gently place your forehead
on the trunk of an aspen
close your eyes and wait
for your sun drenched vision
to be swept toward shadow.
you will see crows fly on the bark
one hundred dark eyes stare
across winter sky.
stay there
let your hands cup her cool torso. listen
until you become the trembling
turquoise leaves spun in wind,
the tears that
stream down your face,
rivulets of afternoon rain.
sink as roots pull you down
toward true belonging
perhaps for the first
time in your life.
be still: you finally
have enough strength
to truly give back. now
pour your animal body in to
the tree, run love like sap,
like a monsoon
or lightning.
feel branches reach for you
as your limbs circle up.
your lips the color of bright
prickly pear fruit
and hers: the apricot lips
of mature aspen.
she will kiss you
as one who lingers:
open-mouthed.
Notes:
I feel there is a deep request from the earth to listen, to nurture her mysteries. To accomplish this we must be willing to limit distraction, and pay attention, so we may unfold in to not knowing. It is for this reason that I spent nine summers outside of Taos, New Mexico with no internet, cell phone or TV. The inquiry became what would happen in this searing stillness? The poem ‘What the Aspen Revealed’ is one of the gifts received.
About the Author
Dyana Basist is a lifelong poet, healer, and a lover of this luminous earth. She has recently closed her massage practice after thirty-four years to focus on energy medicine and direct communication with Gaia through the regenerative power of ceremony and magic. She lives in Santa Cruz, on the riparian corridor and courts coyote, hawks, a hundred songbirds and a rarely seen lynx.
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