My Words are Like Birds

When I was a child, 
my words flew on the wings of birds. 
Then, as I grew, my words became feral 
and ferocious like fire. 
When I became a lover, 
my words were openhearted 
and flowed like a river. 

Now that I’m older, 
sometimes my words are heavy 
and slow like a mountain 
and sometimes they are crisp and sharp like a raspberry cane.
Sometimes my words are unyielding like sunbaked earth 
and sometimes they quench like rain. 

My words are spells that are cast on the wind. 
They are the weaving and the woven. 
My words are pathways of story that wander freely
into green forests and follow meandering streams. 

My words are like birds
  that fly from my thoughts. 

My words are like stones
  that sink into the ground. 

My words are like flames
  lit from sparks in my heart. 

My words are like songs
  that flow from my tears. 

My words are my breath
  and the beating of my heart. 

My words are the flow of my blood
  and the pull of the earth.

My words are like stars
  that glitter in the night sky. 

For the past month or so, my creative imagination has been living in the land of the Kesh, a beautiful group of earth-centered, free-thinking people whose communities are nestled in a southwestern coastal valley far far in the future. Ursula K Le Guin wrote about them in exquisite detail in her novel Always Coming Home, a lyrical and luminous piece of work that is like nothing I have ever read.

The quote that planted the seed this poem sprouted from is:

“What works for words may not work for things and to say that because two sayings that contradict each other cannot both be true is not to say that opposites do not exist. The word is not the thing; word and thing have each their own way.”

Words / Birds: A Madrone Lodge Text | From Always Coming Home a novel by Ursula K Le Guin

Cover image: Amara Hollowbones

May these words bring truth
and healing through open hands and hearts.
And then, let it flow back into our Mother Earth
for the love of all her beings.