Elemental Power

Emotions collide and squeeze me in their invisible embrace. They lift or sink me in waves I do not see coming but feel strongly as they pass through me, each one making me doubt who I was before and who I will be after they’re done with me.

I am puzzled by the chaos inside, not the placid lake others see, or just others with surface vision. I embrace life with all I’ve got, a leaf carried by powerful winds, fires and torrential rains. I used to be elemental myself until I was given an I. And that I and its eye explored again in that tiny skin suit, once again human, once again deprived of nature’s deeper power. 

But what is power really? In nature, power is not something you have, it’s something you are. The tree doesn’t have grounding power, patience and presence, it is all those things and they are embodied by its roots. The bird and the wind do not have the power of transformation and dream, they are that power. One soars and glides using the other’s currents, graceful and effortless. From the sea’s tide to the Moon phases, the jaguar’s coat to the humming bird’s shimmering grace, all of nature is power endlessly expressed and renewed.

In the world of buildings, dollars and cars, power is what you possess. It is things. To me the power of making and owning is a fake power, a shadow toy for missing wings and roots.  

Sometimes I want my strength back, I want the claws and the stealth walk, silently through the night, yellow eyes glowing, lighting my path, unafraid.  

But I have done that. I have been bird and cat, tree and bug, drops of water in forgotten ponds. So now I pounce on words and play with them, and when they stop responding because I’ve tossed them around too much, I need to go and hunt for new ones.

And I need the danger because there is no true power without it.

That is my journey into the night, its shadows exciting and frightening for what they may yield. Something I know, or something I don’t know, something I may not want to know. In a world that mostly bows to Human rule, emotions are my only true predators. They can fascinate and hypnotize me like a snake, they can deviate me off path as would a siren, they can tear me apart or disarm me and make me into a child. They are my teachers, and their way of love is sometimes on the tough side. Even the most pleasant feelings, the ones that make me smile, have an unsettling quality to them, an intensity that sometimes has me say, “please, stop”!

But I will not shy away from them. I am a warrior of emotions and when day light comes, when it’s time for a truce, I give them gratitude because they are my only true power.