She is the Life/Death/Life force, she is the listener, she is loyal heart. 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 course hair and muddy footprints. These fill women with longing to find her, free her, and love her.
The Tree of Grief
Awoken to the tenebrous labyrinthe of the soul,
a neither-land cast in haze obscured by clouds caliginous,
the tree of grief grows alone in the hinterlands between
wisdom and obfuscation, sight and delusion.
Those who journey to her receive purgation
by odyssey of ritual un-knowing,
a maelstrom of no-sense unmaking.
Her leafless boughs laden with blindness
pierce the fog of disillusion,
revealing her black star as she unfurls her limbs
calling for intimacy and faith.
The courage of the unchosen compels steps
forward, laden with curiosity.
Grasping for her form, the breath of being
neither dead or alive whispers
of pregnant storms of joy becoming.
Those who seek tirelessly to climb her limbs,
fearful of her umbrageous apparition
will glimpse nourishment for the soul
and captivated by the promise of sweetness,
lay deceived by the bitterness of possibility.
With gesticulated welcoming, love unrelenting,
a dance of woven withes
reach with mossy softness, inviting
you deeper and deeper.
Heed her guidance as she
cradles you in your abjection.
When grief is your shepherd, you are pilgrim
to your spirit, journeying fathoms to where you find
passages adorned by souls known and forgotten,
heart-wisdom not yet opened:
a foreigner in your own mind.
Your inheritance is manifest,
longings and learnings past gaze
upon your weathered essence, inviting you to be
held lovingly between your loss and loneliness.
They say she bears the richest fruit,
the seed of sight a panacea for myopia,
which abandons you asking
what if I see too much?
Grandmother, counsel without end,
she births you into suffering, a labor
your rite of passage, an answer
to your supplication for clarity.
From branch to root, you seep through her,
your first dark night of the soul.
©Sophie Steele
a neither-land cast in haze obscured by clouds caliginous,
the tree of grief grows alone in the hinterlands between
wisdom and obfuscation, sight and delusion.
Those who journey to her receive purgation
by odyssey of ritual un-knowing,
a maelstrom of no-sense unmaking.
Her leafless boughs laden with blindness
pierce the fog of disillusion,
revealing her black star as she unfurls her limbs
calling for intimacy and faith.
The courage of the unchosen compels steps
forward, laden with curiosity.
Grasping for her form, the breath of being
neither dead or alive whispers
of pregnant storms of joy becoming.
Those who seek tirelessly to climb her limbs,
fearful of her umbrageous apparition
will glimpse nourishment for the soul
and captivated by the promise of sweetness,
lay deceived by the bitterness of possibility.
With gesticulated welcoming, love unrelenting,
a dance of woven withes
reach with mossy softness, inviting
you deeper and deeper.
Heed her guidance as she
cradles you in your abjection.
When grief is your shepherd, you are pilgrim
to your spirit, journeying fathoms to where you find
passages adorned by souls known and forgotten,
heart-wisdom not yet opened:
a foreigner in your own mind.
Your inheritance is manifest,
longings and learnings past gaze
upon your weathered essence, inviting you to be
held lovingly between your loss and loneliness.
They say she bears the richest fruit,
the seed of sight a panacea for myopia,
which abandons you asking
what if I see too much?
Grandmother, counsel without end,
she births you into suffering, a labor
your rite of passage, an answer
to your supplication for clarity.
From branch to root, you seep through her,
your first dark night of the soul.
©Sophie Steele