Cascada Esmeralda

Yolombo, Colombia

Melissa Gail Klein Rendon


Part 1


Felipe’s father said Jorge would let us in

No Jorge, so we open the lock

Up the hill past the fervent hand painted no trespassing signs

Felipe in his rubber boots and woven palm sombrero

Me with my bathing suit, picnic basket, and bundle of flowers from the finca

For Mamae Oxum


‘Go on’ I say and I sit and wait

Halfway up the hill to the white and red hacienda farm house

Under a shady tree I sit pulling 

Little round red mini cocos from my jean pocket

Cracking them open with sun warmed stones to get the meat

Que rico!


A little while later Felipe returns, running down the hill

Full of shaky knees from awkward glares and the silent treatment

They’ll let us in to see her, Esmeralda

The waterfall we came here for

But we’ll have to pay and sign our names

Because nobody told them we were coming

And Jorge went to town


Is that okay with me? He asks

We might as well…

Go up the hill together, where grinning 2 teenage girls

And firm grown ups answer, are at least a bit melted by my gringa attitude

After making us wait, we pay the 30 mil pesos and they point us toward the path


Over the sun baked fields, rolling green hills

Giant wasp nests

Cows and horses

To the mouth of the jungle

It’s about an hour’s walk

Of course this is double what Felipe’s dad has told us


Part 2


The canopy of trees

A welcome shady friend at last

We slip inside and are greeted

By birds with loudly whooshing yellow wings

We stop, get quiet

Titi monkeys are jumping

We see their tails


A river slides crystalline over gold speckled sand

Iridescent blue butterflies waft

We follow two lane highways

Of ants carrying leaves and seeds twice their size

Trying not to crush them


We start downhill, hearing water against rock beckoning

Sending out drops of water

To meet us midair as we get closer and then


River, more lively passing beneath feet

Removing shoes peering

Through canopy to glimpse her

Far above our heads

Moss covered trees with mushrooms

Hanging vines cooling the air and blocking light

Big cream clouds heavy shifting 


Esperalda embraces us, roaring

Pounding down over an expanse of black boulders

An artfully designed fountain

With the unplanned imperfect hand

Nature’s signature style


Black rocks jutting out, catching water and sending it down

Into the pool below

I strip down and move slowly

Knee deep into the churned liquid

Losing my feet, my legs, my whole self

In her cool gel

Life


Felipe follows behind me

There’s no one here!

He climbs up and jumps

I perch and watch

Rainbows stretching out through the dancing drops


Eventually

Made our way to picnic in a patch of warming sunlight

Chicken, rice and salad Felipe’s dad has cooked for us

Freshly snapped sugar cane for dessert

Carnivorous bees

Abandon our toes for chicken bones


After a while, returning to the waterfall

To offer thanks and songs

Felipe climbs a tree

“Solo dejaremos flores, y cantos de esperanza”

Gifting our flowers to the water with a mighty toss and watching them float there

If we have a daughter, we’ll name her Esmeralda


Part 3


There’s a special peace

And a bliss that comes

From dipping whole heartedly

In a body of wild water

The water carries this intelligence

From all the land it travels

From all the time is has been moving

Moving and moving

Keeping itself fresh

Washing us as well


The water came from an asteroid belt they say

Frozen there for eons until it collided

Into the Earth and slept against molten lava


When those ancient Volcanoes exploded

Water was set free and the first rains

Flooded the earth

Primordial oceans

Birthed us

Water, our Extraterrestrial Mother


As we walked back, retracing

Trying not to step on the ants

They even used our bridges

Busy, like in the city

You can leave me here


Filled with the reality of bliss and beauty

Without a thought in my head

I touch the earth with my feet

And heaven with my heart

Wasp nests loom

Bigger than me

And the sun begins dripping her nostalgic light

Over the rolling green hills


With all cameras forgotten 

I promised to inscribe 

These memories in word

Where you can also touch them

I hope they find you

Moist with the same life

Forgetting your duties perhaps

Making your way out

To meet the glorious sky

Whatever season you might be in

May poetry surround you and bring you home

Covid diaries

Oh my darling

What have we become?

