Through misty grateful eyes
The most magnificent thing I did spy
While touching your bark, dear Cottonwood
Beneath deltoid leaves on descending limbs
I catch her form, ripening
At just the right moment
Through parting cumulus
In the early evening sky
Still light on this Beltane eve
As the Sun continues his ripening, too
Turning back again to see
She has vanished
A dream revealed only to me?
A reminder–
Above the swooping swallows
Gathering their supper
Above nodding Plantago
Crowned with creamy white fairy filaments–
Of the prayer to come
And my place in it
How to prepare this vessel
With nourishment of spirit
Of rest
Of vibrant sustenance
Tears come, dear Cottonwood
With the reminder,
Of your softness
And how it is mine, too
Dear Moon,
With the reminder
Of your reflection
And how in the light of the Sun
It is mine, too.
Narrow-leaf Plantain (Plantago lanceolata)
Downtown Manhattan through Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides)
One of my neighbors, Canada Goose (Branta canadensis)
Saving a leaf in my journal, from Populus deltoides
This is a place I have not written in nearly a year. It is my intention to revive this space as a way of slow record keeping in the face of the fast-paced world of social media. This is a time for slowing down, of perspective shifting, of touching into the depth of life. We are at a tipping point and getting ever closer to the edge. How do we navigate this world as everything falls away? One way: connecting with our kin, the plants and plant people. Sacred medicine plants are everywhere. There are some who are potent teachers and other more subtle. This does not make them less impactful.
I’m living for a short time on a sailboat with a view of the capitalist capitol of the world. Living with intention and thumbing my nose at those towers of commerce and commodification of life. Living in opposition to the extractive. Though hypocritically still living in it. What choices do we have? We can do our best to sort through the daily decisions of what to eat and how. Sort through the difficult decisions of how to provision ourselves against the elements.
For now, I choose to live as simply as I ever have. Burning alcohol for cooking on a two burner stove and small oven where I bake nutrient dense bread with sweet potato, hemp seeds, cranberries, and other vitamin & mineral-rich plants. Reusing water collected in the dehumidifier to wash the dishes. There’s running water but it’s on the dock. I fill my filtering water bottle three times per day. There’s a toilet and showers on land, and the head on board if needed.
For a few more weeks I’ll be here and then, paring down even more for the month of June. I’ll leave you in suspense for that one, as I’m feeling into how to share, if I do, the experience that is coming to meet me. I alluded to it above. It is a prayer. A personal prayer and a collective one. A prayer for the life regenerating change we need to experience on this unique and precious planet.
Delicious sweet potato bread, baked aboard
Before the Sun rises
Our Sun (via Destination Cosmos at Hall des Lumières)
Our Solar System (via Destination Cosmos at Hall des Lumières)
You are my reflection, I am your reflection
More reflections on this time of transition to come…