The following was brought to you by
self-imposed solitude during
my healing journey in Panama.
(This was while staying with the beloved
Mercedes, a purely Spanish-speaking "cuandera," or,
a healer who has been practicing natural medicine for
over 4 decades. I was mostly alone there, studying,
healing, learning, growing for almost two weeks.)



The rain came steady, finally,
(Lluvia despacia)
and
In the wet thicket
I can taste my natural soul
like warm herbs and fresh
papaya,
A burning woman-child
cries out in need
as
I paint myself,
The strokes of completion
Of happy alone, alive
Of healing, at last.
I understand everything so suddenly
as in the distance
The chorus of voices
echoes out
[The familiar peace of foreign chanting]
In unison
and the night, still young,
is coated with the
Twittering and chepping of
a harmony of
Creatures,
A cacophony of life.
In me, I have found the mother
My Earth
has turned her soil over
to expose the
Roots 
of a tree planted before
I was separated from the
umbilical cord
And deep inside,
the water flows raw and makes new again.

Is strength really the purity of love,
the courage of living
or
the love of letting go?

You have to fight your way to the earth, where your tears will feed life and the ground will eat your pain -- all real human beings must do this or be ill for not doing so.

And in the meantime, I'm throwing wild parties in a treehouse -- on a limb in your heart.


The more empty I am,
the more full I feel.
Do not stand at  my grave and cry,
I am not there,
I did not die.