SENSING GROUND: POEMS

For much of my life I have lived in disconnection

I am well equipped to separate myself from everyone and everything else

I can shut down my sensory body and pause all feeling

I can  pretend that I am not breathing in the abundance of photosynthesising flora

I can deny the fact that local vegetation receives my exhale as food for their growth

I have feared touching earth, being washed upon rocky shores, bitten by bugs or blood sucked by leeches

I have told myself that I shouldn’t feel the prickly moses bush scratch me and I should stay indoors

Protected. Afraid. Separate. 

Until a lightening bolt of screaming righteousness met me face to face

I shook and I cried as I felt the sensation of earth envelop and penetrate me 

Our interconnnectedness a sacred ecology of relationships that expand with each breath

The give and take of life force orchestrating all form and formless parts within the whole

Entering and leaving me

at all times

It is because I have such intimate knowledge of disconnection that I understand deep connection

I can zoom in and out of connection as skilfully as I can disconnect, remove myself and block all receptivity 

I can lie to myself and all beings

I can live inside a cage of deluded reality

And, I can sing through earth, as earth, through the boundlessness of form, where there is no exact boundary

And everything makes more sense

There was nobody else

In the quiet, I silenced myself

Nobody heard my pains

and nobody felt my tears

I ceased to exist

hollowed

The pitch black of night entered my body like hot tar, burning my tendons into rigid strongholds 

I held it together

I was strong

In the dark of the night I slept like an owl, watching out for someone or something who made sense 

Restless

I lived at the edges, alert to the hardness and hoping for more than this

The only softness I found was at the bottom of an impossibly deep well, a well of sadness

I landed in her waters, and I baptised myself into the religion of sovereignty 

My hollowed centre swelled with buds of possible forms

My hardened tendons rested in a bath of being held

The well waters absorbed the black tar and softened my hardened silence 

I sang

A red gold carport unfurled 

as I stepped out of the impossibly deep well

Jesus took my hand and gave me a crown of flowers which I placed upon my wet hair

My hips swayed to the music within me 

I walked into the world

as The Queen of Myself

In the space that sits between all else, I feel a depth of sadness that is bigger than me

Lost worlds of laughter

Lost hours of subtle touch

Lost truths hidden underneath icecaps of fear

I was found in the silence of my own experience 

I am the space in between

I am stillness in the noise, watching, waiting, and gathering up the threads of all—the interconnected web of real life

I am pulled between the real and non-real

The seen and unseen

The known and unknown 

I feel power in my difference and my feet are earthed

My heart is softened like a sand dune crumbling generously in the wind—offering infinite grains of self to other

My mind is fiercely curious

I seek a container of sense making

to balance out the chaos and confusion that I witness

The view from where I look is vast, breathtaking, spacious, gentle, and clear

A twilight purple with stars beginning to twinkle and the dark readying itself upon us

nourishing our lives with pause, rest and dreaming

May we remember to dream again

May we pause often and feel our inner lands

May we slowly reach outwards for authentic connection with each other—both human and non-human

May we remember beauty and softness

My vulnerability is my power

When I walk into dark places

With no map and no guide

I rest into the depths of myself

Trembling

I am alive

With life force, spiralling, expanding, pulsing within the body of me

 

When I stay in my body

I expand into everything

I feel myself awake

invigorated with life itself

 

Tendrils of hope, and clarity

Show me the way

The dark holds me in her womb

Here, I know what I want

And I am no longer trembling

 

I want to write

I want to connect with the wider web of Support

I want to sing, dance and play

I want to expand into both myself and my place in the whole

I want to feel both Self and self at once

 

Radiant with my own fullness

Settled into myself

Walking the Earth as I am

Free from the tangles of other

 

I don’t want power and freedom—

I am powerful and free.

 

When I walk wide-eyed and willing into the Soul of vulnerability

I am shown my way home

Thousands of us all together

Holding silence

Beyond words

The wind speaks

 

The space in between us has opened

The field is alive

Can you feel it?

Such richness emerges

 

The magpie sings

The waves roar

Our ancestors standing tall

As we return into dust, mud and dirt

 

The wind washes us clean

For a moment

Thick, dense, connections

Weaving us wordlessly wayward

I’m holding it in

When I see a baby orca taken from its mother and wild ocean home

Captured for human entertainment.

At SeaWorld

 

Humans, we need to be more kind and respectful to non-humans.

There, I said it.

 

I’m holding it in.

When I’m surrounded by plastic trinkets that spin, beep, shine.

Single use clutter.

Unnecessary, cute paraphernalia

Decorations for consumer holidays.

 

Humans, we need to be more kind, appreciative and respectful towards the breast milk of our living earth—this isn’t mere resource—this is life force in varying forms.

Everything, including plastic, is sacred and part of our shared ecological whole.

Let’s create cultural celebrations without waste and centred on internal contentment instead of external wanting.

