And So I Go Part 2
Trip Start
Sep 02, 2007
1
54
92
Trip End
Dec 25, 2007
The Pacific Ocean,
French Polynesia
Monday, October 22, 2007
You say to us our brother you will sing. But will the songs within be songs of joy? Will they ring? Out in the skies of being as you say? Pipe through bone, caress flesh wounding? Or will the songs within be ones of sorrow.
Of warmth dreams
Love dreams
Of aching
And flesh bruising
If you listen will it be weeping that you hear?
Lament of people
Earth moan
Water sigh
Morepork cry of death?
My sisters, brothers, loved ones, I cannot tell. But there will be gladness for me in what I do. I ask no more. Some songs will be of joy and others hold the moan and sigh, the owl cry and the throb of loneliness.
What will you do then our brother when the signing dirges through your veins, pressing and swelling in your throat and breast, pricking at your mind with its aching needles of sound?
What should I do but deny its needling and stealing into mind. Its pressing into throat and breast. I will not put a hand of comfort over body hardenings nor finger blistered veins in soothing. The wail, the lament shall not have my ear. I will pay the lonely body ache no mind. Thus I go.
I stand before my dark-eyed mother, blue-eyed father, brothers, sisters. My aunts and uncles, and their children and these old ones. All the dark-eyed, light-eyed minglings of this place.
We gather, We sing and dance together for my going. We laugh and cry. We touch. We mingles tears as blood.
I give you my farewell.
Now I stand on a tide-wet rock to farewell you sea. I listen and hear your great heart thud. I hear you cry. Do you too weep for me? Do you reach out with mottled hands to touch my brow and anoint my tear-wet face with tears of salt? Do not weep but keep them well. Your great heart beats I know for such as these. Give them sea, your great sea love. Hold them gently. Already they are baptized in your name.
As am I
And take your renewal where I go
And your love
Take your strength
And deep heart thud
Your salt kiss
Your caring.
Now on a crest of hill in sweeping wind. Where I have climbed and run. And loved and walked about. With life brimming full in me as though I could die of living.
Guardian hill you do not clutch my hand, you do not weep. You know that I must go and give me blessing. You guard with love this quiet place rocking at the edge of sea...
And now at the highest place I stand. And feel a power grip me. And a lung-bursting strength. A trembling in my legs and arms. A heavy ache weighting down my groin.
And I lie on soil in all my heaviness and trembling. Stretch out my arms on wide Earth Mother and lay my face on hers. Then call out my love and speak my vow.
And feel release in giving to you earth, and to you sea, to these people.
So I go. And behind me the sea-moan and earth-cry, the sweet lament of people. Towards the goddess as she sleeps I go. On with light upon my face.
