An essay on myth, fairytale, and dream. Introducing my new epic poem “What’s Hid Beneath the Bones of this Great Tree.” Here’s the background on the poem as well as an overview helping you understand why mythopoetic material is the material of soul-work and how things like poems, tales, dreams and even artwork are necessary to help us consciously take the “journey of the soul.”
In the dark winters of my childhood, my mother would gather us around our wood-burning stove for story time. It wasn’t as long ago as that sentence makes it sound. I was born early in the 1960s at the feet of the great Rocky Mountains. Boulder, Colorado’s winters were cold; its social environment hot. My parents carried me to anti-war marches on their backs, and trundled me along when they walked door to door promoting progressive politics. I felt my mother’s grief when JFK was killed; I knew her despair when MLK and RFK were cut down, the way she tried to keep her hope alive in the midst of such loss. . . .