Medicine Woman Poem

Dear Ones--I wrote a poem a year ago after working with addicted, at-risk youth in juvenile jail system and with homeless street youth. My heart breaks for these children and their parents. So much suffering. The people that could help them work with their hands tied. The people with money and power can't see or don't want to see what is possible and what really needs to be done.  The poem ask that we sit on circles of stones or---and reflect on our present situation. I wanted to say to the authorities that insist on staying blind, who dance in circles of illusion, who refuse transformation, something and this poem came in a very sacred way. It has since been published and is circulating around the world in various places. This is my gift to you all as well.  

Medicine Woman Needs

I am Medicine Woman. I need circles of chairs or stones to sit you on and fires in the middle of things where smoke rises to clear night skies full of moons and stars of promise. 

I need to smell the smoke of raging fires and sleeping embers.

I need to hear the bark of sad hard dog skins before the thunder wind that rise for all that have life and live.

I need to touch the bleeding earth at my feet symbolic of what needs to change.

I need to bark and bray and gurgle like the babies of all creatures do.

I need to wave highflier Eagle feathers that see it all and shake their heads at our lack of mindfulness.

I need to hear wind chimes and bells and the clank of wood on wood as wind and breeze stirs and blows.

I need vision and fullness and to feel the tears running down my cheeks from failure, mine, yours, ours, us, we.

I need to look upon the child at mother’s breast and know that one will be at One somewhere, someday or all is lost.

I need to see the owl fly that lets the sun beg for dawn and to see the crab mouth eat a tear and be happy to see the blue shell hear ‘no’ so they can know.

I need to grab the loss from the foul air of time and transfer appliqués of flowers on cloth and paper as an antidote to all foulness.

I need to eat the sweet plums and sour apples and the neutral figs and cut tomatoes in half to form pies of unity food of souls ascending and descending.

I need to stand central to all this and more in my circle facing all medicine in all circles.

I need to reach out and touch scales and fur and steel and wood and cloth and the TV remote buttons to make sense of place and space while my soul soars through seas of ancestors where voices echo through time and seat
themselves in present circles.

I need this.

Grace Growing Medicine (2009)