Welcome

A Visitor

Threshold, blue in the morning, 

I resist the metaphor for sky, 

but not the correspondence of ancestor.

How can we ever know, yet --

the heart does what it will, reaches

in that same shade. Blue, blue, 

heart beating, not solely symbol, 

what do you have to share with me?

To be a visitor is to only stop by; 

we are all but briefly here, chance

sightings through an open door.

Pacem in Terris

I cry when I remember being born.

I am loved like a river. I cannot wait

to be married. We sleep like wolves.

I create in collaboration with the oldest

song I know. The heartbeat of my mother.

My blood is your blood, a memory. 

The ocean from where we came,

it pulses on insistent. A poem. 

My body is a cedar, my love he makes

the world with his hands. We walk

barefoot. I am visited by a spider

in my dreams. She is my grandmother. 

She whispers, paint with as many colors

as you hold. The world is

beautiful. It is but a dream we make

together. Seven generations both up and 

down the stream. Little one, wander with me.

Elegy

Elegy, here can I give it to you?

Earth held like a long note in a song,

Ocean who learns to play the drums

with all its arms reminding always,

"you are needed here. You are

not just passing through." 

Darkening sky, a tender kind

of grief, honoring the changing

of the things that need to turn

to ash.  It is not always easy

to continue walking. There is

no reasoning with tides. 

I strike the match of myself

and then I blow it out. And then

I don't choose. I am both.

Kate Belew is an author, poet, and Witch. Her work exists at the crossroads of creativity and magic. She has taught and facilitated circles and workshops worldwide since 2017. She is dedicated to the spirit of poetry, the sacred wild of the planet, and seeks enchantment in all she does. She is a forever student of the plants and the stars. She has an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and is an initiated Green Witch. Her roots are in Michigan, and her wings are in Brooklyn, two places she calls home. 

The Mineral Specimen

. . . at the Museum

Of Natural History,

And it was paired crystals 

Grown from one matrix 

Geologic ages down,

In unknown crush and heat,

The slow meeting of atoms, 

Exchange of electrons,

Migration of molecules

Along magnetic pathways

The unwitnessed matter

Forming in planes and corners,

Transparent in the lightless strata.

One angled body of it red, red, red!

The other, bottomless blue.

Orderly though accidental,

Not made for me

Who flood with gladness

Where none was intended

And I walk towards a dawn

I can never reach

Though it reaches me

Well enough.

In Search

                for Henry Suso

Hard to say just what it is,

What we're searching for--

Nothing but the ache to tell us

When we're getting warmer.

Nothing that we've found so far

Lets us see its face.

Not this, not that. We narrow down 

What we love the best--

Money, drugs, romantic love,

Mental illness, widowhood,

Mastering a yoga pose,

A waterfall in the woods--

Isn't, isn't. Still the hurt,

A compass for the blind,

Says what isn’t recognized

Is right here for the finding.

Just a hurt that glows and fades

And sometimes, late at night,

A terror that it won't be found,

Or that it might.

Yellow Cat’s-Ear

Yellow cat’s-ear and white clover.

The one who has my devotion 

Wears the ten-after-three sunlight 

And the shadow unspooling from the house,

The shiny leaves of the laurel hedge.

The one who knows why this life is

Has dressed in every blade of the dry grass,

What the blue jay asks

And the curls of the breeze.

The one who knows how what’s coming

Is different from what’s now

And how it’s the same

Is here, the afternoon,

And later on, the evening.

Panamint Valley

Once, driving through mountains during a long night, they broke, moved apart, and Panamint
Valley dawned. What a place it was! Somehow not claimed by my kind for our common uses.
No road signs, no power lines, no other cars, just salt flats and sagebrush, just distance and a
velvet ribbon of road that didn’t quite touch ground. Present to itself, and vast, to the ends of
my sight above and all around, and the unknown reach of feeling below, turning its regard on me
even as the rising morning praised it. Including me in its regard-- me who was and am this single
small word. With nothing to visit on me, not judgement or anger or any city made of gold and
pearls, any favorable rebirth for having eaten my vegetables. But just there, just letting me for
once see where it is I live and within whom I release every one of my days. 

Peter Cashorali is a neurodivergent queer psychotherapist, formerly working in HIV/AIDS and community mental health, currently in private practice in Portland and Los Angeles. He practices a contemplative lifestyle. 

Golden Rabbit Hole

Peculiar – 

we try to ward off rabbit holes,

out of fear of getting stuck

in deep, dark corridors

that bring us to convoluted 

dead ends and bolted doors. 

It is precisely that nonsensical

search through our guts

that brings within transformation—

not in the way the world portrays it,

as in getting out from a cocoon, 

with our wings fully open,

but as in enduring a toiling process,

step by step, pushing through 

the birth canal of our becoming,

the beautiful beings we are meant to be.

