The First Immigrant

I was first introduced to Clarissa Pinkola Estes, about 20 years ago, when I met a woman in an office. She was carrying a black book with many tattered pages sticking out of it, like book markers. I asked her what she was reading and she said Women Who Run with the Wolves. She claimed that she could not put it down. That she took it everywhere with her. So, I thought perhaps, I would read it and sure enough, it became one of my favorite books as well. So, needless to say, when I saw this quote from Clarissa, I was deeply inspired by it and wrote this poem.

First Immigrant

This is a poem, to be published in my new book, Native, by Homebound Publications in April 2020.

It is inspired by this quote: “The soul is the first immigrant.” - written by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Never born, I dwell in foreign landscape. Flow with water, the color of blood, sail shorelines of skin and bone, tread lightly on language of the ordinary, in harmony with fire and stars. When recognized, all life gestures through my fingers.

I am a stranger in a lonely land, a small stone, a golden sun. Usually, it takes death to be noticed. The final fall, the last chance, the injury that changes all matter of things. How can I speak to you? I can’t. I have no voice. You must look for me, so that I can cross the border of mind into mythology perceived in the present.

See me in another; the stallion, the bear, the ones who dance and sing, ones who orchestrate symphonies of astounding music, ones who walk the streets with grocery carts and sacks on their backs looking for homes. Hunger opens. How deeply do you want to discover anything other than your own reflection? Be curious. Have courage. You don’t have to feed me. The gardens of the gods will be waiting.

When the sky grows dark, the fires roar in the distance, the earth quakes or your life shape shifts into something unrecognizable, you’ll see me. I’m standing where I always am, amidst the rubble, upon a mountain top, under an apple tree, with you, being.

Thoughts:

It seems that if the soul was a life force with a voice, that perhaps this would be the way it would identify itself to us. And in that, I wonder, do I pay attention and listen? Would I be willing to change ways that I lived my life in order to do so? I ask some questions to you as well.

What is the essence of who you are?

Who are you without the influence of family, friends and culture?

Does that part of you have a voice?