Until We Meet Again

“Since a part of your soul dies when your soulmate leaves, you will never feel entirely the same. Your new partner will make you happy, but it won’t be the same insane feeling overthrowing your whole body and soul. It will be much more stable, rational, calm, comforting. Which may be a good thing in the end. Nobody can live on an infinite rollercoaster.” – Recycled.

Firewood

i plant trees

so i have wood for fire

to burn old sticks of memory

that wound me as i pass

rising smoke scribes lovenotes

into black mouth that swallows things

the last of my love is flung     like rising shards

in hopes it might be seen     by someone who might be sleeping

or might be winged     or might be nothing

in spite of my Achlys’ blindness     i have seen within wisps

of Nyx’s backlit clouds         

Nott’s hair flowing    as she rides a wild horse

of my blackened grief

a clenched fist of heart     thrums against my solitude

alone     i am      without flesh and bone

my laughing leaves     stripped and flung to furthest fields

my evening bonfires     built for comfort

against night thoughts

betrays me      with stories from yesterdays’ fires

my trees are now too big for tearing out

their gift to me are large limbs

reaching down      to embrace my quietude

when my night loneliness takes up new roots

©Carol Desjarlais 7.3.20

Happy birthday in heaven, my soulmate.

©Carol Desjarlais 7.4.20

A message from Richard’s older brother, Gil Cross Sr.:

And So, I Wander

and so    I wander

stars turned their eyes from me
moon covered her face with soft cotton cloth
night bowed her head
until all was dark and warm and comforting

Cyprus trees scythe night's garden
owls called their messengers
sting of you being cut free left me broken
as you took flight towards a hidden sun

your soul      a rising phoenix
whip of leather tether
sliced your shadow away from you
and left it clinging to my heart

I wander      now      in foreign land
my hands no longer mine
my feet older than dirt they walk upon
my eyes forever blinded
by your loving light

I wander    aimlessly
for it is not by choice I stay
here is where you are not
here is where I have no map    no compass
for you were my morning star

this river is high and wild
that needs your paddle      sure and strong
this boat rocks    filled with maddened foam
laughing rocks reach out    but I am leery

go now    breath begins to grab leaves
I shall welcome glacial ice
to entomb what is most dear of you
somewhere near my soul's winter

and so it is    I wander

©Carol Desjarlais 7.27.19

Grief does not go away.  It morphs into a deeper and deeper longing, no matter where you are, who you are with, whether you believe ion heaven or not.   I will spend the rest of my life with a deep-seated loneliness that never leaves.  On low days, I will long for my ‘life’ back.  On high days, I will laugh at memories and see your feathers and share memories of us.  But, every day, there is something that reminds me that I am waiting, learning to live without you another day, and being aware of that eternal longing.  I AM MISSING PART OF MY HEART.

Carol Desjarlais 7.4.20

The Glistering

As I have said, I do not believe in angels with wings, but, from elder’s teachings, I accept that those ‘wings’ we see are personalities moving faster than the speed of light and it trails light behind them.   Have you ever had the experience of seeing light around someone, or seeing light within?

When I was a young teenager, with teenaged mentality, and never one for religious fanaticism, in fact, serious, non-religious senses, I saw something I could never explain.  An older man was up at a podium speaking, and we were not, as teenager’s are wont.. we were snickering and whispering back and forth about what we thought was important to us, and I looked up and was mesmerized by the speaker.  There was a light radiating from him.  I watched him for a good ten to fifteen minutes, still not listening to his words, but intent on figuring out why he would shine like that.  I have always always wondered what that was and as I matured and became more aware, I know that his soul and aura were pure and radiating around him.  In Christianity, Luke 9:29, (I had to research it, the word “glistering” was used to describe the light emanating from someone.

Another time, a bit late, but before I got into being married, with children, and living real life, I began seeing what we term as “auras” around certain people.  Sometimes they were strangers, sometimes they were known to me as acquaintances, sometimes workshop presenters, sometimes family.  I began to know I was seeing colors.  I could not explain it, as I could not explain my younger experience, and seldom said anything about any of it.  Eventually, I researched what I was seeing and talked to Medicine people.  It was explained in traditional cultural terms.  

It is said that a light that surrounds the body is an energy field.  Our spirit/soul does not fit into this elastic stuff we call skin and it is a moving energy field.  When we are sad or negative, or happy, or soulful, this energy field changes and is a moving living thing.  It is why we do not like to sit too close to strangers, or stand in the far corner of an elevator, or like someone to point a finger too close to us, etc.  It is this energy field that we sense when someone is standing behind us, or someone is in the room in the dark, or has someone turn and look at us across a room.  

It is, and I know this to be true, an energy that leaves the body when someone passes.  I experienced this energy movement when I was holding my father’s hand at the moment of his death. I felt an electrical surge go from his hand into mine and up my arm.  I cannot explain it.  I do not need too.  It was a learning experience, and so dear, for me.  There is an energy in the body and around the body.  Some call it an aura.

I experienced some teachings from an Elder who was a healer.  She taught me what New Age might call “Aura Massage”, but she explained that it is massaging the soul.  I have used it to calm clients, I have used it to relieve sufferers of Migraines.  I have used it to help some release emotions.  It is powerful and it works, ion my experience and knowing.  I do not understand this, either, but used it as I was taught to use it.  There is ceremony to it and includes smudging of hands and person to protect me as I do it so their negative energy does not stick to me.    

A few nights ago, several of us were sitting out before our firepit.  As things do, conversation moved to speaking about what we each had experienced as what is called astral travel.  We spoke of feeling the body rise from being prone.  Each of us had experienced some sort of experience with it, even my 80-year-old partner, The Bee Man, who spoke of rising above and seeing his father who was floating, just before death.  This is a man who does not necessarily believe in any organized religion either, nor was he brought up going to any church.  I was so surprised at his telling because he is not one to speak of such.  My just-about-son-in-law, from Ghana, spoke of knowing his father was about to pass in that he experienced sickness and confusion and had to pull over while driving, and, the next day, his mother called to tell him that his father, in Ghana, had passed away, at the exact time as he was driving on a long road trip and had to pull over to gather himself.  Another spoke of ‘traveling’.  I am sure we have all heard of someone doing such things, of knowing, of traveling, or rising.  I had a life after death experience in 1982 during a brain bleed.  I rose above my body.  I saw and grieved myself and then moved to some higher or different space of beautiful hum, and there, I met my father who had passed, who reached out his hand and said if I took his hand I could go with him.  I only saw his arm reaching out and it was definitely my father’s hand as he always buffed his straight cut beautiful nails that were a mahogany color.  I begged not to have to go and be allowed to go back and raised my babies.  The request was honored.  The pain of returning into my body was like a thousand nerve pinpricks as oxygen returned to my body and I was once again in the ICU room. 

It changed my life, all these events, unexplained, really, changed my personality and thoughts and knowing.

How do we explain such?  Do we need to?  Is knowing enough? Have you ever seen the Glistering?   What difference does such, or did such, make in your life?  

©Carol Desjarlais 7.3.20