does not pump
“Contrary to orthodox belief, the heart does not pump blood through the system, but rather receives it, listens to it, and sends it back out again. It is an organ of perception.” — Charles Eisenstein
listen to the winter darkness & shortness of day
shortness of heat & of golden sun
listen to the roundness of night & her belly of fullness
of surrender to curl up & sleep
giving way to a secret inner contraption
registration of sound
colon of the mind
owed compter
lush Lusk
thrush
townsend
masked
warbler & grasses
(break the neck of a bass)
and complete funerary
(thrust the guts out)
the things we absorb
by the build up of silence and of heat
release as it grows
becomes softer whereas
sitting in those warm grasses the day after
in the mouth of it
of change
of ancient story
of where the whole collective mind begins pointing
get into the stirrups of warm fields of grasses
make a poem in the hollow of the mouth
this gesture
this opened box of tinkered toys
getting loose & looser
to follow what is quiet, slow, unappealing to the eye of the winner
go soft & listen
sit down upon the grass
soft.
soft & open & warm
the sun, the day after
— how long this conquest, this endeavor
where i put my money & my mind
gift as total lesson
as ground of being
as intelligence incarnate
relationship of each thing
(go softly now)
still listening to the grasses
uniform armor in the gloaming
metaphoric decibel
the frequency of lovage
of inert matter lurking alive
a softened explosion
the black of new year’s eve
gives way to sparks of forrest fire
cantata, in leaping flames
debauched
mustachioed
what will i call myself in the rest
of the golden turn of the year?
This poem is one in a series, Our Season of Embodied Economy, which is a poetic collaboration for National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) by Samantha Wallen and Michelle Puckett. To read the previous poem in the series, click here.
Uranus (the planet of revolution) recently moved into Taurus (a slow, feminine earth sign) where it will stay for the next 8 years signaling that we are likely to see big changes in the realms of agriculture, embodiment, pleasure, and economic systems over the course of those years. The cosmos is bidding us to move into a time of slowing down and getting back to the basics as embodied, earth-dependent beings.
Please join us as we marinate on these themes, read Sacred Economics: Money, Gift & Society in the Age of Transition by Charles Eisenstein, and write poems each day. The time is ripe for deepening our relationships to the earth, our bodies, money and everything we truly value.
