BE HER NOW
The sun is setting over the soft magenta anemones
with golden centers where the bees drink.
And I can’t stop wondering
about where all of this began,
this narrative to be more,
do more,
become more,
achieve more,
more,
more than you are.
More.
More than you need to be.
More.
By someone else’s standards.
More.
To the degree that you lose
whoever you already were.
For a time, of course —
whoever you already were can never be lost,
because that’s all within you anyway.
But the narrative of strive and drive
and carry the burdens of the ancestors’ crimes
is too much to ask.
The band-tailed pigeons are fluttering in the valley oak,
both of them on the watch list right here.
I listen to the sound of their wings.
And when the ravens come and the squirrels run,
how they all communicate together.
I can’t help but wonder
where that whole narrative started.
Whose grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother
first had to step out of the matriarchal framework
into the dominant framework in order to survive,
and how this errant thought
that there was something better over there to become.
Something better over there to have.
Something better than what she had.
Something better to achieve,
to receive,
to compete for.
To even ask for,
but worst of all,
to want for.
To want for something other than what there is
in one’s own self and life and being.
Something better
stirring us to look outside of ourselves.
And I just can’t help but wonder
about those moments in each of our lineages
when we are striving towards something better,
which really makes whatever we have seem somehow less,
and us seem somehow less as a result of it.
The hummingbird is pausing at the rose,
red-trimmed white petals blooming
beside the golden sun-kissed tomatoes
and the mint,
the basil.
Everything wants to be enjoyed.
It doesn’t want to be compared.
It wants to be appreciated for what it is.
The tomato and the rose and the mint
do not have a story of needing more
or being better.
They become the fullest versions of themselves
in this sun,
in this full moon energy.
And I’ve been writing for days,
decades,
to articulate the unarticulatable.
To share that which I cannot find the words to share.
There’s a sacred urgency
humming in my stardust bones.
And it’s about this:
how everything we really need is already here and innate.
It’s with us.
We don’t have to earn it.
We don’t need more.
It doesn’t need to be better.
But the riddle is
that isn’t how we experience it,
and it’s not what we’ve been taught,
and it’s not how it feels
in the daily struggles of our lives.
And yet there’s this sacred unhooking that happens
when we realize,
or just to come from,
for a cycle
or an afternoon
or an hour
or the length of a poem walking through your heart,
that everything that is needed is innate.
That there’s no place else to get to,
nothing more to add,
and nothing better to become.
And that doesn’t mean we don’t wish
for a small patch of grass
to lay on our back and look at the moon.
That doesn’t mean we don’t wish
for sturdy, solid boots
that will last for more than one wet winter.
That doesn’t mean we don’t wish
for everything to be organic and sustainable,
and the salmon to not be farmed,
and the strawberries to not be GMO’d.
We do wish for these things,
but it’s how we internalize them,
how we make it mean somehow
that we’re something less.
Everything I’ve been moving toward
is toward this idea
of revealing ourselves to ourselves
as the ultimate act of sacred sovereignty:
to not need more,
not be better,
not need to be seen and acknowledged.
Not need to have a title or a designation
or an affirmation by others,
but to simply acknowledge
the innate majesty of who we are.
And the journey, really,
of recovery,
of making new promises to ourselves.
Not promises about more and better,
but promises about being.
Not promises about needing to belong somewhere else.
Not promises about needing to heal some ancient wound
that happened before we were ever born
that we’re trying to heal this lifetime.
And not just to simply be here now either.
More like
be her now.
Like even for a couple of seconds.
Right now.
Right now.
As the butterfly bush dies
with the purple rain-colored flowers,
beckons for a kiss from the passing flutterby,
just looking for that connection
through the sun and the air.
A place to be met within one’s self.
A space and a place
where identity just rests in itself
through this expression of soul
that has always been here.
That is so easily forgotten,
not because we forget,
but because it is hidden from us.
Some gorgeous way to access the truest voice
which is held within us
and set it free from the constraints of silence.
Some way to curate this gorgeous consciousness that we are
so we can design our own minds
and liberate that self-expression
which is begging for form,
for matter,
for energy equals matter at the speed of light
to become matter at the speed of light.
Plus love.
Approximately equals the stardust bones that you already are
in this cooling sack of stars.
Where you can source your own presence enough
to embody your sensuality with more pleasure
than you could ever have imagined belong to you.
To manifest the prosperity
which is in alignment with the generosity of all of creation.
Because everything we need has been provided,
and it’s so hard to remember that
when scarcity is enforced.
When the morning light came on the pink lady apples
and there were enough apples to eat throughout the day.
What generosity,
what generosity.
Prosperity manifested,
to see it as such
and love it,
to be in love with the apple.
To be so in love with the apple
that you could spend an afternoon
or an hour
or five minutes
catalyzing your calling,
not to have or be more or better than,
but because it’s just innate and natural for you
to want to create beauty.
Not to save the world,
but just to create beauty
because your hands want to,
because your heart sees some potential.
Not to rescue,
but just because it’s f***ing beautiful to make beauty.
And it’s enough.
And you are enough,
and you know this.
You know this deep down in your cells.
That you are a sovereign initiate
of this cosmic unfolding.
That you, like me,
are part of an ancient futuristic Stardust Lineage.
That we don’t need to do anything to become it.
We just say yes to it.
And then the practice is the lifestyle.
A lifestyle of pleasure and beauty and self-expression
with intention
of continually arriving in the now.
Be her now.
No permission,
no apology,
no need to become.
Just being for the sake of being
is the beauty unfolding right now,
as this poem runs through my body
like a wild horse
looking for a view of the harvest moon.
Shiloh Sophia
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