Clarity, Place, Proximity, and Sisters Swimming

I have just returned from a glorious retreat in the Southern Yucatan, and I'm feeling incredible gratitude. Gratitude for the beautiful place, for the space to think and work, to write, to be in community, and to take time to feel and focus on the sacred space we were in.   Just look at the place!  Literally, we walked out of the cabana into a fresh water lake created by an underground cenote flowing into the clearest, most incredible womb of water I've ever seen or been immersed in....and the colors!  Even the yoga was special.  Lisa, the yoga teacher, gently reminded us about why we do yoga--how we work to our limits, how we need to pay attention here, right at our limits, and notice what we can and cannot do, understand it, feel it , accept it, and begin to learn from it.  Oh, is that what this is about?!  What a tool to use in our everyday lives.  Who knew?  I have been on retreat with these same leaders several times, but this time, I began to get it.  I'm a little slow, but this time I began to use my free time to explore where I am in my life, where my limits are, where I want to go, how the stories the leaders weaved for us help me begin to weave my own story and understand how it connects so beautifully to hers, and hers, and hers, and what we can do as women in community, and in the world.   What would it be like to live so simply and  nurture the world and each other so? Women are just so cool (sorry guys on this list, but you all have extra doses of the divine feminine in you; that's why we like you so much!).  I am so lucky, so lucky, so lucky to have had these experiences and to have such a set of sisters from all over the world.  There are three poems I'd like to share.  The first is about clarity and patience, the second is a wonderful poem about stars, and we saw more stars than I knew existed in the sky.  The third is one I wrote there that tries to capture the experience of swimming in this incredible place.

If each day falls

inside each night

there exists a well

where clarity is imprisoned.

We need to sit on the rim

of the well of darkness

and fish for fallen light

with patience

                   Pablo Neruda

Place and Proximity (Patti Ann Rogers)

I’m surrounded by stars.  They cover me

Completely like an invisible silk veil

Full of sequins.  They touch me, one by one,

Everywhere – hands, shoulders, lips,

Ankle hollows, thigh reclusions.

Particular in their presence, like rain,

They come also in streams, in storms.

Careening, they define more precisely

Than wind.  They enter, cheekbone,

Breastbone, spine, skill, moving out

And in and out, through like threads,

Like weightless grains of beads

In their orbits and rotations,

Their ritual passages.

They are luminescence of blood

And circuit the body.  They are showers

Of fire filling the dark, myriad spaces

Of porous bone.  What can be nearer

To flesh than light?

And I swallow stars.  I eat stars.

I breathe stars.  I survive on stars.

They sound precisely, humming in my nose,

In my throat, on my tongue.  Stars, stars.

They are above me suspended, drifting,

Caught in the loom of the elm, similarly enmeshed

In my hair.  I am immersed in stars.  I swim

Through stars, their swells and currents.

I walk on stars.  They are less,

They are more, even than water,

Even than earth.

They come with immediacy.  The are as bound

To me as history.  No knife, no death

Can part us.

Sisters Swimming in Laguna Bacalar

Early morning half-light

as we step off cabana steps into cool,

transparent water the color of the

soft, sandy-brown bottom.

It is sunrise and hushed, the surface

 a plate of shimmering glass.

We wade out to our knees, hugging

our arms against the cold,

and the water changes from silver

sage to celadon.  At our hips,

mint encircles us.

As the sun begins to tip her face

to the sky, low clouds hug the water,

reluctant to let her go.

We dive, rippling the surface as mint

slides into teal tinged with light.

We are swimming in a liquid jewel.

As we move, I look down between

my legs into a translucent turquoise

vessel pulsing beneath us,

reaching up to touch us.

I roll onto my back and look up

as the moon becomes a ghost and

the sun pushes pink fingers across the sky.

Her spread hand blessing us from above.

We are held close here by liquid womb and sky.

The sun sends bands of light over our skin;

all at once, I realize that we are the jewels

cradled here in these colors of creation

being filled, transformed as we swim

into something ripening, expectant.

Ancient wisdoms wash through us,

rushing to teach us of innocence and descent,

of chains and limits, of growth,

of letting go, of abundance, of love.

Turquoise slips to teal, to mint

to celadon to silver, finally releasing us

to flash our jeweled bodies in the sun

as we climb out of these sacred waters

reborn.