Thursday 11 October 2018

Leaping, & These Mountains: A Poem

As my writing practice, and creativity in general, has been stuck for some time, I’ve decided to take a rather large leap of faith. 

Early next month I will be participating in a writing program called Writing the Wild Soul, run by Soulcraft Australia, in partnership with the Animas Valley Institute (founded by depth psychologist and wilderness guide, Bill Plotkin, in Colorado, USA). I am a little scared and apprehensive, for this will be a physical, psychological and emotional challenge; but I am also excited and hopeful. I want this course, however difficult it may be, to shake myself out of stagnation, and propel me into a new psychic and creative landscape, from which deeper work may emerge. This is not only important for my own health—as I have found writing to be such an important healing practice—but also for my participation in the larger web of relationship, both human and more-than-human.


I am looking forward to finding out what the land has to tell me, what songs the mountains sing, what wisdom the trees can offer, and writing down what I hear and feel. Perhaps I will return transformed, ready to speak with a renewed voice.

In preparation, I have already been writing some intuitive pieces, responding both to words/images from poetry, and to nature, as I sit on the deck of my studio and scribble away in my notebook. I will share some of what I have written over the next few weeks. In the meantime, here is something to whet your appetite. In addition, one of my previous poems, ‘An Everywhen’, has just been shared on the Soulcraft Australia blog.

These Mountains

These mountains which were never mine 
year after year have remade me.
~ Robert Bringhurst, ‘Jacob Singing’


These mountains that form my skin
my flesh and bone. What part of me 
do they not make? My eyes see 
through mineral facets, crystal shards 
that absorb light and create colour
Elementary particles are all that I am
in body; yet there is an animating force—
the mountain’s heart, the breath of the 
green world, sustaining and cultivating life

Small beings lift themselves towards the light 
while rooted in darkness, the source of our yearning
The unknown is where we speak from, bowing low 
to the original language of being, the inherent meaning 
that resides in matter

Year after year we are remade from earth’s source
from mountaintop, dust, tree, feather
from wind and song

To be sourceless, unmade, is to be adrift in meaninglessness
the only permanent death

My source is the mountains, the heights and valleys
the caves and cliffs: sandstone, granite, clay
Ancient and eroded, mist-kissed and sun-warmed
often impenetrable, holding back secret places
hidden worlds that feed us with mystery

My own body does not belong to me, though 
it is mine, and is me, my own small mountain
mineral-laden and sky-filled. I bleed just as they do
and will one day return to them what I had only 
borrowed

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