Rite of Passage

my dear friend Vanessa wrote this beautiful poem inspired by our experiences in Axladitsa-Avatakia. If I would write a poem about my time in Axladitsa, this would be it, with exact meaning and words...thank you Vanessa!

Rite of passage

Tunnel womb, midnight wetness
Burning in the fire of creation
Birthing the pain of life and sorrow
Revealing our stories, the spiral past that brings us
to now
And the stories that we no longer need
three times told, must become new
or be discarded
in order to be life-giving, a source
leaving stagnant waters behind to dry in the sun
dissolving into soil,
fertile, rich, complex,
yielding new life in neverending cycle

and our rite of passage is ours alone,
created from the ritual of our love
opening our self, caressing it into the world
in the embrace of our listening
the holding of secrets, the telling of truths
soft conversations folding into sand

these truths, known to us now and witnessed by the
elements

are the roots of our life
and we begin again from here