A Poem

Today I want to share with you a poem. It’s one of our favorites here at the Verdant Collective, and it encapsulates so much of what our work is about and how we go about it. 

In our world of busy-ness and sound bytes we tend to rush from one thing to the next, shoveling things into our bodies and minds, rarely giving ourselves the time and space to actually taste and metabolize what we are taking in. And we want you to be able to take this in. It’s quite possible that your life actually depends on it.

So, before you read or listen, take a few moments to feel the ground beneath you and to check in with all the layers of your being. Slow down. Take a sacred pause. Feel your self open to receive these words.

The Grooming
By Patiann Rogers

Though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall become as white as snow.
– Isaiah 1:18

Under the branches of the elm
and the tall, blooming bushes of black haw,
in the wavering jigsaw of the sun,
you sit, naked on the bench, waiting.
The paraphernalia is gathered,
laid out–warm wash water in a stainless-
steel bowl, rinse water in the deeper
pail, creams, soaps, a sanctuary
of flannel and towels.

She begins, holding each foot
in turn on her lap, carefully,
as if it were a basket of sweet fruits.
Her fingers stroke, wetting, soaping.
She washes the toes, the tender part 
of the sole, over the swivel
of the ankle, the swell of the calf.

A hedge of slender sassafras
beside the road sways, almost female
in its graces, as you stand and turn
and she sponges behind your knees,
around each leg (they are pillars),
along the inner thighs, without rushing,
to the groin, the slick soap lathered
beneath her hand, the rag dipped
and wrung in the rinse water.

She bathes the buttocks next,
and to the front, your genitals,
slowly, carefully. The sassafras sway,
and off in the distance, out of the center
of the rice field, a ceremony of sparrows
appears, releases, dissolves.

Up the strict hollow of the spine,
your torso, your neck, the clean water,
ladled and poured through the disciplined
light of the afternoon, finds its way
back down from your shoulders, following
every wrinkle and bead of nipple
and joint, like rain through leaves
and blossoms of yellow poplar, into the creases
of your sex and out again.

This is the form of ablution:
your hands in her attentive hands,
your arms inside her ministrations.

Listen… elbow, your elbow.

Can’t you hear, in the sound
of its name how its been innocent
forever? And doesn’t the entire body, touched
with honor, become honorable? Doesn’t the body,
so esteemed and cherished, become 
the place of divinity?

The face, the hair, laved,
toweled, rubbed, perfumed,
clean, radiant–you are new,
new as the high-mountain snow
not even yet seen, snow so fine,
so weightless, so pervasive, it is one 
with the white explosions of the wind,
one with the tight, steady bursting
of the moon, one with the hardest
and safest seams of the night,
by which you now know and so must declare:
the soul can never be more
than what the body believes
of itself.

Now that you’ve taken it in, pause again to notice what these words evoked in you. Grief, joy, numbness, tears, anger, love. There’s no right answer here, only an opportunity to notice what is actually living in you. Because that, in and of itself, is precious.