Dance was my way of praying, of listening, of celebrating, it wasmy way of being as beautiful as the life around me. Now I feel hideous, unloved, abandoned. I lie down and sob and I feel a screeching hunger for mil, for some essence to flow from the sky and reach down through my shattered mind and reconnect me to warmth and calm. And very gradually it happens. The life in the trees and grass and the warm rocks enters my body and joins me to them. One morning, I sit up and see the incandescent trees in silent communion with each other, immersed in love. This is the world, I think, the real world. Whatever happens to me, the world is still this luminous mystery.
Spirit, rehearse the journeys of the body
that are to come, the motions
of the matter that held you.
Rise up in the smoke of palo santo.
Fall to the earth in the falling rain.
Sink in, sink down to the farthest roots.
Mount slowly in the rising sap
to the branches, the crown, the leaf-tips.
Come down to earth as leaves in autumn
to lie in the patient rot of winter.
Rise again in spring's green fountains.
Drift in sunlight with the sacred pollen
to fall in blessing.
All earth's dust
has been life, held soul, is holy.