Crying and rocking on the front steps

Under a sole star


The pandemic

Is not a joke

Slowly that's been revealed

Even to me, the most stubborn and slow to admit it.


My mind roots around

Like a wild pig

Pulling up weeds of anger, blame

Disquiet


It seems like all around me

Walls are falling

Walls I built to protect myself

To shelter me from

the living flame of my own life

While around me everyone

waves their swords

Hoping forgiveness falls like

Summer rain

on the cracked earth of their yawning wounds


The living flame

Will not be contained

in houses

and all the vices in the world

Won't shield us from it:

This reckoning


Volcano

heartbeat of the world

Waiting at the center

To reveal us to ourselves

Was never mine

Not a car I can drive


This body, these hands.

This spirit who plays me

Plays me soft and wild

Sputtering and then stopping

Turning me like a top.


This woman I am

Resists and rebuilds

Nesting first here, then there

in the shifting safety

and comforts she can find


Ultimately

she sits naked on the steps of her front porch rocking herself

like a child, in the dark morning hours

Hoping for some sense of home

in her own skin

covid

In the darkest hour

Tears that flow like wine

Glide over the carved ravines

Of my trespasses

Settling in the lowest places where there is

no hand to hold


I hear your voice

It speaks without words

And grips me so that the tears

come and come

I am not

Able to resist this power

Who floods my soul with sorrow

And also with immeasurable joy

I'm just a vessel

A small boat on a larger ocean:

In my dream I was finally riding the waves.


All my life I've dreamed of oceans

The oceans licked my heels on the shore

The oceans rose and entered my bedroom window

The oceans loomed over me in great tsunami waves

The oceans pulled me beneath and beckoned me to be still

I held my breath and waited, hush



The dreams have come

Sometimes with whales, dolphins or sharks

Messengers from the deep who spoke to me of

a sensation of home

Where is this place we go

Beyond all death?


Why has God dealt us this immutable blow?

Repenting for all humanity

In a single tear

Like an acid wave on a broken ocean

A fevered dream

A stolen notion

Read somewhere in a faded book

From a corner store where no one looks

And the cash register guy sits grizzled behind his counter, reading

Conversations with God


I picked up the book in California, actually

Before I wasn't allowed to leave my house

Before my lungs ached

With the ash of dying Amazonian trees

Before I had to forgive presidents

I didn't even know

What is it we were made to hear

Before we felt powerless?


All naivety stripped away

I stand in the mirror, aging

Unafraid of what is to come

Open and stretching to love this hidden heart of me

Even if it's hated

Or I am misunderstood

I know me to be both great and small

Both powerful and weak

Correct, and also flailing

As the winds of change and challenge confront me in my duplicities

Where can I go?


Forgiven, forgotten laughter

I can't make them see me beyond their own projections

I can only stay where I am and hope

Beyond all hope that love will prevail

Love is the only thing that makes sense to me

That and forgiveness

Even the evilest of deeds deserve it

It's the only thing that makes sense to me

So when people get angry

I get scared

Because I don't know if they will forgive

Even me where I died

Where I died to myself and everyone

In my explosions of angry tears snot and imperfection

How can you love me through this, God?


I'm scared now

No one here to help me

My life derailed

But still


I know and I affirm I can do this

This is just a moment passing

In a field of flowers blooming and dying

Here in Texas first it's the blue bonnets

Then the Mexican hats

Then the bee balm and the daisies, last


I'm like one of these flowers

And even as I change

My spirit is eternal

I am one of these flames

Flickering and disappearing

Instantaneously replaced

I am here for something

Oh poignant fleeting life of mine

How I love thee

Make me correct so I can be the person you want me to be

Forgive me my sins and let me die to them so I can be free


Last night I finally rode the waves

I was free

And I was on top

I was courageous and whole

And I knew who I was

Spiritual Bypassing

Imbibing the modern day version of us versus them is tempting. We are being served a  glass of the liquid on the daily, but this bitter concoction is anything but medicinal.  So what is the real divisive issue here?  Is it masks, race, politics, freedom, the quickening doom of our inevitable annihilation into the great unknown someday or perhaps very soon? 

