Low Ground

I am filled with an unnamed longing today, an existential sorrow that threatens to pull me into its undertow. I will let it roll. I will let it flow. Today, I will not be a vessel that holds water, I will be the pathway through which the waters flow…like the low ground in flood. Tomorrow, the waters will recede. They always do.

Advertisement

Journal: The Dreamer

The dreamer turns…tears her own throat out…fingers blood tipped reaching in and farther in, she sends breath like fire out through her eyes. They drop sandy water like the tilting river, dreams boiling underskin. The dreamer doesn’t speak anymore. Her fingers run over and over again across her larnyx and along the rings of her trachea, searching for a hidden treasure and hearing hoofbeats in the distance. She doesn’t notice the river water…the silver fishes, little snakes, crawdads and tadpoles floating from the rent in her neck until one tickles her nose with his fin. She flips her tail and swims, silver scales flashing in the sunlight.

~LHeilman

Journal: Anxiety Disorder, OCD, Globus Hystericus or rather The Tale of the Little Green Snake

These wild eyes don’t belong to me. They are too blue, too hard. Some fey wildness has crept into my veins and my blood rolls like a drumbeat, the pounding rhythm of a deer in flight. My hair flies from me on the stormwind, torn from its roots and smelling like honeysuckle. When Eurus hid his scream in my chest, it sent my heart banging like a trapped bird against its cage of ribs and breath. But all is quiet…there is no sound…the words that are stuck in my throat coil like a little green snake, content to have sanctuary.
~LHeilman

~Sculpture by Polly Morgan

We wait, Silent

Sharp Tongue by Nela Dunato

We are waiting for the storm to come, the cats and I. We sit by the window, our legs folded beneath us and watch as the trees wave the wind onward. The cats are always near…enchanted by my silence and the way my hair lifts even when there is no breeze to stir it. I shoo them away so that I can shift to the side. My feet have fallen asleep from sitting on them. A sumac tree that has grown too close to the house, grates against the siding like an old woman hacking to clear her throat. My own throat has closed down on all the words inside, like a dam that has grown over the years. I haven’t spoken a word since last Tuesday. These words, they have piled up at the base of my throat and no matter how often I swallow or cough, they will not budge…not even one little word will loosen to allow the flow. So, I sit and wait for the storm to come and the cats gather around me in silence. We wait and we do not speak.
~L. Heilman

Winter bird meditation and dreams of springtime dancing

I am enchanted by the multitudes of hopping, burrowing, hard working birds in the woods around the house…I can just sit quietly and watch them, my mind still and smooth…taken by their ceaseless activity. I have tried unsuccessfully to meditate to stillness yet it is scenes like this that allow my mind to still…that and the rolling movements of my body in dance…now I am dreaming of springtime drum circles…

Little Bird

Little bird, little bird hopping to and fro on the starry icesheet turning sunwise…
the sky is a silver veil shimmering crystal chandelier, reflecting the sheen of your wings.
You hold the dreaming world in your frosted feathers,
its song buried deep in your swelling chest…
waiting for the thaw…
waiting for nothing less than the heated embrace of the rising sun…

The Coyote Den

It’s always there isn’t it…this darkness? You can stave it off with trips to the thrift store or obsessive tarot readings or your kid’s laughter or a sunny day or visiting the river or a walk in the woods and you’re happy, you really are then holy shit, here comes the darkness.

The Coyote Den
I went to the woods to find peace
To head off the melancholy tap tapping at my windowsill
I should have known by the turn of the branches,
The scrape of the muscadine vine across my neck
What was waiting for me there.
But I was mesmerized by the shining silver trunks,
By the patchwork loam sewn together with greenbriar vines,
dotted with sweetgum balls.
I should have heard the train roar sound of darkness
Rushing towards me, like black smoke from an autumn trash burn,
But instead I knelt down to look more closely at an old coyote den
Four smaller tunnels leading in four directions,
all contained inside one larger dip in the earth.
I should have prepared for what was coming
For the sudden push and rumble as the darkness caught me in a tailspin
My heart, which had shone so brightly and in so many directions
Was filled with the night and I tumbled down into the den.
Into the Dark.

Treesway

Treesway in the coming storm
my heart aches with longing
words lodge in my throat
in the secret places of my
soul.
It is a fey dance, this blue fire
there are messages in the earth
in the leaves that tremble in the stormwind
in the sway of my
hips.
Hair swinging low
I press my hands against my heart
for it will surely
beat right out of my
chest.

Drunken bumblebees

They come out, these children
Smelling of sunshine and graham cracker crumbs.
With their light filled eyes,
They laugh and scream-
“I feel unstoppable!”

Country mamas spill out of their bikinis.
Calling for Bubba, to come here right now!
While my girl does Interpretive Dance in her
saggy bottomed bathing suit.

I squeeze the water out of my heavy braid
and turn my face up to the
white sunlight, the
blue summer sky.

~L. Heilman

Summer Sleeping

Summer Sleeping

Lay your head in my lap
and sleep the light down to dusk.
Dream curled inside the red,
The heavy heat
As the clouds sweep slowly overhead.

Like green growing things,
Dreams sprout delicate tendrils
Uncurling and
Waving their tiny hands in surrender
To the hot sticky air.

~L. Heilman