what speaks in the blood

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Once every year, the Deer catch human beings. They do various things which irresistibly draw men near them; each one selects a certain man.

The Deer shoots the man, who is then compelled to skin it and carry its meat home and eat it.

Then the deer is inside the man. He waits and hides in there, but the man doesn't know it.

When enough Deer have occupied enough men, they will strike all at once.

The men who don't have Deer in them will also be taken by surprise, and everything will change some.

This is called "takeover from inside".


—Gary Snyder

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Walking, I can almost hear the redwoods beating. And the oceans are above me here, rolling clouds, heavy and dark. It is winter and there is smoke from the fires.

It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another.

Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say.
Watch and listen.

You are the result of the love of thousands.


—Linda Hogan

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be light.

as minerals in the ground rise inside trees
and become tree,

as plant faces an animal
and enters the animal,

so a human
can put down the heavy
body baggage and
be light.


—Rumi
Coleman Barks version

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in(side

 

.

How something is made flesh

no one can say. The buffalo soup

becomes a woman

who sings every day to her horses

or summons another to her private body

saying, come, touch, this is how

it begins, the path of a newly born

who, salvaged from other lives and worlds,

will grow to become a woman, a man,

with a heart that never rests,

and the gathered berries,

the wild grapes

enter the body,

human wine

which can love,

where nothing created is wasted;

the swallowed grain takes you through the dreams

of another night,

the deer meat becomes hands

strong enough to work.

But I love most

the white-haired creature

eating green leaves;

the sun shines there

swallowed, showing in her face

taking in all the light,

and in the end

when the shadow from the ground

enters the body and remains,

in the end, you might say,

This is myself,

still unknown, still a mystery.


—Linda Hogan

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the way in

 

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Who really respects the earthworm,
the farmworker far under the grass in the soil.
He keeps the earth always changing.
He works entirely full of soil,
speechless with soil, and blind.

He is the underneath farmer, the underground one,
where the fields are getting on their harvest clothes. 

Who really respects him, this deep and calm earth-worker,
this deathless, gray, tiny farmer in the planet's soil?


—Harry Martinson
the earthworm
Robert Bly version

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Sometimes the way to milk and honey is through the body.
Sometimes the way in is a song.
But there are three ways in the world: dangerous, wounding, and beauty. 

To enter stone, be water.
To rise through hard earth, be plant
desiring sunlight, believing in water. 

To enter fire, be dry.
To enter life, be food.


—Linda Hogan
the way in

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