Shapeshifter - A poem from the Sacred Quartet

 

Shapeshifter

A poem about sacredness

On a Sunday afternoon

The rising joy of running your hand

Through a river as it runs beneath you

And where does the water begin and end

And for how long

Are you the water in your body that fell from mountains?

Or are you part of the mountains

Oh great shape-shifting

Earth mover

Eroder of all things

Holder of all things

And the thing that is held

For now, some of that shapeshifter forms the shape of something you know as you,

A human suspended between different infinite nows

With that body of yours, mostly water and

Therefore mostly older than humankind

The same water that cooled volcano formed land masses

And lapped at the edges of rising tectonic plates

As continents formed

The same water that formed rain and rainforests and oases

The same water that nurtured seeds throughout time

Ever since seeds evolved as a way for plants to scatter themselves

The same water that swirls in your tea cup

And will quench the thirst of anything thirsty one thousand years from now

The same water that ran in tears that ran for grief and joy and despair

And all the blood that returned to the soil. That was made from water too

And those ice caps falling into the sea and the scientists that study them

Gesture with your hand across the sky

And know that the clouds, the air and the hand all come from this same water that sat in pools on distant shores

That great shapeshifter, making your body real and alive

Who helped the herbs in your garden to grow

How could anyone ever own something so eternal

Something that all life is built from

How can we treat it like anything less than sacred

Because it is our ancestors

And also more deep, potent and eternal than them

The chalice and what it contains

Perpetual momentum

Transition

One thing and another

Creating form and yet formless

Twisiting and turning

Through landscapes

Veins

Drifting across landscapes in clouds

Washing everything clean

And moving all the dirt

Rising in waves to greet the moon

Like a lover

And all this

This great moving, shifting

Beingness of transition

This dance

Forever.