Us against them has never been an issue of morals, and has always been the difficulty we have in building bridges between our own disparate internal parts.  This must be done before we can even broach accepting others for the gorgeous mess of complexity they are.

We are living in a time when our warp speed schedules have come to a screeching halt, and all of us who had been using modern life to distance and distract, numb and run must now have a reckoning with ourselves.  We have been forced into a fish tank and we are scraping the bottom for exits or perhaps new strategies for dealing with our very unruly and often contradictory selves.  In this pandemic, the glass walls are mirrored.

So what are we going to do about it?  Lately it seems like our old friends bubbly, chipper exuberance, and even good old gratitude have been shooed away like embarrassing family members during a dinner party- these friends and more under the guise of spiritual bypassing.

Spiritual bypassing is a fancy name for the psychological defense mechanisms of repression and denial.  When we don't want to feel something, we tuck it away deep down inside.  This is unconscious, automatic, and in some cases, necessary form of protection prevents us from being overwhelmed by circumstances we can't emotionally handle.  Think about a child with an abusive parent.  The child cannot consciously acknowledge the abuse because they are completely dependent on the parent.  The mind copes by literally hiding the emotions within the body and the psyche in inaccessible places, only to bubble up in flashes and moments later on.  We are in a collective trauma, and our commendable psyches are doing their darndest to protect us from our  feelings. 

So what is spiritual bypassing NOT?  It's not putting all of our joy on hold.  While feeling joy and peace and all that lovey dovey stuff might not be so easily accessible right now, it's also not inherently bad, nor is it bad to strive to feel it.  We're not spiritually bypassing because we're having a good day while the world is falling apart.

I think it's revolutionary for us right now to claim the joy that is our inherent birthright.  Staying in a place of mild finger wagging or extreme anger may win us some new enemies in a social media scuttle,  but if we're going to move beyond hate, it might be time to start considering letting love back in.  From a place of love, wholeness and centeredness, we can face the world and make meaningful, impactful choices for the benefit of everyone around us.

Obviously not everyone is going to see matters the way we do. Luckily, our opinions and beliefs do not define all of who we are.  Knowing this, we can become more willing to let down our drawbridge hearts over the motes of misunderstanding we are drowning in.  We don't have to agree.  We do have to orient ourselves around the qualities we admire and wish to embody.  Alighting on these ideals is a good idea, and it's not spiritual bypassing. 

As adult human beings we can learn to steward our thoughts, feelings and actions.  This is healthy and natural and necessary.  So why do we abandon our morals and act like children with words for toy guns and fire our misplaced discontent every which way?  We need to try to understand each other because if we don't, we're going to continue to be alone, both literally and figuratively.  If we're so gungho that our beliefs define us, and that our way is the right way, then for darned sake, let's believe in love. 

Love requires intimate understanding.  Love requires patience.  Love requires returning to the ground of our being where our nervous systems can unravel and we can feel something besides pain and panic when we get quiet.  I know we are all capable of this state of being.  I believe we can worship it, believe in it, invite it, savor it.  Let's not forsake it because we'd rather be right and make others wrong.  It's okay and natural to be angry, but being angry is not going to put us on the right side of history.  We need to make room beyond the binary of our own thinking and be willing to challenge ourselves, humble ourselves, and ultimately, to transform. 

transformation

Lately feels the fingers of wind pushing me forward

Through years of gliding memory and song

Like an iceberg melting to the sea

The last melody of snowbound birds

Homes that once were and are no more

And one could reckon with this fact in many ways

At the center of my central nervous system

Is a plethora of stories about the world


At the center lies the root of love and fear

Preverbal like the prehistoric dawn

Crawling out from sea we still retain

Knowledge of how to be beneath the sun


She rises and sets

Bringing new eyes to see

Everyday and yet we cling like infant to their mother's breast

To things that feed us pain and blood

How long can I deny the fact of life

That death is still my ancient motherly embrace

Destination and destiny

Good company for those who don't avoid the pain


Life is pain, desire is pain

My profound love the birthplace of my profound terror

Pleasure who lifts us on soft wings

Ocean lullabies and dripping nectar

Sleighs in crippled dreams and nightmares come true

Fear and loss

I cannot avoid

Control is not mine

Control is not mine

Control

is

not

mine.


