Surrender, Gratitude & Wisdom
hummingbirds in the heart
I dreamed I was following a scar in the earth that was covered in light blue wildflowers.
I followed the flowers into an open meadow surrounded by mountains and read a prayer from a book, out loud to the air and meadow and mountains.
A rainbow appeared then, across from us and we were wonder-struck. Then two more appeared, making three rainbows in a row. And before we knew it, rainbows began appearing throughout the entire circumference of the sky surrounding us, placing us in a meadow surrounded by mountains and rainbows. The sky was magenta.
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“Surrender, Gratitude and Mystery.”
The words of the wise woman who received my grandmother buffalo drum yesterday. I bundled the leather and wooden beaters in a handwoven wool scarf from Peru and presented them to her between the heavy snowfall and blossoming apricot trees.
The sky was entirely white around us, like her own shimmering hair, and we set the the stand up right there in center of her music room filled with singing bowls, luscious green plants, round drums and djembes, crystals, herbs and her spinning wheel. Her home smelled like frankincense oil and juniper smoke. Out the windows we could see nothing but white and thick falling snow.
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I dreamed I was following long skinny animal tracks with five little toes, through a river valley covered with sprouting green herbs. The earthen knolls along the trail were not earth at all, but old gnome-ish beings, bent over, holding their knees against their chests, carrying the greening earth on their backs. They appeared in many shapes and sizes and hardly moved, but they did move, ever so slightly, and sometimes, it made the earth look like it was breathing.
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The wind shook the yurt in the middle of the night, whipping the canvas roof and walls, shaking the wooden lattice and the beams of our loft. I could hear buckets outside flying across the ground and tarps shredding in the high speed wind.
I heard a cry in the night. I wrote down my dreams.
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A hundred lifetimes ago I took myself camping for seven days outside of Bend, Oregon. All I wanted to do was sing to Green Tara and paint and be still.
One morning I was sitting in meditation when an enormous star flew from the sky in rainbow colors and landed right in my heart. The sheer force of it knocked me over and pushed water out from my eyes.
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When I drove down the mountain to deliver my drum to the wise woman, I cried. I cried because I love her so much. I cried because the enormous space of gratitude filling my belly feels like home, and her holy healing hands and heart have given so much to my and my daughter. I cried knowing she would be the keeper of the drum.
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dear friend, please speak to me of the holy men and women you have come to know along your path - speak of the revelations and sacred memory of fire and wing, please tell us of your heart's hallowed return and how it ripped through time and space, friend, please, speak to me of meaning light and mystery - leave nothing out. tell us of the constellations of your birth, the mirror in your lover's eyes - speak to me of the songs they sang at your mother's funeral, the transformative power of your Presence, and how you wept on the dock near the sea -- tell me, friend, how you solved the fragments of your ancestor's pain with the honey you found in your veins, and how it tasted, that first time - speak of the song the sunrise taught you all those years ago, golden, blue and rising with a thousand hummingbirds who danced geometries around your heart, reborn, unknowing, original - friend, I want to know how the sand feels beneath your feet, how the sound of the waves stirs your belly, please, tell me the holy stories, leave nothing out.
✧ a poem dedicated to dear friends, A & R.
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Much love,
Leah