20 December 2024

The Breath of My Mother – the Blessingway

The holy air – which renews all by its breath
The spirit – life, breath, renewal
We sit together and don’t touch, but something is there.
We feel it between us as a presence

Witherspoon Blessingway Navajo ceremony

I hear the rushing spirits –
the whirlwinds, gusts, breezes, blasts and breaths
swishing through the mountain.

The crimson waters of the Unending
are rising as our sensuous bodies
shimmer in the silence of silvery shadows.

I feel my mother’s breath in this ‘holy wind’ –
an unbounded Breathing Being beckoning –
the oak, mountain, meerkat, flower – me to sing

I hear the music of the mountain’s soul –
the rhythms of dawn-dusk dancing in the Unbeginning –
The spirit of woodwinds and brass trembling in the Whole

I see women bathing in the smell
Of autumn colours, amber, paprika, yellow-brown –
The mountain’s stone ceremonial gown.

They giggle and point to the sky
hurled through with the birds and winds –
the inside-out of the body, bone, and the human sigh

I am the swirling psyche of the Earth
the pneuma, spiritus, animos,
the wind or circle of breath – unending depth

We awaken, we bud and blossom within the law
Of the stars, the sun, the sky, the Uncovering
The homecoming, the harmony, the Hovering

Chorus
With everything having life
With everything having sound
With everything having the power to breathe
With that blessing, I will survive