that speaks to me
Where days without food are nothing
Compared to years without soul
And the lives lived through the window of someone else’s car
Lived through the screen where we sacrifice connection to people
For connection to wifi
Trade social support systems
For social networks
Trade soul
For rubber.

We trade mud between toes
For tar in every crack
Even the crack between our eyelids that are sealed shut
After sleeping for so long that Prince Charming may try his best
But this one needs stronger medicine.
Butterfly kisses to the earth are not potent enough anymore.

So grow your own medicine.

Grow your claws, teeth, beaks and talons
Grow your thorns and stingers
Shoot your arrows
Roar

Wake up! Wake up!
Run through the patch of brambles barefooted
Jump into the icy lake naked
Let the bugs bite.

Cry, dammit!
Dissolve the cement that seals your eyes
Flush out the sand dumped into them
By those who didn’t realize
that they weren’t sprinkling fairy dust in a nursery rhyme anymore.

Cry, dammit!
Cry until your eyes fall out of your head
So that your body deflates and falls onto the floor like a limp balloon
So soul can fly out
Blinking and stretching
And reaping havoc upon the house.

Cry, dammit!
So that your tears can be pulled by the moon, too.
Pulled from your beautiful face
And into the fertile soil that has been waiting for its whole life
For the gift of your grief
To water the seeds of your new life, a new world

Where I don’t have to hide behind trees.
Where you don’t have to hide behind screens
Where you don’t have to wish you could be like a bird
Or the wild girl who scares you witless
Because you can be one, too.

So stop wishing!
Don’t look longingly for another moment
You think it is flattering
But it is offensive
To the wild essence that wishes to be freed from your body, too.
The twisting, meandering, terrifying and beautiful
Elegantly messy and free
That moves through landscapes of taboo and pleasure and pain
Let
Her
Out
Now

Let her eat you from the inside
Feasting on all that died within you long ago
Because we know but a single grain of sand
On a planet of beaches

Stop fighting it, please, I beg you!
Stop plugging holes with your poor choices
Like bubble gum in the crack of a dam

Don’t kill the weeds
Be the weeds

Be the bird who flies into the house uninvited
Causing a ruckus
Building a nest in your mother's hair
Filling it with spit and twigs

Maybe if you lay eggs,
She will care to keep her head steady enough
To watch the seedlings hatch.

2 Comments

9/4/2019 06:18:49 pm

I am not familiar with this website, but I am assuming you would like critical comments. These comments should probably go to the poet, not her public.

I read this through twice. The first time I liked it; wasn't "sure" about some of the imagery; but I got the point; liked that it was long and kept working at its theme; and by the end felt clearly how much the poet had been moved by her own experience. Read it a second time, wondered about a few parts and liked some of the lines (independently) A LOT. I thought, “Nice job!” – with clearly a lot of work on a long poem.

1.

So grow your own medicine.

Grow your claws, teeth, beaks and talons
Grow your thorns and stingers
Shoot your arrows
Roar

Wake up! Wake up!

I thought this was powerful but was surprised that the images are all associated with aggression. I felt the poem trying to make me optimistic about change and the positives mentioned like the richness and reward of:

blowing kisses to the land

or the simple pleasure of seeing

. . . my own nipples
Responding to the tickling wind
The cold and sunshine

It makes sense or perhaps is in tune with the context of the end of the poem where the self is urged to let her [heretofore hidden] soul:

. . . eat you from the inside
Feasting on all that died within you long ago

2.

Don’t kill the weeds
Be the weeds

This is quite striking because of the surprise (something thought of as bad is seen as good). I think the point is “grow where and how you want to grow,” but I have a hard time getting past the pejorative impact of the term weed. I don’t have a good substitute, but perhaps there’s something analogous to say, the word “pollen” (which is a positive thing – life giving instrument in plants and food for insects) but which we sometimes don’t want around. “Don’t vacuum the pollen off the table top, be the pollen.” That doesn’t work because the pollen from flowers in a vase is a clunky image. Or “Don’t brush the pollen off your clothes, be the pollen.” That’s all a long-winded way of saying that the “weeds” are worth some further thought.

3.

. . . languages between species and lines between worlds
blur
Where dreams and imagination are inseparable from what we
see.

This is an incredibly powerful way to open the poem. It immediately entices or encourages the reader to think in a fresh way.

Why specifically it is powerful is complicated, and I think the following comments shouldn’t matter, but they are thoughts on perhaps why it may be powerful. – We tend to take words like “languages” and “lines” literally so there’s a little jarring when we are told they exist between species and worlds. “What? Languages between species? Literally?” But before we can think about that very much we’re told the lines blur when we do something quite special, and that is, allow our dreams and imagination to be “inseparable from what we see.” Then I think we drift back to the languages between species and think of it figuratively – without specifically thinking about this, in the sense of balance and interaction in nature – the biological / geographical balance reached in ecosystems – which we see as “natural” and “very positive.”

In short, I think the reader likes thinking about the idea of our “dreams and imagination [being] inseparable from what we see.” In a quick read, it feels very positive, and it sets a positive context in which to receive all the discussions of struggle that follow.

4.

. . days without food are nothing
Compared to years without soul

Another powerful two lines.

It’s a broad perspective and something of a call to attention for the reader. It also stands out because its broad reach (comparing food with soul) is creative and in contrast to the specific imagery and non-aphoristic calls to action that surround it. Instead of being told specifics of experiences or specifics of what to do, in these two lines where called upon to think about a truth.

It was rewarding to read this engaging poem.

Angelina Clark link

10/19/2021 12:43:05 pm

Veery nice post

Journal

Peeking From Behind the Trees

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