Intimacy with your own life

poem from the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in the Woodland Garden by Arisa White.

everything emerges from intimacy with your own life

you walk between worlds

circle and circle until revolution is ritual

on which side are you misaligned?

you are the answer to be trusted

listen for the portal

plant your body like a bulb

dredge through your nervous grid

you are safe and beauty devastates

your heart is where you meet the gifts

child of earth and fire and air of university

your breath graduates you to the next breath

a wild and liberatory path longs for you –

an elder of your own narrative

when was the last time you were watered?

whose laughter shakes loose your chest?

you are held here by a sound

your name is a composite of its nuclear parts

like a tree nurtured on mutuality

you learn love by being loved and told you matter

clouds reposit their imaginations

between rupture and repair

universe is another word for all we don’t remember

between rupture and repair

clouds reposit their imaginations

you learn love by being loved and told you matter

like a tree nurtured on mutuality

your name is a composite of its nuclear parts

you are held here by a sound

whose laughter shakes loose your chest?

when was the last time you were watered?

an elder of your own narrative

a wild and liberatory path longs for you –

your breath graduates you to the next breath

child of earth and fire and air of university

your heart is where you meet the gifts

you are safe and beauty devastates

dredge through your nervous grid

plant your body like a bulb

listen for the portal

you are the answer to be trusted

on which side are you misaligned?

circle and circle until revolution is ritual

you walk between worlds

everything emerges from intimacy with your own life

This was written in a mirror image on the ground. So you read it, and you walk up to the halfway point and then from the halfway point to the end, you read it again.

And it took my breath away.