To Get Your Head Close to Earth

Ritual Flyer of Papantla

Shake your head,
Do the whole hokey pokey.
Squeeze your eyes shut
then blink them open
all the way.
No? Ok, then
stand on your head if you can.
as long as you can,
use a wall, make it a shoulder stand,
whatever is required
to get your feet in the sky

and your head close to earth.
When you come out of it
your eyes half slit
look around, as if –
no, expecting –
what you see to be
a different world, a place
where connection is the first thing
you notice, where
your awful loneliness
need not be.

There are countless routes,
some spend decades in a monastery,
some must climb through grief,
it doesn’t matter how
but getting there,
to the view you weren’t perceiving,
is the gift of being alive.
The world where you are not alone
exists in front of your eyes
which can learn to gaze differently
at the wriggling intersections of it all.

©Susa Silvermarie 2026