Shaman Song

You saw the pure white light

of the great liberating Dharma Kaya.

Congratulations on your OBE.

But the animal guides were not impressed.

"Out of Body" doesn't dip their bread

in essence of elk marrow.

This is why the totem shark bites off your head,

an act of compassion to deliver you from concepts.

Freed from liberation,

you tumble back into embodiment.

Ruthlessly committed to not making you spiritual,

the Panther means business.

Your smell guides her back to the fire in your eggs
forcing you to flee, to wound your soles
in a moss-green discipline of hidden sticks
and devil’s club.
Why not let her devour you?
Spread the feast of your body on the forest floor.
You will survive
as ten thousand squirming creatures
blossoming from putrefaction.
But you are more than food.
She won't kill you.

She loves the chase, the tease of death,
She wants your paws to grow
voluptuous black callouses
to sense the Groundless.
Blessed are your feline familiars

who destroy, awaken, sting like nettles,

licking your thought-bones with fire and water.

Now a She-Serpent coils your loins,
squeezing your bowels to mimic
the ecstatic ambiguity of birth-ache.

Jesus had to learn this from the desert too.

He didn't just say, "be empty,"
he said,"eat my flesh."

Slither belly down, tangled in mycelia.
Share your roots with infernal fungi.
Are we who bleed not all one creature?
Be coyote cub mothered
between red cedar thighs.

Fast, pray, howl and shimmer
in the wine of starlight.

Be an elder-child, play wisely
with the talismans in your body:
thighbone whistle, womb drum,
juniper seed and vertebrae of mice
rattling in your polished skull,
Read yourself in runes
of liver and moon blood.
Trust no other nostrils:
the scent is everywhere.

Burst the chrysalis of disbelief:
no more cocoons.
Be the flame of this moment,
a tingling clit in baptismal dew,
orgasm of animal purity
spreading rainbows over the mountain.

Be wildered and whirled
in a snow-melt stream,
clattering angelic stones.
Then wash your body in black sod:
this world is the mystery.





Collage by Rashani Réa: click on it and look carefully
into the blackness at the bottom of the picture.
Panther photo by @shaazjungphotography