Letter to my Wild Self
By April Thanhauser
In the course of an unforgettable Plant Initiation weekend, led by Pam Montgomery, we participants were asked to write a letter or a poem to our Wild Selves. This is probably more readily done when you're in deep communion with a Plant Spirit in a beautiful natural setting. However, it's a wonderful practice at any time. We would like to invite you to write such a letter, and then, if you will, to share your writing with us here Here's mine: To my Wild Self
Come home!
Where are you hiding?
Behind the ferns?
On some stony peak I didn’t climb?
Are you in the fish’s mouth, the night glint in my cat’s eye?
The pounding of my heart?
I feel you in my fingers when they itch to pick wild strawberries
whose tiny hidden faces seek out my dazzled eyes.
I smell you! I smell you in balsam, in salt spray, in smoke from the cookfire
the fire that beckons us together, you and me
who lose each other and find each other
sometimes
when the sparks fly up,
or when I lick my fingers and taste salt.
Come home, please.
I am too lonely without you
too modified, circumscribed
almost too appalled at all
I have forgotten
to even try to raise a flag or a lily or a torch
to get your attention.
I see you walking at the edges of my vision,
moving the brush just enough to let me know you’re there.
Come closer, please
If I stay still, will you?
If I kneel to smell the moss will you meet me there?
Will you brighten my eyes again and strengthen my teeth
Will you fill my belly with laughing and my feet with dancing?
You’re the one who gives me discernment
The knowing when to say yes and when no,
What I can invite into my mouth, to whom I can open the door.
So, step outside the door! you say
If I come out of hiding, you will too?
You’ll help me relearn all those things I forgot.
How to see in the night and fly when necessary.
How to pounce, how to gather, how to disperse.
I’ll remember with you. We’ll show our true colors.
My real self is not foreign to your forest
I find you here, eating wild strawberries
with the sun on your belly,
the wind in your ears.
Let’s slip inside each other now, as water into water,
as if we’d never been apart.