Category: poetry

year of the snake, we shed. year of the horse, we ride.

This past weekend was the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. From here onward, light returns, slowly, almost imperceptibly at first. We are also finally standing on the edge of a new year. This past year felt like an earthquake, it felt like a mudslide; the news, the climate, the world, the job market ― everything felt like chaos and nothing felt in control. I know many loved ones who weathered significant storms. Friendships and relationships might have felt unmoored and uncertain. I contributed no small part to that, in a journey clawing out of the darkness. To my friends: I know I was not untouched by that turbulence. While the light does not return all at once, minute by minute, thank you for taking my hand and walking with me towards it.

A month ago, a calendar placeholder was created for T’s “holiday hoo-ha” and in advance, she invited me and two others to pick poems of choice to read out loud in honor of Yalda, a Persian winter solstice celebration on the year’s longest night. The celebration symbolizes the victory of light over darkness, poetry, and storytelling especially about rebirth and the future horizon. I picked two epistolary poems from Natalie Díaz and Ada Limón’s correspondence-as-art. M’s ancestors are from Iran and she meditated on selecting a poem written by a lesser-known Persian poet, then eventually picked a Rumi. When she mentions this decision prior to her reading, we murmur: “Rumi always wins.”

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.

On the morning after the hoo-ha, I arrived early for a movement class, and L suggested a short walk to the ocean while they prepared the room for the workshop. Winter does, in fact, present as winter here. Everything I was wearing as my outer layer was waterproof, except for (of course) my shoes. I attempted to tred carefully on the completely-wet-winter sand, and took note of the edges of foam where the tide met the land. Despite my intent on not getting my shoes wet (you had one job!), the ocean entranced me, distracted me, and I set music to the waves as the tide taunted my shoes and soaked them, too, as it also started raining. When I returned from my walk drenched, L’s face was set in apology for sending me out before an unexpected rain shower, but I shook my head and smiled. Living in the Netherlands conditioned me to feel like any other rain elsewhere is tolerable.

Later that afternoon, we sat together touching limb-to-limb in the heat of the sauna (in this case with full consent to our bodies for becoming completely drenched) awaiting J to begin the first ceremony of the day, and the person who was prepared to provide music on her flute paused. She asked if she could offer some words first.

Some themes arose from both gatherings.

In February next year, we will finally come out of the year of the snake’s introspective skin-shedding renewal, and move towards the fire horse’s freedom, adventure, and momentum. The room hummed with hope as the flautist said a prayer for us to get ready to ride. Bodies sweating out what we need to leave behind. Contemplating one’s own limits, tolerance, life, death, choice, control.

Heat + time coaxing out the idea that a sensation that seems intolerable may turn into a completely different sensation or revelation entirely. There’s an intense need inside me to keep moving, to stay productive, to not sit still. I am reminded of what it feels like to let go, to allow abundance and patience take lead. An exchange of pain and discomfort into something neutral, and sometimes even blooming into something hoovering around pleasure. The release when one has the choice about when to leave the heated room, skin and hair releasing heat, heart pounding as if we actually have been riding.

After the first ceremony, R sat next to me on a tree strump in regal silence outside of the room, the steam from his skin curling into the winter air. Everyone else chose soft surfaces, but he sat with his body at attention and eyes closed, hands extended and palms upwards towards what the universe might give to us if only we remain open to it. He says with his eyes still closed that usually you don’t get to see people’s auras surrounding them, but today, we do.

I reach into T’s mantras from her talk in Berlin:

When ambition is rooted in wonder instead of fear, it transforms. Work becomes expression rather than escape. Growth becomes spacious rather than frantic. Impact comes not from proving, but from presence.
Be disciplined, yes—but not in self-erasure.
Listen deeply—to others, and especially to yourself.
Let go of the need to define everything.

To remember even as we prepare to ride together at dawn, that even in the riding we should take time to pause, to listen. (Even to the roughest surf there’s a rhythm findabale which is why we keep coming here, to find it, said Carl Phillips.)
We will not find what we are seeking by chasing more.
We will find it when we stop running long enough to listen.

That belonging is not a place to reach, it is a felt sense of safety in our own bodies.

