Fire, Tea, and Stone Oiling

We attempted to make tea. Somehow it
The full moon appeared Wednesday night
She illuminated the fibrous forest floor,
Littered with thousands, no
Millions of red ochre pine needles
Softening, smoothing
A space for my fragile feet
We began peeling birch bark
Dusty, pink-white, crispy
Dragging crackly-dry tree limbs
And methodically,
Slowly,
Patiently
Snapping and piling
Breaking and stacking
Until there were four;
The tinder- fluffy, soft, downy
And the small, bigger, biggest
We assemble them gently
With care, as if our lives depended
On that teepee to stay ablaze,
To stand upright
(Which it did)
She fluffed and stuffed the base
And lit it ablaze
The fire; the candles(6), the incense
Smells of wafting, crackling
The deep time energy of their bones and skin
Fueling our own heat and tempering the frigid air
Smoke billows in bursts, bits,
Often clouds
That perfume our hair, clothes, sweat
Blossom into our eyes and drive us backwards, away
Gasping and laughing
She clicks ‘play’
And calm- temperamentally so- notes and tunes bomb and blast
Somehow gently
Through the center of the hearth
Into our heads
Out into the achingly bright night sky
The trees blast and tremble
Quiver with shakes of breath and
Tremors of wind
I go to stare at the moon
So yellow
I always thought yellow was ugly until this moment
My legs sway my hands Clasp behind my back
And I’ve joined the trees
In rocking with the wind
And gazing at the moon
A festival of thanks
A celebration of strength and power and bright
I am rooted in the soil
Yet I move and grow up, reaching up,
With my cold ears and ruffled hair and
My spine, my sacrum
Stretch up and over
The straightest
Yet somehow, too,
The most curved and fluid
They’ve ever been
A tree needle tickles my nose
Eruptions of giggles and guffaws
My friends, yards behind me, tending to the fire and laughing at their own story,
Turn to me
I turn to them
No light- but the moon herself must have lit my face with her source
And I jammer out a torrent of emotion
Attempt to explain what I am
I’m a tree! No- I’ve joined the trees!
My roots are meeting theirs,
My eyes are gazing with theirs
They play understanding
Perhaps authentic
Perhaps not able to comprehend the jumble of spirit that I attempt to proportion into language
Did I fail at it,
Or is it even possible?
To have felt, to have seen my swaying shoulders and thighs
Could’ve expressed enough
More than enough
She fills the whole forest with herself
What a gracious, all giving love
To share it with so many
I plod back to the fire
We write poems, words, feelings and thoughts
Scraped into birch bark
Hopes for the future
Grief from the past
Pitch a corner into the
Deep blue waxy candles
Watch the flame grow
Become one with the whole fire
At points, all grows silent
But the sentient music quivering
The rustling leaves
As five faces stare with melancholy,
Perhaps peace or calm,
Into the flowing liquid heat
That burns between us and inside of us
One woman places her precious stones
Sapphire, turquoise, ochre, opaque,
Glass-orange crumbles of frankincense
Sticky balls of pine sap
Melt and steam and smoke
Flavors of must and sweet and lime
I gather leaves of cedar
Burn them slowly over the flames
They crackle and pop and release bits and drops of clean sweet scent
We burn green herbal oil
And hand drawn maple syrup
Our words, and our laughter burn too
After all is said and done
We clamber to leave
To fill our growling stomachs with ‘nachos’
My friends pour water on the hissing coals
And a torrent of steam and smoke erupts,
Explodes,
Into my existence
Forces its whole being in and around me
Until, for several seconds,
All that exists is a world of the brightest gray billows and plumes I’ve ever experienced
Then we say goodbye to the moon