:

You gift this vantage point of thanks.


The teacher of how to be the grace.


Miracle of life

Precious pearl I cannot understand

I am you and you are me

birth and death and birth and death

Here in the home of the Silence

Thank you for the gifts that stun me

move me

shake me

take me

life, I am yours eternally

a daughter of the rising sun

standing on the nerve


The pain where she spouts wonder

The hate where she sprouts acceptance

The death where she sprouts eternity


The root of it the nerve

So tender like a bludgeoned wound

My childhood powerlessness shifts to a mighty roar of capacity

To change and change until I am what I was made to be

Transformation in the womb of the multiverse star studded infinity

On my knees at the colossal gate of what's yet to be

Rapping on the door with all the faith I can muster from me

Belonging to no one and looking for no one to understand me

Who will permit me

Is my own self which is your self and the self of us

Not good enough in the eyes of whose eyes never met the light of all

I am the way and the way is the way to fall

In the fall comes the redemption of the one and all

stream of consciousness

Dear soul,

Soul says go.Soul says no. Soul says yes. Soul says.

I forgot how to be a person. I forgot how to be a thing. A mammal. A 4 legged. A 2.  A plant. Maybe a house, or a boat, or a ship to sail far far away. That's where I want to go.Go to Heaven where I can hide. Take a rest in the place where I used to live. Before I was a thing. A Home, my home in the stars. I am home. I am here. I am alive. I am a person. I am made of stardust and potions and conscious and consciousness and right and wrong. All the stories of all I ever was or will be.

I want to love you

But it scares me

I want to be thankful

But I push you away

I want to follow you

But I want to stand on my own

I want you to love me so much

The way you do.

Please

I don't want to forget who I am

I remember I am here to serve the light

I am here to shine the light

To firm the light

I don't want to forget all the flowers you gave me

The way you washed my feet

The way you opened the door

Or looked into my eyes with that crazy shine

That blazing look of passion

Why won't you touch me now

But when you do

I am alone

Who will be there when my bones crumble to dust

Only my butterfly wings gracefully padding the wind and dirt

The air above and below

Who will be there

Will the sun shine in my eyes as I take my last breath?

This poignant life of nothingness

and everythingness

You feel so close to me now

I need someone to relate to

Because here at the edge I feel like a frazzled monkey thing

Someone I don't understand

Moving imperceptibly at the speed of light

Calm yourself down and find the right

The inspiration

The motivation

Cultivate the soil

Til the land until it's fertile ground

My children rising up around me like weeds

Like stones

Like beautiful amber crystals to carry me

I want to hold their hands,

Look into their eyes

I'm tired of waiting for my pillar of man to come

When I think it could be him

I don't know you

And you feel like a perfect stranger

All of the sudden, like I never knew you

All  I knew was change

My end is my beginning

My river running into my ocean

And I am change

Please help me forgive forget

surrender to the uncontrollable

I am tired of dying again

But I know the rebirth is a necessity

Let me rebirth myself

I'm tired of the awkward insecure little girl

That hid herself in the mirror of appearances

Fixing her hair and popping her pimples

Ay, uncontrollable urge to be perfect in the eyes of a perfect lover

Forever sexy, young and strong

Who I can never be

I'm only borrowing this brilliant suit of diamonds

And I will always be beautiful, even in my shriveled grey suit

The sparkle of beauty graces my eyes

So I can see the shades of green waving here in the wind

Please hold my hand,

angels of life

Angels of death

Guide me and teach me

I want to hear

I want to fall off the cliff into your yawning silence

Onto your gaping tongue

I can't go forward in this world alone

Please, secure me

I feel myself falling

What do I ask for

When up is down?

I want I want

the end of my want

And I breathe slow and steadily

Remembering to come down from this creative flurry

I am alone again

Wandering in the desert

Looking for water

Or a mirage of home

Or an actual home

In your hands

whose hands are God's

Too.

