Category: Poetry & Music

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Let the World Hear You

“Be loud, my sweet girl.
Make some noise if you want.
Let the world hear your voice—strong, clear, and full of all the things that make you you.
You don’t need permission to take up space.

Care deeply, my darling.
Put your whole self into what you love.
Let your heart stretch wide, even if the world doesn’t always understand.
The depth of your kindness, your passion, your love—it is your gift.

Be brave, young one.
Bravery doesn’t mean you won’t feel fear.
It means you step forward anyway, even with shaky hands and unsure steps.
Your try is always a great feat.

You are beautiful.
You are gentle.
You are kind and sweet.
You are bold.
You are creative.
You are perfectly, wonderfully, uniquely you.

You are so many things—and so much more.
Never let anyone define you but you.

Because right now, in this very moment, you are exactly who you are meant to be.
And that is enough. Always.”

from Be Brave Mom

Art: Leap of Faith
by Lucy Campbell

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She

She is the Life/Death/Life force, she is the incubator. She is intuition, she is far-seer, she is deep listener, she is loyal heart. She encourages humans to remain multilingual; fluent in the languages of dreams, passion, and poetry. She whispers from night dreams, she leaves behind on the terrain of a woman’s soul a coarse hair and muddy footprints. These fill women with longing to find her, free her, and love her.”

~Clarissa Pinkola Estes

🌙

Image: Triple Goddess
by Amy Haderer

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The Wild Will Call You Back

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

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Moon Woman

a woman can’t survive
by her own breath
alone
she must know
the voices of mountains
she must recognize
the foreverness of blue sky
she must flow
with the elusive
bodies
of night winds
who will take her
into herself

look at me
i am not a separate woman
i am a continuance
of blue sky
i am the throat
of the mountains
a night wind
who burns
with every breath
she takes

~Joy Harjo
What Moon Drove Me to This? 
🌙

Image: Moon Meets Morning Star
Kwon, O Chul

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Be That One

One tree can start a forest,

One bird can herald spring,

One smile can begin a friendship,

One hand can lift a soul,

One star can guide a ship at sea,

One word can frame the goal,

One sunbeam can light a room,

One candle can wipe out darkness,

One laugh can conquer gloom,

One hope can raise our spirits,

One touch can show you care,

One voice can wake up everybody,

One life can make the difference.

Be that one.

-Author Unknown

Image: Old Ponderosa by Nancy L

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May A Good Vision Catch Me

May a good vision catch me

May a benevolent vision take hold of me, and move me

May a deep and full vision come over me, and burst open around me

May a luminous vision inform me, enfold me.

May I awaken into the story that surrounds,

May I awaken into the beautiful story.

May the wondrous story find me;

May the wildness that makes beauty arise between two lovers

arise beautifully between my body and the body of this land,

between my flesh and the flesh of this earth,

here and now,

on this day,

May I taste something sacred.

~David Abram

Images: Egyptian Wadjet, the Green One.
AKA Eye of Ra
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I Water Things

I water things now constantly:
water the hearts of dead friends with light,
the sores of the living with anything warm,
water the skies with a thousand affections
and follow the voices of animals
into grasses that move like ocean.

I eat flowers now and birds come.
I eat care and things to love arrive.
I eat time and as I age
whatever I swallow grows timeless.

I eat and undie
and water my doubts
with silence
and birds come.

~Mark Nepo
excerpt from Surviving Has Made Me Crazy