The Land That Walks Me
By Sudevi Geary
I wish that I could open my heart and find my mountain within, sweet forests and sentient streams that flow into the wide abalone river. I live eight stories high, my only sanctuary the sky, and for all those wide burning dusks, it’s the song of the land that I miss.
I miss mud between my toes, trees that – like flutes – give way to the wind’s deep breaths, roots that weave in and out of fallen leaves that gather in currents on the forest floor. I miss the craters under shrubs, hiding doors to the earth’s core. I miss berries, red like crimson winter lips, and the thorns that crown the softest flowers.
I miss spring showers in the open fields and summer storms that darken the sky, only to tear it open with clean piercing light, and how the heavens descend upon it to dance reflected in puddles on fresh washed floors.
I miss the land that holds me, that lays me in her lap and sings when tears must fall, that raises me upon her roof and orders me to spin and laugh into the blustering wind until all rage has been wrung out of me and I feel I shall never be disturbed again, never toppled again by the soilless world and its riverless souls, by my own grief and fear, because my feet move with tendrils that reach into bedrock and I am earthed wherever I go.
I miss the land that tells me this, the land that built my bones with her milk, that taught me how to fly before I could crawl, the land that walks me, and I wish that I could open my heart and find her within, never lost, always home.
Read by Manjari dasi
Mixed by Radha Govinda das
Graphic design by Ragalata dasi
Produced by Thakurani Arts Publishing