There, I said It

 

I’m holding it in.

The dry earth, dead shorebirds

The grey concrete urban deserts.

The earth-moving machinery, moving more earth

Disturbing more aliveness and disrupting the unfolding patterns of microbial life.

Damage to our precious critter relations who contribute to the health of our already suffering and strained ecological system

 

Humans, we need to learn when life and aliveness rely on our care, stewardship and responsibility for our ongoing collective health.

We can’t destroy the heart of our planetary systems and expect continual regeneration.

We are part of the regeneration.

May we consider generative collective systems, abandon economic growth metrics, and return to our true nature of connection, respect, kindness, and ‘degrowth’

May we remember when enough really, truly, is enough.

There I said it

 

Holding it in.

New cars, new homes, new stuff.

What was wrong with the old one?

Why aren’t we habitually recycling, repurposing and reusing because we can?

Why are we forced into necessity before these simple options take hold as a normative and respectful way to honour the abundance of earth?

 

Humans, we need to be accountable and responsible for our individual relationship to earth

Not because it’s externally dictated and enforced,

but because it feels good to be in direct, loving and respectful relationship with the living earth

Who created every single thing that we use, touch or ‘own’

We don’t really own anything.

Everything circulates back into our atomic pantry.

There, I said it.

 

Holding it in

With asylum seeking refugees detained in prison, stripped of their humanity

With ageing women under-resourced, homeless without savings

Because they gave all of themselves to the outer world.

Tending to our children, tending to our odd jobs, putting aside their creative power.

Just as they were taught to do.

They took care of the collective ‘us’.

 

Humans, we need to recognise the depth of humanity and creative power in other humans.

We need to stop caging people up and enforcing the same patterns of power imbalance on repeat.

There, said it

 

Holding it in.

As media talk about polycrisis and Permacrisis.

The scattering of hopelessness and the many dislocations of our modern, capitalist world.

Political polarisation – them versus us!

Economic delusions – growth till we die!

Cultural denial, Artificial Intelligence, genocide, biohazards, war, Indigenous Knowing melting away like the ice caps.

 

Humans, maybe we need to consider not many crises, but rather one huge turning point of discernment.

What if this is a metacrisis and a Metanoia?

A time of radical change within ourselves.

A time to change how we experience the world, how we relate to the world as a living organism and how we embody respect, appreciation, kindness, and compassion

What if this is a time of radical differentiation

For each human to dwell in their own nature, as they are, with the idea of externalised norms thrown out of the equation.

A return to nature

Within and without.

There, I said it .

The legs of my mind

Running, fast

From points of orderless rubble

Collective chaos

To layers of expansive wetland

Fragile cycles, water song, glasswort, stilts, harriers, and mud

Stillness and running

Both, and.

The soft, warm mud

The sincere almost-still waters

The food chain before me

And within me

 

Parts gobbled up, chewed, swallowed

Digested

Into me, of me

The parts within parts

The food chain of orderless,

Collective chaos

 

The legs of my mind are hungry

 

Below there’s a dark fall

Deeper than “allowed”

Above there’s a wall

Built by hands not my own

Built by non-hands

I chew and I munch

Nourished and reshaped

The dark below is a fertile web of real and non-real

The immense space above me is a warm glow of possibility

 

The mind of my feet rest deeply into the web of what is

Standing, floating, tickled, ready

The mind of my legs are softened, earthed, flying, prepared

There’s no beginning, no end, no race and nowhere else to be

 

No singular “thing” happens to me

Boundless time and space move through changing cycles of “me”.

I have an Angry White Woman living inside of me

She is sometimes in my shoulder hiding behind my left scapula

Sometimes she sits in the concha bowl of my right ear

Sometimes she grinds my teeth

Sometimes she lodges into my lower back and camps there for a week

 

When I’m in a board meeting with monoculture-thinking creating policies that affect us all

She speaks to disrupt the excessive coherence

She politely suggest that we consider the non-humans impacted by growth targets, development and habitat loss

Groupthink can kill living systems

She knows

My Inner Angry White Woman seeks to disrupt homogenisation and loss of diversity

She nurtures aliveness

 

When I’m dancing among chaos, where nobody agrees

There is no common ground, and no human connection

My Inner Angry White Woman speaks up

She dances like a worm and invites everyone to listen

“We need shared purpose and a container for our life force!”

