Fire and Earth

Dear friends,

If the journey has taught me anything, it's that the path towards freedom is longer than we think it is. And along the way, there will be many fires. But perhaps those fires are more than meets-the-eye. Maybe they're there to burn away at old parts of us that just aren't serving us anymore.

Where there's smoke, there's fire. And where there's fire, there's transformation. May the words you read and write, dear friends, cause many fires throughout your lives. Here's a poem from Thirsty Camel that I called "Fire and Earth." It tells this very same tale of rising from the fires and emerging as something different. Something stronger. Something transformed. This is why I wrote it. This is why we burn...

 

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Fire and Earth

 

a new age begins

when we strip off our clothes

our nametags and labels

and surrender ourselves

to the Truth

 

our birthright is love

and our roles

no more than characters that we play

however well-intentioned

what matters the most

is naked runs through the woods

our only clothing

is the warriorpaint

that we adorn on cheek and breast and brow

like a head plunged fiercely

into the rush of a waterfall

a battle cry erupts

from the lungs of the goddess

and we emerge

transformed

 

today

the veils dropped

human denial replaced by fire and earth

burning like sunrays

on fair skinned travelers

but solid like the soil and

wet with vegetation

 

from the other side of the river

smoke rises from the shore

there is a clearing where fire

meets earth

i’ll meet you there

naked

at last

 

© 2015 Brandon Thompson