Thoughts

I hope to use my human suit, my spirit, my heart, my words, my being, my whiteness, appearance, power and privilege to make positive lasting change to defunct systems that perpetuate racism. I hope to position myself within my chosen fields of music and social work in ways to elevate the voices of POC, indigenous, Latinx communities, and minorities. Social workers serve minorities, and yet the field remains predominately led by white and heterosexual persons. I hope to work for and with communities to elevate the voices of people with lived experiences of oppression. I will leverage my white privilege to amplify these voices. I am white and benefit and perpetuate these systems unless I actively dismantle them, and I am dedicating my career and life to doing so. We are all equal, we are all one people. I believe in love, harmony, truth, justice, unity, and peace as the ground and essence of life, and welcome all waves of negative emotions as a cleansing, a healing, and an indicator of how we can grow and change, deepen our love and align ourselves with true health of body mind and spirit individually and collectively. Let's continue to self examine and plug ourselves in to solution focused organizations doing the work. Whether your way is loud and public or soft and behind the scenes, I see you, I feel you, I am with you. We are changing, the change is now. Thank you to everyone who has been putting themselves out there and getting uncomfortable. Thank you for baring with each other through strangeness and discomfort, through feelings of guilt shame and anger, judgement. All of it. We will and are enduring. We are growing, together, whether we see it or not. Our destinies are linked as one people, and I see a time on the horizon of more respect, justice, equality, peace, understanding, love, and balance with each other and all of nature. I hold firmly this vision for our planet with deep prayer, reverence, respect and love.

Sincerely, Melissa

2020

Said the girl to her Grandmother:

Put to words

Memory disincarnate

So we can carry

Tangible threads of then

In our hands

She replied:

Times when highway snakes

Trampled breeding grounds

And oil reigned supreme

When busyness meant merit

And violence hid inside

Rhetoric of valor

There were people in cages

And plastic in the water

Good food was wasted

While many starved

Some saw, and some fought

Some closed their eyes

Some were confused and manipulated

Not to care

Still, many hearts were led

To wisdom

Gems pressed by the heaviness

Of the times

When the birth of multitudes

Blended colors, genders, creeds

We found founts of sameness beneath

No one felt they could stop the red tide

Death and melting ice caps

Fires and storms took precious jungles

Animal cries pierced the silent night

From millions of miles away

Exploitation was its name

The few over the many

So it is with the history of humans

And so it was in the year 2020

One day a disease came

Disregarding status and place

Everyone took to their houses in fear

Some people believed the government

Would take their rights

The disease was a hoax

Or even,

Intentionally spread through acts of evil

Others paid less credence to the news

They listened to their gut and took a middle road

Carving their space on the earth with great care

Many gardens bloomed

And people looked to the earth and each other

For the richness they had been lacking

So my child, today we stand

On the rubble of what came before

Evolving beyond the forces that turned

Animal instincts into cancerous carnivorous disaster

T​he earth ​is powerful

And greed could not consume her

She balanced herself with the goodness

That bloomed even in the hearts of those who had caused the death

For they were also of her

and she forgave them

The granddaughter, taking in these words

Looked up at the blue sky, breathed the clean air

Thanked the Earth

And scampered off on grateful feet

Toward the ocean

March 15, 2020

I am afraid,

Because the lot next to my home was razed

The trees uprooted

The ground compacted

The bees gasping their last breaths on my kitchen floor

and the hawks circling low and crying

I am afraid

Because this is the first time I ever felt my home

Stolen from me

My peace raked violently

By the beeping of loud machines

From sun up to sun down

Over which I have no control

But what scares me the most

Is that this is not new

People around me have been dying

for a very long time

It’s been urgent

And we’re just now seeing

The manifestations

You can tell me not to be afraid

Indeed, I have told myself

Commanding the voice into silence

Oppressed beneath the sheet of night

But I'd rather gather all my pieces

And sit them down here at my knee in prayer

Holding gently my own hand

Whispering we will find a way

Asking forgiveness for my part

In the destruction

For our unhealthy ways

Bodies and lands have been stolen

We have always been this vulnerable

We can't eat money

Or buy health

From where will our richness come?

What will be our currency

How will we extend ourselves to the ones

who are buried beneath the ground?

