Solstice Stardust
The power to withstand collapse is within us
We got it all wrong.
It’s not mind over matter.
It’s not even balancing mind and body.
It’s the connection between them.
We ourselves are a rich ecosystem
we constantly try to sever.
Our systems serve to sever us,
not deliver us.
Deliver us to our own knowing?
That would topple the hierarchy.
Because once we know all
the ingredients to our own power
are within us,
we won’t need to go shopping for it.
We lost our listening
when we set alarms to wake before
the sun.
We have a perfect clock
that we ignore,
except maybe on the solstice,
but only to remark -
isn’t that short,
or isn’t that long.
Not the correct answer:
the stars know the recipe for
what stardust needs.
Our bodies are seen as inconveniences
to our obligations.
I dream of a world where the only obligations
were to take care of the village.
When your body wasn’t able,
other bodies stepped in.
But we’ve made ourselves
individually irreplaceable.
Our bodies crushed by the weight of
our manufactured obligations.
And now there’s no village to catch us.
Unless you have cancer.
If you have cancer and you have a village,
they will probably show up.
But only if you have to
poison your body with chemo.
But anything less than cancer and chemo?
Good luck,
you’re on your own,
hope they make pills for that.
My body knows things.
It knew how to grow life.
It knew how to birth life.
It knew how to make milk.
It knows how to make love.
The body’s memory
is stronger than the mind’s,
especially a poisoned one.
None of us need a nurse
yelling at us to push.
All of us need a midwife
witnessing us access our own power.
Yoga’s the only exercise I know
they call a practice.
Not to perfect a pose,
there’s no filter here.
It’s to practice rebuilding
the highway of trust
between your mind
and your body.
Harder to do
when the poison of our world
finally reaches the body too.
But our bodies
were built to collapse.
The buildings don’t
have the blueprints
for that.
We’re more prepared than we think.
The mise en place is ready.
Take off the blindfold,
remove the earplugs,
the burner’s already on.
Listen to the recipe inside:
Stardust can burn bright too.
Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash