Page 111 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

spiritual love with extreme joy given as a darshan, a blessing. It is both physical and emotional, and I

am unable to conjure it from my imagination, or from inside myself, alone. The sensation of intense

heart-­‐open love following my encounter with the dancing dragonfly lasted about five minutes before

fading.

Fortunate encounters with insects, moments of wonder, of rescue and recognition, of communication

and camaraderie, of intense love and long memory, remind me that we are not alone here on earth,

abandoned on a burning stone whirling mutely in space. We are connected in relationships of diversity,

human with human, human with insects and plants, creatures and spirits, requiring only that we pay

attention and stay still enough to think/feel the connection, and accept that we have been recognized,

sent a vital communication, given a gift.

Judy Grahn is a poet, writer, and

purveyor of embodied philosophy

(Metaformic Consciousness). Her

work has been part of a number

of social movements, which have

enabled certain changes, so she is

an optimist. She recently finished,

and Aunt Lute Press published, a

memoir of the first half of her

life, A Simple Revolution: the

Making of an Activist Poet. The

book tells stories about her

childhood and people who lived

through various social justice movements with her, some of whom she interviewed and quoted. For

her next collection, she wants to tell a very different set of stories, about times in her life that spirit, or

one of the variety of minds within nature, has reached out and said “hello,” or “help” or “stop” or has

redirected her. And also, times the reach-­‐across has failed. “Dragons Dancing” is part of that

exploration.

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