Trust What You Cannot See

Shutterstock/Martin de Jong

Dr. Mines is an award-winning poet. Her poetry has been published in anthologies and in chapbooks. A collection of Dr. Mines’ poetry, The Great Physician: Medicinal Poetry for the Anthropocene, will be published in 2023 by Kindred World. Her latest book, The Secret of Resilience: Healing Personal and Planetary Trauma Through Morphogenesis, will be released in 2023 from Inner Traditions/Sacred Planet Books.

This is Stephanie’s first poem just over the ledge of her 79th Birthday. Read and feel the flourishing of the Crone.

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Trust What You Cannot See

I wake to

Order Stephanie’s first major collection of poetry now, a proud publication of Kindred World Publishing House.

The lacy indifference of the trees,

Like movie stars at Cannes

Posing for the photographers,

Everyone making money from

The suffering of others.

But the trees have a solid

Base, a root of purposeful

Connection with the

Invisible.

“Trust what you cannot see,”

They tell me,

As they become

My two grandmothers

Who I never knew.

“Put your faith in the impossible,”

They say.

“That is what we did. We had no other

Choice. And this is how we fed the children,

Day after day after day.”

They are happy,

These grandmothers of mine,

Sophie and Rose.

Their faces soft now,

Glistening with endless

Certainty of love

As destiny.

Not the romantic love.

That is the lacy indifference,

The garments of seduction,

But the rooted kind,

The love you can lean into;

The love that supports you,

Holds you solidly,

But never

Encircles you or

Entraps you or

Suffocates your

Original Brilliance.

“We wear the lacy indifference

Sometimes”, my grandmothers say,

“But only to play with the air.

We take it all off to live in the

Truth of who we are.

Naked, heavy breasted,

Old, androgynous,

Our feet in loamy soil,

Our striated skin etched by

Centuries of triumph.”

Then they stop and look at me,

Taking my face in their

Four hands, and they say,

“Yes, be wary of the omens, for

Darkness is on the rise,

But trust what you cannot see,

And put your faith in the

Impossible. Remember,

We are not the lacy indifference,

We are the soft and the solid,

We are the valor of eternal life-giving,

We are the dark tunnel of becoming,

We are that which you lean against and

Which never

Disappears.”

I want to live with them now and

Not wake to the cold tasks of

Manifesting dreams in this time of the

Great demise, when brittle cultures based on

Manipulation crack into shards of no value.

Why have I lived this long only to witness

The ceaseless cruelty of white male privilege?

Have I not protested enough to make a difference?

I close my eyes one more time before rising and

Repeat the mantra,

“Trust what you cannot see,”

“Put your faith in the impossible.”

And thus I go out into the day with

My grandmothers.

 

 

 

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