She exclaims truth to protect our collective balance

 

My Inner Angry White Woman was given her name by the Monoculture Thinkers and the Chaos Makers

(not their real names)

 

If I were to give her a new name, I’d call her Loving Balance

She seeks to meet polarisation not match it

She seeks to return the cycle from extremes back toward common ground, acceptance of our differences and embodiment of our shared humanity

 

She cares not for herself alone, but for the whole—of which she knows she is a powerful part

She cares not for names thrown at her because she knows that no name can define her

 

She tends to the garden, turns the compost and sleeps well at night

 

Sometimes she lives in my whole body as a pulse of love that begins in my centre and radiates out into the interconnected wider cosmos

 

She touches the unknown and weaves the unseeable edges

She binds us all

Part by part

Back into a whole

 

Loving Balance

She is quenched disorder

Randomly scattered throughout our day

Creating the next unfurling fractal of evolution

Ingredients

1 cup of heavy blanket (damp & stinky)

1 tablespoon of righteousness, hiding and shining-bright wit

Finally chopped absence, self-abuse, dismissiveness, light and love

Half cup of contradicting seas

1 teaspoon of wakeful sleep

Grated aliveness, self-worth, self-love, self-permission, centredness, and groundedness

A sprinkle of profound dislocation

A dash of deep connection

Three large scoops of greed, defensiveness, overprotection, and hypervigilance

 

Place all ingredients in a container of loving awareness and slowly stir with kindness

Sing to them, listen to their songs, and welcome them home

Remind each flavour, texture and spice that they belong

Blend everything with together with pure intent until it creates a continuous whole

 

Season as needed (your needs matter)

Enjoy warm, or if you feel full, freeze for a later date

My heart

creates waves

that pump, pulse, and roll

Outward thrashing

through walls on the inside

crashing and churning

past restrictions that had me

bound, blinded and blocked

 

My heart

thrums into eternity

from the centre of me

I feel so powerful

that I must cry

 

Tears of joy

Tears of life

Tears of me

There is a space between ‘having’ and ‘not having’.

It is freedom, ever present and easy to miss.

 

I’m curious about this.

 

What is having anyways?

 

Is it a neurological experience that temporarily washes over us, synapses firing, an interface between inner and outer worlds, an illusion that something is captured at a still point in time?

There was a whisper of stuckness in my body that

no expert could reach,

no yoga pose could touch,

and no external intervention could identify, see or work with.

 

It was an accumulation of stories that entered me, and made a home.

The stories were not mine,

they don’t belong with me,

and my body was never their home.

 

So, I threaded words together and

I posted those stories

in the form of poetry.

 

The poems came from my L5/S1 joint

and when they left me,

they took with them

the dull ache of unbelonging.

When I was younger

in my darkest moments

I cried alone

and I spoke to The Moon

 

I couldn’t find a human

to bear witness

to the rivers, mountains, deserts, shores, rainforests and icecaps

within me

Only the moon knew

of my inner complexity

 

Now I’m older

I no longer cry alone

I have learned that my non-human friends

create a sacred space

that humans cannot

I allow the snake to bite,

venom bleeding into me

 

I bow to the broken Goddess, as art remade, renewed

 

I release all of my knowing,

to become whoever I really am

 

I feel the sunshine’s warmth, an outer warmth that massages my insides

 

I feel the spinifex seed,

it’s spiky sensations of fertility and beauty,

a spiral of expansion that I hold in my hand and feel in my heart

 

I am heavy with familiar as my toddler creeps and crawls over my chest in search of a bed, a bed that is my body

 

I taste his salty skin and smell his fragrant heart, until it weighs so heavily within me that I devour the full menu of Sublime

 

I transcend this place of “known”, “seen” and “done”

 

I become the field of continuous becoming

 

I am, for these precious moments, the mystery of all life

 

I am somebody and nobody

I am a body, and I am not a body

I am.

Empty

 

I am empty

I do not lack

 

Everything that nourishes

all the food for heart, mind, body and soul

arrives at each moment

 

Like a gift tenderly wrapped

delivered to my door

 

And received with grace

 

It unfolds within and without

 

I inhale its essence with sweet pause

 

With its presence, I am full

 

May everybody receive this nourishment of life, deep within their bones

 

And so, I return the gift back into all

 

emptying myself again

Approximately 90 days after I turned 40

something stirred within me

the Sacred pattern of life entered my body

and every breath carried with it the ancient source of all life

the current of universal creation

sang through my marrow

awakening a sense of divinity

that has strengthened

with each and every breath

 

It dances to the pulse

of my own heartbeat

the same thrum of life

that pulses through all living beings

touching and shaping us

there is nothing that I cannot touch

and nothing that cannot touch me

in the heart of life

with loss, death and war

I feel deep grief, sorrow, sadness

and an expanding toroidal shaped of love

I know Loneliness well

She lives in my heart

 

We can fight and mock each other, scrambling for a sense of comfort

 

Or we roll together on the floor laughing, belly laughs echoing into the mud upon which we deeply sink

 

Loneliness comes to me and offers me her heart

 

She surrenders her will and falls into me with a trust so deep that I can’t help but adore and love her

 

It is because of Loneliness and her deep trust in my essence that I can’t really be lonely for long

 

With Loneliness in my heart, I am never truly alone

 

She warms, tickles and invites me back into deep time, deep space, and the deep echos of all who know her