On May 19th - 22nd, Kootenay Shambhala Centre member Robin Higgins attended ALIA West, a three-day Authentic Leadership in Action intensive in Victoria. Inspired by “an amazing walking meditation in rain forest [where] an owl swooped by a hundred people standing in the morning forest,” she wrote the poem below.

Robin will share some of what she learned at the intensive in her June 15th Open House presentation, “The Art of Hosting Mindful Conversations.”

Forest Body: Walking with Arawana at Royal Roads

Fern and water unfurl
at foot of
ancient firs.
Earth breathes me.
Creek sings in my blood.
I am forest.

In dream time I return
to sit beside
my mossy grave.
Flesh joins
rotting leaves
to feed wild webs
of worms and roots
and hungry microcosms
of the invisible.

Red thread calling
sculpts the threshold
of mystery’s memory
and dances chaos
with the juggler’s
fluid grace.

Cradled in endless
tantric coils
of merging and dissolving,
owl wings shimmer
my own ripe elder voice
and vastness
seeps between
the spaces
in my bones.

Tags: authentic leadership, community artwork

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Arts and Poetry, Local Announcements, Pacific Northwest, Regions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can also leave a comment.