better a mile wide than an inch deep

Medicine Woman

Medicine Woman
holds tools for healing in her magic basket.
Medicine Woman
dances in the moonlight and sings her prayers.
Medicine Woman knows herbs and signs, seasons and stars.
Medicine Woman is old - is young
is in between maiden and mother, mother and crone.
She is the part in each of us that knows deeply.
That sees clearly. That listens between words.
She moves between worlds.
Medicine Woman cannot be domesticated, at all. ever.
Even when we don't recognize her,
She is there. Always. Calling.
She has butterflies in her hair.
She has on red cowboy boots.
She can be found at the movies
with teenage girls on Saturday night.
She may get a tattoo of the Guadualupe
on her bicep in downtown San Franciso.
Or rollerskate through Central Park at 7 am.
She may teach workshops on tantra
or accounting or raw food or revolution.
She definitely runs with wolves and wolfey women.
She is fierce about many many things.
She is compassionate about, well, almost everything.
She plays hard. She takes action.
She tree sits and marches and prays.
She may paint glitter on her toe nails
and let her armpit hair grow, and her mustache too.
She is not one way, we cannot say,
oh yes, that is how she is.
Because she is the changing one.
She is the place within us that wants it all.
And wants to give it all up. And live simply.
She swims naked in the ocean.
She rides a motorcycle up the coast.
She paints, she writes, she dances, she dreams, she runs businesses.
She is medicine woman.
She heals the unexpressed in us.
She asks the question -
Who are you not being?


© Shiloh Sophia McCloud 2007