Limón, on how it might feel to make our way back to green:

What is it about words that make the world
fit easier? Air and time. […]
Maybe this letter is to say, if it is red where you are,
know there is also green, the serrated leaves of dandelion, lemon balm,
purple sage, peppermint, a small plum tree by the shed.
I don’t know how to make medicine, or cure what’s scarring
this planet, but I know that last night the train came roaring
right as I needed it. I was alone and I was time, but
the train made a noise so I would listen. I was standing so
close, a body on a bridge, that I could feel how
the air shifted to make room for the train. How it’s easier
if we become more like a body of air, branches, and make room
for this red charging thing that barrels through us,
how afterward our leaves shake and stand straighter.

Spell for Grief or Letting Go

For those of us grieving today’s election results, re-living trauma, feeling terrified, heavy-heartedly unsurprised while still in shock and disbelief, feeling at once invaded yet also abandoned, feeling ravaged yet unseen.

adrienne maree brown gifted us this spell for grief, for letting go ― both of which we might need, but also to nurture the strength to keep up the fight where it matters.

“This is a nonlinear spell. Cast it inside your heart, cast it between yourself and any devil. Cast it into the parts of you still living. Remember you are water. Of course you leave salt trails. Of course you are crying.”

Spell for Grief or Letting Go – adrienne maree brown

Adequate tears twisting up directly from the heart and rung out across the vocal chords until only a gasp remains;

At least an hour a day spent staring at the truth in numb silence;

A teacup of whiskey held with both hands, held still under the whispers of permission from friends who can see right through ‘ok’ and ‘fine’;

An absence of theory;

Flight, as necessary;

Poetry, your own and others, on precipice, abandonment, nature and death;

Courage to say what has happened, however strangling the words are…and space to not say a word;

A brief dance with sugar, to honor the legacies of coping that got you this far;

Sentences spoken with total pragmatism that provide clear guidance of some direction to move in, full of the tender care and balance of choice and not having to choose;

Screaming why, and/or expressing fury at the stupid unfair fucking game of it all (this may include hours and hours, even lifetimes, of lost faith);

Laughter, undeniable and unpretended;

A walk in the world, all that gravity, with breath and heartbeat in your ears;

Fire, for all that can be written;

Moonlight – the more full the more nourishing;

Stories, ideally of coincidence and heartache and the sweetest tiny moments;

Time, more time and then more time…enough time to remember every moment you had with that one now taken from you, and to forget to think of it every moment;

And just a glimpse of tomorrow, either in the face of an innocent or the realization of a dream.

This is a nonlinear spell. Cast it inside your heart, cast it between yourself and any devil. Cast it into the parts of you still living.

Remember you are water. Of course you leave salt trails. Of course you are crying.

Flow.

P.S. If there happens to be a multitude of griefs upon you, individual and collective, or fast and slow, or small and large, add equal parts of these considerations:
– that the broken heart can cover more territory.
– that perhaps love can only be as large as grief demands.
– that grief is the growing up of the heart that bursts boundaries like an old skin or a finished life.
– that grief is gratitude.
– that water seeks scale, that even your tears seek the recognition of community.
– that the heart is a front line and the fight is to feel in a world of distraction.
– that death might be the only freedom.
– that your grief is a worthwhile use of your time.
– that your body will feel only as much as it is able to.
– that the ones you grieve may be grieving you.
– that the sacred comes from the limitations.
– that you are excellent at loving.

Sending love and strength.

The Hill We Climb, by Amanda Gorman

I felt so inspired by Amanda Gorman, National Youth Poet Laureate and youngest person to read at a presidential inauguration. Here’s the full text of her poem, The Hill We Climb.

When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We’ve braved the belly of the beast
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn’t always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished
We the successors of a country and a time
Where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one
And yes we are far from polished
far from pristine
but that doesn’t mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect
We are striving to forge a union with purpose
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious
Not because we will never again know defeat
but because we will never again sow division
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid
If we’re to live up to our own time
Then victory won’t lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we’ve made
That is the promise to glade
The hill we climb
If only we dare
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy
And this effort very nearly succeeded
But while democracy can be periodically delayed
it can never be permanently defeated
In this truth
in this faith we trust
For while we have our eyes on the future
history has its eyes on us
This is the era of just redemption
We feared at its inception
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation
Our blunders become their burdens
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,
we will rise from the windswept northeast
where our forefathers first realized revolution
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,
we will rise from the sunbaked south
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
and every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it