Once, initiation was part of every life.
Our ancestors perhaps, or someone’s
left the campsite,
endured
days and nights with just the company of
self SELF
looming, hideous at times
or tender, dissolving, disorienting
until the stripping down was done.
Turned back with gifts to be decoded
mysterious fragments
received with praise and fear.
Now the Great Pause
offers time – whispers, flashes, faint recall,
but how to draw them back to consciousness
without the old ones’ stories, myths
and rituals to guide us? How to shed
the dead and hollow weight
of civilised society?
Let your body guide you. Hold the Stance
of Gods through discomfort, trembling,
fluttered eyelids; against the winds of centuries
that threaten to unbalance you.
Let the hardened shell that holds you tight
drop into earth,
leaving you vibrating,
naked, new.