Whose children will we feed

When death has claimed us?

We cannot be free

Until all of us

are freed

So let’s consider each other

As we never have before

And find comfort in our unity

Let the fear root us down

Into a deeper meaning

A humbleness

And a truth we all crave

We are one

thoughts 2019

Remember to peer through the weeds to the

True beauty:

Nobility of spirit


They’re not just words

But the underpinning of a life worth living.

We are taught to loath ourselves

And make Gods out of

What we are not

Perpetually at a deficit of

self esteem

So we feel the need to strive

And we fall down worshipping at

Feet

That would stomp on us

snapping down

branches

Never meant to hold our weight


I won’t make a God out of youth

Money or things


What is beautiful never fades:

Nobility of spirit

Integrity

Truth

Justice


Learn how to see it

How to honor it

How to feel it

You laugh because your eyes

Are covered in dust


How beautiful do you feel?


Plant your flag in the unmoving soil

Of your soul

shaker

who you are:

knowingness,

stars.

thought

Perpetuating

Action


What profundity

Is this?


Notions

Kissing

Pink

Dazzling

Pedals

Breathing

For the first

Or last

Time


You are

change agent

Rattling

Rice

In coconut shells

To the rhythm of

foggy mountain nights

And

Limes.

Crimson skirts

Flying

Hands clapping

Sky

Opening

To take you

Up

Again.


Mother

Swallowed my bones

And gave me new ones

To dance this celebratory song

Of life

With you

Nannying

Baby squeals meow!

loudly in other room

I peel brightly turnips in kitchen

starkly lonely

Wrestling parade of boy-man faces from mind

Who, don’t want me or

I don’t. I have to stop to

find a pen:

To live inside a poem

Is better than to give into

Sickly sadness sniffing

With sticky snout.

word is refuge

baby meowing

Turnips cubed and ready for holiday.

If earth could bare more children

And delivered me

My Good Man

I would willingly give over

all time.

Somehow

It makes sense, this compulsion to seed valleys

with tearful human flowers,

To feed

The earth

With song

wild

Help me, these
uncontrollable
wild fires
Keep cropping up

It is unreasonable
And
With reason
We could put them out.

A man like you could not want
A woman
With such subtle
Crimson
Undertones
Who is
Rich
Not very simple
Sees, truly!
Won’t let you
Go on
Holds, holds.
I cannot blame
You

Anyway,
Whose job is it to catch?
A spider in her web
Has both welcome
And unwelcome visitors
Whom she does not
necessarily choose.
By any means
I certainly don’t want
To eat you.

So help me put out
These wild fires
Go away from my web
I would like to return
To easy spinning
My silver
With no further
interruption

and if I’ve scared you

Good.

Mercy

Sometimes my heart
Is a led balloon
That will not float.
Sinking
With the weight of its
tender mercy
And pressing tears
Like grapewine from the fruit
Of one
too many failures

I am at the mercy
Of these hours
Just
a simple thing

Bone balanced atop bone
Precarious around nightfall
Soft young skin leaning and
listening mightily
For one sound that speaks of
The wordless
Sweet and bitter
I could
really
Taste.

Make me know the meaning
Of these
diversions and dead-end wishes
This aloneness.


There is strength
And there is solace
Yes there is mercy
In that

Identity

I am a Jewish disciple of Jesus, Buddha, and all the Great Teachers who exist on the plane of reality I tap into when I get still. I believe in all the Gods and Goddesses of Old, the Hindu and the Orixas, the intuitive way a child connects language and sound, subject and object; the aspects of feminine and masculine, yin and yang- the many facets, shades and colors of the absolute and it's virtues such as justice, truth, peace, and love; its elements of earth, fire, air, and water, it's directions in time and space North South East West, up down and center; I consider myself a Dadaist, a surrealist, a beat- I believe in the reality of the absurd, with its easy humor, its paradox, and its simple way of pointing out the miracle, the spectacle, the comedy and tragedy of existing- of being mostly space and subatomic particles that disappear and appear from view simultaneously, ignoring laws of physics. A three dimensional mobius strip with personality and social context.

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