lately...

There hasn't been too much coming forth recently--no words seem right enough. Some words come close: sublime, inspired, righteous, delicate, inhale, juicy, dewy, gritty, anxious, doubting, truth, pure. None of them are perfect; some of them are close.

How can I write about something that feels like falling off the edge of some hard and sharply defined surface, but on the other side it feels familiar and inviting and I can taste what I can only describe as divinity and it is sharp and juicy and sweet and it smells of salt and earth and rosewater and truthfulness yet somehow that sharply defined edge seemed so stable even moments ago and sometimes I just have to look back and wonder why in the hell I ever let myself be nudged off of it and then I think of the women: soft, full, ripe, trusting, deserving and I go forward with them and we all spiral out into an unnameable galaxy and help bring down a new soul to this reality...

A five day marathon in some of the oldest mountains on earth. A demanding, unyielding, heavy and lingering two day welcoming of a baby boy. Two young midwives bonding over shit and blood and cold washcloths--water, warm and deep--delicately constructed sentences--deep belly laughs--serenity--contrariness--delicious, ripe womanliness--a dedicated and soft papa--all of us groping for the right vibration; the perfect wave length for a sweet baby to ride on down to us, earthside.

Three more days spent immersed in those ancient mountains. A sacred exchange of Women's knowledge. So grateful for those holy mountains, those loving and skilled midwives, the time of solitude and release and integration and education.

It's crazy, this life I have found myself in...downright absurd...and absolutely enchanting.

I was at a stand-still of what or how or why to write about birth. The more I fall into this world, the slower the words come, or at least any words that can make any sense of it all...I re-read Emily Dickinson's "They shut me up in Prose" and found at least some kind of voice in a poem...

There are no aqua green sterile scrubs
No Darth Vader masks
No beeping, clockwork orange machines
No straps
wires
whistles
catheters
no steel tables
No beds that rise/fall/move with a mechanical hum
There are no tubes, inserted into delicate spine
Pumping science fiction liquid
Until everyone in the room is anesthetized
paralyzed
until the heart of it all is coated
and cornered
boxed up
contingent, dependent, restricted, controlled

Instead we create the holy, the mystical
Offering darkness, stillness
Water, hot and deep
Familiarity
Scrambled eggs
Rose oil
Hawks eyes
Patience
Love pulled down together
Beyond the stars—past the planets
Tapped from the primal source of divine righteousness

There is a struggle—trying to wrap a poem around the
Exceedingly profound
There is no metaphor
No allusion
No simile
No clever rhyming language
To describe the essence of everything
Wet and slippery
A delivered prayer --Right into my hands
In the darkness of home
A collective hush
As we all breathe ourselves into this newness
Now earthside
And watch as pinkness radiates from her heart
Her chest rises and falls
And like Ms. Dickinson, I will not be shut up in Prose