My body is none other than that of this island, and I carry the knowledge of what is required to sustain and heal myself, who is none other than the land. I create and destroy the seasons. I am the darkness in the center of a tiny seed, holding the map to the flowering of the entire ecosystem.
When you sit at the table and eat, you are consuming my own body. When you touch your beloved, you are touching me. I respond to the touch of your tools in my soil with the same measure that you bestow upon me. For generations, you have tended me as you tend your own heart and I have thanked you with each year’s harvest. I know what is given with a sincere heart and who it is that resists me. You cannot hope to control me. You cannot hope to rise above me. There is nowhere else to go. For it is me who gave you your very life and on whom your life depends. There are some who do not like to accept this fact and who would like to think they stand apart, invulnerable to me. I suffer at their hands and through this suffering, your precious harvest dwindled.
There are those who would blame me for this loss, and use this as fodder to feed their arrogance and suspicion of me. They would use this to say that I am weak or that I spite and hate them. But while I am sovereign, I am vulnerable to the same tides of harm that befall your shores. I am vulnerable to your touch and those that touch you. When you are ill, who is it that you blame? Do you blame the body itself for its disease? Or do you slow down and defend the one who has fallen ill? If you want how to restore the vitality of the land on which you depend, ask a woman how she is and listen withthe patience of the oldest tree. I speak in their voice. I speak in the resonance of hollow spaces in your bones, the beat of rain lashing the hills, and the howl of the wind racing over the ocean. I speak in the salt of your blood.
I live in a stone. I live in a cave. I live in the mountain. I shape-shift into seals. There are those who would know me through song. Sing to me gently. Sing to me the song of myself, that I may rest the fullness of my body ravaged by your wars in your own fragile skin-sack of bones and weep. Some among you, do not have time for my tears. They want my blessings, but not my pain. But I tell you, those who will let me weep over their fields, through the soft flesh of their faces, in the silent frontiers of their hearts, I will lay within fields of gold and surrender my secrets, the fragrant words that are the blossoming of the flowers of spring, the solidity of the mountains, the ferocious courage of the sun rising and falling each day.
You want to know if there is still time for you to find me? You want to know if it is too late? You hurry and yet you are not urgent enough. You underestimate me, still thinking as you are in human terms of time. Don’t look for me. See me here in the mystery of your own skin. I will lead you to my darkest cave. I will show you the bones of my grief. I will alchemize you there into who it is you have always been and you will belong to me as much as yourself. You will be buoyed by the same strength that pushes the wind and lifts the mountains into the sky.
If only you will know that I love you and I have always loved you. Even as my land, blighted, no longer feeds you. Even I have hidden from you, deep in a cave, nursing my wounds, after the men from over the water raped the women and pillaged your villages. That was my body they plundered and left split in bone and spirit.I have screamed my righteous fury across the land as blight and plague. If only you would cease resisting me and know my love for you is deeper than the ocean, more spacious than the widest field, as vital and inescapable as breath.
I came to you as the hag. I came to you as a seal. I came to you as your own body. Now I have returned to my cave and wait for you to hear. I will never cease my song. spacious than the widest field, as vital and inescapable as breath.
I came to you as the hag. I came to you as a seal. I came to you as your own body. Now I have returned to my cave and wait for you to hear. I will never cease my song.