my borderlands

The night calls me into the folds of itself
and I wander into the unknown places I wish to see.
My heart full of hope and fear knows desire for
that feeling of expansive revelation, abundant trust
that carries me to clouds and to deep earth
simultaneously like the cords of knowing
where I am grounded and elevated at once. I am
floating on fire while planting seeds
moistened by my own spit, in soil watered
with my sweat dripping from my temples,
rounding my breasts, lingering beneath
my nipples and crashing to the mouth of seeds.
I squat naked covering cultivated earth
as my bleeding womb releases
a slow and steady flow of nitrogen, mud-red,
into the bed of next month’s meal.

I never leave the soil even as I hover
in the treetops with the birds, even
as I become the owl
and the wind,
even as I coil round the willow branch, serpentine,
and my tongue tastes air, flickers insight
like tastebuds on my third eye,
detects scents of seasons, senses
the reasons and rations of
spit and sweat and blood of soil
blanketing my sprouting food.

Even as I plunge my body
into the sea
into the deep salt
into the spray
of ocean air and smell of empty husks
of clams and mollusks,
I never leave the soil. Still I trace
the roots of seaweed, still I bury
toes in sand, still I catch
the dolphin, leap reaching for its fin and
hold, am carried to decentered places,
where no margins exist, where boundaries
are beyond sight and all I can see
is blue of water blurring into blue of sky and
no horizon splitting the world into binaries.

I live in the borderlands of soil, ocean, sky and sun,
the fulcrum point where consciousness collides
and holds my breath and sweat and blood and fire.
Like rays of sun my hand splays open finger rays,
desire touching tips to tips, lips to teeth and tongue unfurling,
palms spilling open hearts where voices breathe unfolding
visions of night wisdom, unknown places we’ve always known
we remember to see by seeing into the folds
beneath the soil of our sprouting seeds.

--diana tigerlily