Nancy Lankston
The deer say
be gentle with you
It is a time to be courageous
in gentler ways
People cannot bully their way into creating magic
It is the gentle heart that will find the way forward
It is the gentle hearted who will find strength in the journey
who know that their gentle ways are forged with love
There IS nothing stronger.
~Jude Downes
judedownes.com
🌙
Photo by Carly Rae Hobbins, Unsplash
“It’s just that you’re not that feminine.”
I beg to differ.
I’m feminine like a thunderstorm.
Feminine like the glint of a falcon talon.
Feminine like an ancient redwood.
Feminine like the orange glow of a grizzly bear in the sunset.
Feminine like a wolf on the hunt.
Feminine like decaying bones.
Feminine like the eye of an old whale.
Feminine like a roaring river.
Feminine like a sheer cliff overlooking a forest.
Feminine like a wildfire.
Feminine like a desert wind.
Feminine like a battle cry.
And yes.
Within my stones and bark and fur and fierce slit irises .. I am as soft
and enveloping as any woman who’s blood ever beat red.
This is the Sovereigness.
I am her.
We are her.
We are an age of woman who has come in, representing the medicine of the Wilds.
We are not built to actualize your sense of masculinity through your traditional idea of femininity.
We are built to bring in the voice of our Mother.
Which is why Earth herself screams in our veins.
So, if what you really mean is,
“Your femininity is overwhelming”,
Then I understand.
It is to me, too.
~Adrianne Tamar Arachne
#wild
#sovereign
#female
Why do we spend all of our precious soft?
trying to be hard
talking like we’re hard
dressing like we’re hard
pretending to be hard
moving like we’re hard
acting like we’re hard
writing like we’re hard
living like we’re hard
until we wake up one morning
stone
cold
hard
and we’d give anything
everything
to feel a little bit of
soft
~Max Mundan
~~~
#getYin
This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.
In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.
This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.
The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.
No lust, no slam of the door –
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.
No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor –
just a twinge every now and then
for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.
But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.
After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,
so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.
~Billy Collins, Aimless Love
❤️
Image by Nancy Lankston
Blessed are you
who bear the light
in unbearable times,
who testify
to its endurance
amid the unendurable,
who bear witness
to its persistence
when everything seems
in shadow
and grief.
Blessed are you
in whom
the light lives,
in whom
the brightness blazes –
your heart
a chapel,
an altar where
in the deepest night
can be seen
the fire that
shines forth in you
in unaccountable faith,
in stubborn hope,
in love that illumines
every broken thing
it finds.
~ Jan Richardson
♾
Image: Tree Sculpture by Debra Bernier
The Wild will call you back.
Through half-remembered dreams
and sunsets painted
in burnt sienna
and vermillion flames
she will call you back home.
The coyotes will wake you
from your sleep
with their clarion call
to keep your eyes
wide open.
How long have you been sleeping?
How much have you forgotten?
The Wild will call you back.
She will hang you upside down
and shake the nonsense
from the pockets
of your mind.
She will strip your soul naked
leaving you raw and exposed
under the searing glare
of the gods.
Offer up the holiness
of your confusion
and questions.
Dress yourself
in fireflies
and attune your senses
to awe
while you learn the slow seduction
of courting your muse.
Brush the stardust from your wings
and wipe the ocean from your eyes.
Flex your claws
dig your roots deep down
into the fertile earth
and show your fangs.
Gather pollen on your legs
and speak
in venom
and honey.
Peel back your colonized tongue
and let it hiss
and purr
and growl
and scream.
Do you remember
how to stalk
as predator
and how to surrender
as prey?
The Wild will call you back.
The owls know your real name
and will call you
from the darkness of night
to dance under the moon.
Crack your heart open
with your ancestors’ bones
and dance in the ecstasy
of your love
and your grief
with flailing limbs
bloody knees
and mud-stained feet.
Braid mugwort into your hair
and dream yourself
awake.
The Wild will call you back.
She will teach you how to die
again and again
and how to die well.
There is no difference
between your funeral pyre
and your birth canal.
Do not bother
to try and stop
the bleeding.
Love with the gentleness
and ferocity
of your whole
soft
tender being.
Feed the spirits
with your beauty
and sweetness
and ask them to show you
the way home.
⠀
~Gina Puorro
www.ginapuorro.com
What does it mean to come back into our power as female creators?
And as protectors of the wild?