Musings From The Trail
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
when they want to
control you
they do not come
with shackles
made of iron
they come instead
with cages made
of shame and story
like the one
about the woman
who earned crisis
for her curiosity
so tempted by a life
of wisdom and independence
she caused the downfall
of all civilization
women are dangerous
says the shame story of Eve
they cannot
be trusted and
should not
trust themselves
give a woman
free choice and
she’ll eat the fruit
tempt the man
enrage the god
she’ll destroy us all
with her mad desire
to know
to discover
to understand
her self
her world
her maker
give a woman any freedom
and she’ll follow
her curiosity
shape her
own story
seek truth beyond
the dictates
of order and obedience
she will wreck
your carefully controlled mandates
your reign of tightness
she will unmake
your holy wars
of right and wrong
and infuse the realm with
choice and instinct
empathy outranking rules
creativity eclipsing war
sovereignty subsuming
blind servitude
when you want to know
like Eve
when you have a taste
for truth
and a hunger for wisdom
you have to question
the stories
test the facts
rattle the cage
who profits from you
believing a lie?
who benefits because you
believe you are both
cause and curse?
they have tried
to burn you
with their shame
strip you
violate you
shrink you
silence you
but they could not break
your phoenix spirit
its fierce heat
will melt old regimes
and enflame a generation
who will not settle
for smallness
for submission
for shame
sink your self into
the feathered
red sleeve
of your ancestors
and rise, woman
rise again
for you are
Persephone’s Daughter
Lilith’s lover
Eve’s heir
find the truth
eat the fruit
unmask the myth
let it burn
~Angi Sullins
🔥
Poet: www.AngiSullins.com
Painter: www.tsenov-art.com
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
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
If you come as softly
As wind within the trees
You may hear what I hear
See what sorrow sees.
If you come as lightly
As threading dew
I will take you gladly
Nor ask more of you.
You may sit beside me
Silent as a breath
Only those who stay dead
Shall remember death.
And if you come I will be silent
Nor speak harsh words to you.
I will not ask you why, now.
Or how, or what you do.
We shall sit here, softly
Beneath two different years
And the rich earth between us
Shall drink our tears.
~Audre Lorde