Each rabbit hole represents

one more line of inquiry,

one more adventure into

unknowing our knowns,

to unveil what is veiled. 

Golden Darkness

Why would I think

all my shadows

would have left me by now, 

a body, tired, getting old?

My minute-long arrogance

that I am more than an ant,

walking blindly on well-known paths,

costs me breaking down

and remaining behind,

running in circles,

unable to smell my way back.

Rebelling? Against what?

The colony and my role within it?

Every time I rebel, 

shadows cover in darkness 

every part of what I am 

and I remain utterly isolated

in a space where no light exists

but inescapable desperation.

“Love thyself,” 

I hear through 

the cloak of a bleak spell

and I truly wish I knew what it meant . . .

Golden Apprehension

Apprehension – 

rises from an awareness of life’s passage 

with the inevitability and uncertainty

of its sundown.

Apprehension – 

expands in moments of clarity 

of the futility and replaceability of existence, 

including our wishes and toils.

Apprehension –

resides in the inescapable responsibility

for each decision we must make

on how to live each day

regardless of what we know

and don’t know to be true. 

In twinkling moments of apprehension,

we find ourselves mere fallible mortals,

seeking the touch of golden light

to dispel our pain and fears,

and hold space for hope and love

to grow in our hearts. 

Golden Collision

A collision of Andromeda

with Milky Way – 

this is how loving with pure heart

between two entities plays:

a crossing over 

through each other,

a symphony of immense energy

pulsating through infinity.

The entire universe

feels their merger

in a unique signature undulation

only love can imprint.

The outsides of each other

become insights,

and what matters for one,

now is a unison of a powerful,

transformative thrust.  

I am not ashamed 

to want a deeper merger and more

golden threads of love . . .

Cleopatra Sorina Iliescu

Deliberate solitude

Deliberate solitude,

my new companion.

We sip orxata

amongst loud families,

and we read only poetry.

We eat without podcasts,

we walk alone, not lonely.

At first it is noisy,

uncomfortable and frightening.

Sitting through that part,

it becomes peaceful,

then bliss kicks in,

gratitude descends

and freedom sparks creativity.

She inspires me to write

and lets me paint.

She lets me just be

and creates space

for me to decipher

all those inner voices

long longing to be decoded.

There's a constant urge

to call a friend

to send a message 

but I resist,

to be with her,

fully present, aware of myself,

the good, the bad and the raw.

I choose not to escape

the thoughts of my mind.

Without judging,

I let them flow by

just like the minutes

of being with myself,

not by myself.

Deliberate solitude often invites a guest.

His name is fomo.

Unwanted, I kindly ask him

to leave us alone.

Jealousy sometimes drops by too

but she usually leaves quickly

for the neighbour’s house.

Intentional solitude takes me apart

and puts me back together.

Like a medicine she removes the dirt

and lets the light back in.

Clean, spacious and humbled,

centred and together,

I go back into society.

G-d

So many years

without hearing your voice,

because nobody had told me

that your voice is my own voice,

and I had not liked my voice.

They had taught me you are someone,

someone outside and above.

Choosing anger over happiness,

I rejected all of it, all of you,

devoted completely to the mind.

Until my skin caught fire,

urging me to look within,

to listen, to trust,

and to seek silence.

I opened up --

a moment of grace,

of extraordinary awareness.

Heaven unfolded above,

and then within,

and I knew.

I remembered,

a truth too vast for words.

Losing my self

I lose myself

time and again

a million times

have I lost my selves

so many times

I became a seeker

I looked for gurus

I searched for healers

I tried to find god

and also some dealers

I looked for mother

and then for father

I searched the scriptures

and travelled the world

looking for something

looking for anything

I vanished in movies

in characters and names

I played them a thousand times

switched channels

always the same

I lost myself in them

in you and also him

until one day

I pushed the button

the screen turned blank

and I was home.

Letting go

Slowly but surely,

I let go.

I say thank you,

I pause.

I cry, and I laugh.

I release all my tears

to wash the path clean,

to water the new.

I sit still,

looking back,

resisting the urge

to escape into the next.

I make time to heal,

time to grieve,

and time to celebrate.

I feel robbed, and I feel rich.

I feel vulnerable,

and I feel empowered.

I honour the old me,

our good and bad times together,

all of you who stood beside me,

the work done, the lessons learnt.

I give thanks, and I move on,

a little softer and a little stronger.

justine lotus is a poet, multidisciplinary artist, and guide in presence-centered healing. Her work weaves together ink, touch, and silence. Through poetry, somatic practices, and meditative inquiry, she invites others into intimate spaces of transformation—rooted in devotion to inner truth and the mysterious unfolding of the soul. Reach out and learn more at  www.justinelotus.com.