Mucking about in the roots
Mud up to her knees
And splattered on her thighs
Arms, face, bunched up skirt held high
All speckled with brown dripping grit
Decomposing leaves, old dusty cobwebs
And collections of life’s infinite droppings
All accessorize her sweaty gown
She is searching for the lost egg
The one we are all supposed to be sitting on
Incubating
To replenish the life we are using up
Just by breathing
But we lost it in this swampy wasteland
And only she has the courage
To wait at its edges
Preparing herself to wade in
As soon as the rains soak the cracked earth enough
That she could slurp through
With wriggling toes
And sensitized leg hairs
Feeling through the depth of suckling mud
For a solid round warmth
The seed of new life
We let fall in our blindness
This forgotten womb
Holds exactly what we all hunger for
That golden kernel of concentrated wisdom nectar
That would guide us out of this anguish
We keep insisting that the answer to our pain
Is somewhere up in the sky
Somewhere in some dream of achievement
Some ascension to some height will provide the renewal we are desperate for
But the only thing we find way up there
Is an even higher place we haven’t reached yet
And the slippery slope pulling us down
We think we must resist this downward pull
Fight against the primal force of gravity
But what we have forgotten
Is that life itself depends
On this intimate embrace of Mother Earth
Holding us close to her
So let us join this muddy sweaty woman
In the marshes and the bogs
Remembering that it is in the muddy soups
And salty brines
That life discovers its newest self
Let us join her as she searches for that lost womb
In the dark wetness
Let our legs slurp and slog with hers
Sinking down to float and rest when we tire
Submerging our backs in the soft mud
Letting it encircle our scalps
Coating our hair with mineral richness
Let us almost disappear into the mire
Let us dissolve there and discover
That we have entered into the very womb
We were searching for
Let us remember how to breath
The amniotic fluid of life’s intrinsic intelligence
Into our cells
And be refreshed
And as the mud covers our eyes
Let us see the beauty in the darkness
Feel the longing in our hearts to burst forth into the light once more
Building in the stillness
Let us let it build
As we absorb the infinite unconditional love of Mother Earth
Into our skin, bones, hair, nails, teeth
That our organs might remember
What it means to work together
On a team
In an ecosystem
Where everything has equal value and importance
Let us fill ourselves with this wisdom
Until our lungs cry out for air
And a great inner roar
Pushes us up out of the mud
To stand and drip and sputter and weep
For we have been reborn
We have found what was lost
Without knowing beforehand how it would feel
Life has surprised us again