Feather Talon, Medicine Woman

Sometimes I just like to proclaim it, to use her voice, to call forth the promise she has offered me, now that I know her again. Of course, she has been here all along, patiently breathing under my gravel, quietly bleeding her wisdom through my wounds, anointing each one with a salve of Sage. She spread bitter on my tongue that I might spit out the words I dared not say aloud. She heard me weep, unconsoled, until I came to see where my tears joined the waterways then rose as vapor, merging with Sky (“The Drop”). Through the dreary, the dark, the freezing rains, through the sunny interludes and wonderment, she was there, steadfast and knowing (“River-Lake”), ever patient that I would come around, to claim her back and own her splendor. She has always been there, yes, but I had forgotten her face, her wisdom, her Earthly knowledge (“Cell Mate”). And when I relinquished my awkward protections, when I became tender and humbled, when I began to realize how little I knew for sure, only then did I ripen to welcome her back. And it was then that she whispered my Calling for the first time. I was ready to live as the Medicine Woman I had always been and the path of the Shaman presented itself. Through the work of another great Healer I discovered my gifts and began to share them and it was then that my name came to call on me. And when I heard it only then did my voice pour out in raw and clear verse, poem after poem, each one a balm of medicine written in advance of my readiness to glean the nuance, to be used to absolve myself of the complex prison I had constructed around loss and injury.

It is my promise to discover the mission entwined with this “Feather Talon” that conjures gentle and fierce. This name will take me another lifetime to honor and grows each day into something greater than I had thought before to imagine, pacing slightly ahead of my grasp, keeping my intrigue, urging me to reach. Like my own heartbeat this name lives in me and calls out softly, assuredly, pulling me along exquisitely by a thread scouting into the future of myself (“Raising Daisy”), into the fullness of my purpose in the Universe (“Messages From Moon and Star”). It is a rhythm unlike those familiar orders from outside of me that have groomed such a sideways posture (“I, Alone”). And so it comes that I learn to place first my Soul Voice that had waned tragically obedient for so long she began to wonder if she had become the forgotten remains of a failed campaign launched so many eons ago….
Now I find she has not been failing. She has been watching, gathering tales, singing out poems to reveal and prayers to heal.

Miserably, I used to be Marionette of Obedience, never daring to disappoint. I was naive to failure, I didn’t know weakness, refused to acknowledge dismemberment (“DownBeaten”). Always could I limp up and perform as was expected. I knew not refuse, not quit, no boundaries, and they knew that I did not know (“Cow-Worker”). In serving indiscriminately I sunk countless levels below rock bottom, but my exhausted existence had become my normal (“Words That Use Me”).

What matters is that eventually something profound occurred. Negligence toward my voice allowed my brain to hijack it’s function. Against all my corporate career conditioning telling me I could not ever leave a shift, call in sick, nor be infirm, my voice disabled me. I could only stutter (“Spoken Broken”).

During medical leave I felt free (“The Stripper”“BareFootFalls”). I immersed in the songs of trees (“Twin With Nature”), became cleansed by the natural breezes, knew my own blood pulsing through me. Intuition paid visit (“Calling”). Slowly, I realized how far I’d strayed from my own life. I needed to stop ignoring Me, to realize some truths about where I’d been (“Hope Chest”). In order to move off the dead spot beneath so many heavy layers of rock bottoms (“Wounded”) I would need to ask for help. Gently I was led to a gifted Shaman who helped me with healing and release.

As I immersed in Nature’s beauty and calm I renewed. I opened to prayer when Grass taught me I did have a safe place in the world where I could be spiritual (“Fescue Rescue”). I now held a once missing knowledge (“A Song for My Arrival”), a sprinkle of nature’s confetti. We need a little confetti of insight and celebration for moving through, however clumsily, the substance that we call Life, no matter how much we do not yet know. Much was revealed about myself as my work with my Shaman helped me shed the stains and over time the roles shifted and my healer became my teacher. I learned my name as I ventured in to my own practice as a Shaman Medicine Woman and now I offer a safe place for others to find their way.

In being named I am informed. Life is lived on a stage where we stumble, recover, and constantly ask the big questions (“Ancient Mothers”) rooted in only one- or two-word sentences. “Why? Why bother? Who? How? When?” We all ask the same questions. The answers are in the plots of the poems we perform on the stage of life. Living is what I write about.

My poems are not the answers. They are the prayers pleading for the answers. They touch upon the legends of the age-old meanderings of mankind (“Metamorphosis”).

I shall continue to stumble, to turn up troubles and errors and beauty to craft into hopeful stories fit for human consumption (“Art of Zen”). I must. It is now What I Do. I sprinkle this confetti of Life in the hopes that you may be startled into remembering some ancient truth you already own, that it may germinate in your heart and come to bloom questions you would like to ask of the World, the Universe, Yourself. I pray my tiny planting inspires you to keep inching along on your own thread of gentle beckoning. Remember to turn around once in a while and savor what you have planted. Calibrate your compass of intuition and sharpen your curiosity. Look to the Heavens and deep within your soul with an endless stream of awe. When a truth comes through, honor it, use it, share it. The world is looking for what you already have.