Witches and Wild Fires
By: Karin Swann
Tags: Witches, Poetry, Spoken Word Poetry, Feminism, Environment

In the dreams of this sleep,

modern priestesses have been gathering.

Carrying their crystals and herbs,

these witches in hippy robes

have stirred up archetypes

in a brew for our awakening.

We have ridiculed them with scorn

believing ourselves the ones who know the truth.

Nevertheless, they have persisted.

Working against the tide,

they are resurfacing the old stories and wisdoms,

studying the body and nature from old,

anew,

because they have seen clearly

that if we are to save ourselves

nothing else matters.

For my five decades

I, too, have mocked this tribe

for their fringe, womanish, heteronormative, freakishness.

But what if the Witches know best?

And who is paying the price,

as we approach our extinction,

for staying asleep while they awaken?

After all, the tribes of Witches know

that the path to true power

is birthed not from deviance,

but from heartache and despair.

Those chosen to walk it

are taken into the dark,

pried open to the truth,

anointed in the deeper currents.

Walking upon it,

bereft and lost,

we all eventually fall to our knees,

recognizing in the falling that

the great turning only happens

at the doorway of devastation.

When the courage finally finds us,

to turn towards the grief,

the tears fall,

forming rivers around our knees.

When we find ourselves able to stand again,

to stay standing,

between heaven and earth

our palms and chins turn up to the sky.

I join this tribe today.

Persevering through my grief,

and the grief of generations past,

allowing layer upon layer to rise up.

The anger and hate,

the hurt and sorrow,

the rape and denigration,

the self-doubt and self-betrayal.

All this unfolds

with ferocity and Grace

in the elixir of the Great Reveal.

We, the women,

and the gender-queer.

We the “they,” and the “them.”

We, the new and noblemen.

We who have seen the contours and consequences

of who we were told we were and seen through to a new horizon.

We who have witnessed

what has been lost

and survived.

We who have cried dissolve into the streambeds of our tears,

joining the rivers first cried by hippy priestesses.

… And the current is quickening now towards the ocean.

We come not only from Glastonberry and Esalen,

but from the cities and countryside.

We come from all directions,

North, East, South and West.

We walk through the water out of therapist’s offices

with reclaimed strength.

We walk out of poet-song,

with the guidance of Sophia.

We walk in the desert canyons,

with the scent of medicinal plants on our fingertips.

We walk out of meditation halls,

with the stillness of a far deeper Truth in our hearts.

We walk on the front lines of gender-queerness,

where the revolution, itself, is happening.

No matter our genitals,

we walk the path of the new,

feminine Warrior.

And somewhere, on a quiet night,

after years of walking,

years in this rawness,

the healing waters lap at our ankles,

and we receive the gift of life

that for all this time we thought lost:

Our True Value.

Our Birthright:

The vulnerability,

mystery,

inter-dependence,

tenderness

surrender,

that constitutes life itself.

The Love that connects us.

The Connection that loves us.

What, on our deathbed, other than these things,

what?

Beyond everything else

in this man-made world,

will matter more?

Answer this.