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
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
“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.