ah yes, today is the extraordinary total soular eclipse of the new moon in cancer, a day we’ve been feeling coming on for so long and it shook my world…

although i wasn’t in totality today as i was 2 years ago when i took this picture, the effects were just as primal with a lucid dream portending the whole cosmos being shaken up and i had to call on Rumi…

“Every step of the way I will walk with you and never leave you stranded. The Beloved is in the midst of your seeking holding your hand wherever you wander.”

thank goodness for a supportive field in which to ground and for this poem of Maya Angelou’s, a favorite, reminding us that like the sun’s eclipse, we will also return to rise again and again…

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.