Untold and all-told
Before I was bereft,
I was a winged girl on a horse.
Before I was brokenhearted,
I was an adventurer who needed no path.
For a while, I was a trapped bird,
A dog afraid of prawns,
The truth a secret for the night.
Now, I am a ferocious wolf,
Circling my tender heart.
I am atop a moonlight soaked mountain,
Howling love to the listening stars.
I am my territory.
I am courage without question.
I am my ancestral ache:
The lost child, the unseen wife,
The falsely accused, the redeemed.
I am a tree in a forest of women,
The providers of words to my song.
I am the forest, the truth teller, the mirror,
The turquoise underbelly, the dragonfly wing.
I am this story and a thousand others,
Untold and all told.
Lotus & Mud
I am sacred geometry, sense making,
Far-seeing: cartographer of my own heart.
I am the howl of birthing pain and ferocious love.
I am the rot of fermented secrets, held too long,
The grafted root and grasping tendrils,
The light-seeking plant, the unrelenting growth,
The germinating seed soaking up loamy goodness.
I am the lotus, rooted in my own mud.
I am paradox and riddles: unknown to myself.
I am not shallow water or the doe-eyed buck.
I am the too-muchness, not the not-enoughness.
The underbelly of a love-seeking dog,
The cracked shell of the spiny fruit.
I am wild imaginings, and steady rhythm, The inhale and the exhale.
I am the shared glance and the belly breath and the forever-delayed train.
Shivani Ranchod
Somerset Gift, December 2019
© Shivani Ranchod