I've been thinking about mycelium SO MUCH the past year! I love both the scope and intimacy that this poem has, zooming into the body and out to the world.
This is very beautiful, Julie, and your questions resonate with me. I especially love the insight we are a "network of living beings in a multitude of forms."
The last stanza hits so perfectly. Thank you for these words; they are an unexpected validation for a lot of what I've been walking through the past year. <3
Who or what am I really?
The body, the soul?
My mind or my heart?
Who was I sixty years ago,
forty, twenty, ten years ago?
Before I was born and
what about after I die?
.
Seems Shapeshifting
Is my modus operandi.
The once smooth skin
has wrinkles now.
Hair that was brown and straight
now curly and streaked with grey.
The vascular system once hidden
currently under translucent skin.
.
What about all the
microorganisms and bacteria
that live on and in this body.
Out numbering these human
cells by a factor of ten!
So, who or what am I really?
Am I a home, a factory, a mother?
A collaborative organization?
.
Where do I end and
where do you begin?
Maybe we are all one being
connected with deep roots
and mycelial threads.
A gigantic nervous system,
a network of living beings
in a multitude of forms.
So, what shall I be today?
Beautiful! I feel like ‘What shall I be today?’ is one of the most joyful & open questions I’ve heard in a while! Thank you for it.
I've been thinking about mycelium SO MUCH the past year! I love both the scope and intimacy that this poem has, zooming into the body and out to the world.
This is very beautiful, Julie, and your questions resonate with me. I especially love the insight we are a "network of living beings in a multitude of forms."
H2O
I am the one who bends
Around the rocks and rubble, strewn
Along my path
I rush
I slow
I overflow
I am the one who sinks
In the roots and riveluts, dripping
In the darkest caves
I fall
I slip
I support
I am the one who feels
Airflow and temperature shift
And adjust my form
I freeze
I steam
I refract
I am the one who cleanses
Darkness and dirt from the past
During sobs and storms alike
I rise
I fill
I release
Truth that shifts shapes
white guy on a throne,
who's aged beard flows
into the clouds.
brown rebel, welcoming father,
and the conversation between them.
greening mother.
sparkles of love and creativity
inside each and every cell.
Colors 🙂
My body is
bodying today,
on the cusp
of some new
something:
*
What if it all
worked out?
is a question
therapists ask
you to ask your
catastrophizing
thoughts. Usually,
I think, these therapists,
full of great love
and wisdom though
they may be, have not
known daily pain
that shifts your
shape.
*
Three bluejays
keep playing in
the yard, cedar-
bound, noisy, and
a little rude. I'm told
they're not actually
blue, but shift to our
view of cerulean in
the light.
*
What to do with
this news, I don't
know, but I raise my
aching to the sky
just the same, and
stretch my
tightness under the
shifting clouds.
What if it all
worked
out?
Shapeshifter
I think maybe
I have shifted my shape
to different roles
and others' expectations
so often
that now
I do not know
what shape I am
or even
what shape I want to be
The masks I've discarded
Lay like breadcrumbs leading back
Through all the people I've pretended
And not pretended
to be - each girl a survivor,
Each face true to itself in the
Fast-shifting moments.
I stand solidly on the hill called
"Middle age," staring down my crone-hood with a giggle
And a wink,
Beckoning the girl child to come along,
Hold my hand. Here we go.
See? We were always here.
We never really changed,
We just kept shedding old skins
To become more ourself.
Mom was a Poe.
A Billie Ruth from Arkansas.
Always teasing us with her family tree.
but, a span of her history
always seemed
to fail the bloodline key.
So as fact slowly turns to fable.
And brings an end to our chore,
We hear, upon a midnight deary,
Quoth the Raven,
"Nevermore"
That middle stanza, Kaitlin! Wow. Thank you.
Years spent angry at myself
For not being of a standard shape
Constantly, all the time,
But rather changing, tide to tide.
Now I see that wish to be just like the standard
As a wish to be stagnant;
A manifestation of the pollution of my inner world
Which made me forget that inside there is a girl
Who wanted nothing more than to be like the wind
And to grow into a shapeshifting nature’s friend.
It took her 30+ years to realize
There is so much self-hate she internalized
And now the practice of self-loving
Means knowing there’ll always be new shapes to try on, to discover.
That final stanza, Kaitlin!! What I didn't know I needed to hear today ❤️
The last stanza hits so perfectly. Thank you for these words; they are an unexpected validation for a lot of what I've been walking through the past year. <3