Watering the Heart

On Revelations

Sep 15, 2024

I find myself concurrently exhilarated and exhausted by events of my life the past few weeks. I have been working with my first two voyagers in The Coracle, developing my website, working as a massage therapist and an innkeeper, planning live events here on Moku O Keawe that I’m truly exited about, and trying to get to my new book that’s been simmering since Piko: A Return to the Dreaming came out a year ago. (Three books are simmering actually.) It’s a lot. But I know I’m lucky. I am in the affluence of my kiakahi, in flow with my purpose, and though I miss socializing, and I’m not swimming as much as I want to, I am choosing to ride this current because I know that all my work, current and in development, is a beautiful contribution.

“You gots to maintain,” an old boyfriend of mine used to say whenever bumps appeared in the road. They could be little bumps, or big ones, but he lived by this mantra, lighting up every room with good cheer, rock ‘n roll riffs, and a megawatt smile even when life was knocking him down.

He was a master of maintaining, until he wasn’t, dying from alcoholism far too young. We’d been out of touch for years, but when I heard he was sick I wrote him a letter. Although I wanted to sentimentally gush about how much I loved him, I wasn’t sure how well received that would be, so I settled on humor, knowing he’d get it. “You gots to maintain,” I wrote, “Merry Christmas,” because it was that time of the year.

He wrote back that my letter touched his soul. He understood everything without me having to say it through our inside joke. It was a perfect farewell.

You’ve heard the phrase living legend—even though he’s gone, he is one. His legacy lives on through the stories people tell about him. I hope his soul hears them. That soul that I touched.

I am an agent of change, so I almost said before that I am willing to toil so hard right now because I know my work is a beautiful contribution to others that will change lives, but my work, or anyone’s, doesn’t have to be justified by whether it changes anyone’s lives. What matters is that I channeled it from my heart through my body into physical form. That is enough. I’d love if my work made the world more beautiful, but I don’t need that to feel worthy anymore. What a relief. I hope, any of you who feel anxious or unworthy, you get to feel this, too.

Revelation is the lifting of the veil, the Apocalypse of the Bible where God’s final judgment is handed down. The images are terrifying, especially if you read them literally.

As long-time readers of the Corpus Callosum Chronicles know, my mission here is to heal the gap between the metaphorical and the literal, between imagination and logic, so that we can access the full potential of our brain hemispheres to create a just world, a balanced and harmonious world, which for me is one where we accept the contrasts, instead of being so threatened by them we condemn and wage war on actual living, breathing humans who love, or long to be loved, just as we do.

Far too many of us are in literal prisons because of the failure in imagination to envision societies where everyone can experience safety and belonging.

Even more of us are in metaphorical prisons, trapped in the literal mind that doesn’t realize how we could change the conditions of material existence for the better by reuniting with the imagination, the unseen forces that actually create this world.

Just because they can’t be seen, doesn’t mean they can’t be felt.

I’ll leave you with that, and with this poem I discovered this week going through old files in my computer.

I wrote it about 10 years ago when I was living in Mexico on the shore of Laguna Bacalar. The lake is known in Spanish as La Laguna de Siete Colores—the Lake of Seven Colors. I was enchanted by it. By its colors and texture and sounds. It drenched my soul with revelations that are still unfolding, and I hope always will. One of them is, I don’t need to understand to love.

The title of the poem came first. I didn’t consciously choose it. It popped into. my head and I picked up a pen and fulfilled its prophecy with the story that followed. I haven’t actually understood the poem until today. If you’re a writer, don’t toss those old drafts. You never know what you knew before you knew.

I hope you find something here that touches your soul.

Revelation of the Seven Blues

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

This must begin 
with the sound of water heard
underwater, with a man and woman
bathed in smoke 
from a low fire he lit 
to keep bugs from their bare legs
stretched long on the ground.

This must begin 
after she has offered herself for hours
to the light shattering
into seven shades of blue
cradled between a goddess’s 
stripped white hipbones.

At lake edge, ringed by mangroves,
where two young vultures rise from their nest
without flapping their wings
and home in relentless circles
to the hum of spilled blood,
he will float in her arms 
and grief will burst him open
like rain flooding a ghost river
of boulders worn down by time 
that can’t be measured.

He will remember his childhood.

And then he will hear 
the tribe of women inside her
whose tongues 
have been cut from their mouths,
and hold his wrist to hers
until they are one pulse,
naming each shade of blue
as the rising sun rolls over the water
and the vultures bow
to the clean bones
before rising into the clouds.

Only then,
will they reach the body’s furthest edge, 
a blue watermark
rising under the skin 
bearing all they have lost
to the river’s source.

Then, when they stand in the still mirror

on the spinning Earth,
surrounded by fish that flash
and go out like stars,
they will hear the sun hiss
in surrender to the water
and blood will turn again
toward the heart.

Paid subscribers receive a 96-page PDF download of my book Weaving a Basket of Words: How to Write a Poem to Carry Water. I will send it to the email you subscribe with when you upgrade or take out a paid subscription. Thank you!

It’s been a year! For those of you who haven’t yet read Piko, it’s available through all online retailers or can be ordered by your local bookseller. If you’ve read the book, I’d be so grateful for a review on Goodreads or Amazon.