A Birthday Celebration

Today, April 1, 2026 marks my seventy-forth birthday. And this is the story I tell myself about how life began:

I entered the world by crawling out of the cave – Carlsbad Caverns, in New Mexico, to be exact. My father was the park naturalist there when I was born. Most days at sundown he gave a talk for the tourists at the large, arched opening that was the mouth of the cave. After his lecture, as if on cue the bats would fly out, long black ribbons of small dragons, disappearing into dusk.

The image of the cave’s opening, the doorway from which I told myself I’d come into the world, was permanently embedded in my developing brain, a symbol and foreshadowing of who I would one day become. Of course, it helped the story along, that my parents and my siblings told me I’d been born between a stalactite and stalagmite. They thought they were joking, but I believed it was true. Hundreds of times, through the power of imagination, I’ve returned to the mouth of the cave. From her, I derived an understanding and comfort that the cave is the womb and the earth is my first mother.

Carlsbad Caverns blessed me with a gentle peace which fills me when I’m in dark and craggy places. Early on I was given a vision into the last room of the caverns, what I came to know as the womb of the cave. Ancient crones sing and dance there, in front of a glowing fire. The sound of water dripping from rocks into a pool, keeps the rhythm. This is what my life became, keeping the rhythm and cadence close by, in poems and in dreams.

The veil between the world we call reality, and the ethereal world of magic and moonbeams, grows thinner with each passing year. Imagination is what allows one to pierce the veil and see into a time and place where metaphor and symbol weave our life into poetic lines.

When I visit the cave in my mind’s eye now, I see myself dancing with the old crones, bare feet pounding on soft sand as embers leap from the fire. These images are etched on my heart. The cave is where I first became aware of the crones. They are the part of the story which explains how it is I learned to see in the dark.

Wind chimes

forged from the boneyard

of forgotten dreams,

sing the songs

of ancient crones

Sing a song of mercy and forgiveness,

sing an oak tree lullaby,

hum the haunting refrain of crones

who dance here now

and a thousand years past.

The floor of the caves

know their rhythms, still,

a rhythm that lives in me

as close as a heartbeat.

To celebrate my birthday, I will make a pilgrimage to a forest place which feeds my soul and helps me to weave my words into stories and snippets. I will remember the cave, the womb and the crones. I will place a small leaf upon which I’ve painted the word poet and float it into the water in a favorite place of mine, fed by spring streams. This is a birthday gift to myself, a ritual, to set free the poet and follow where she takes me. Today I celebrate the goodness of life and the impermanence of life. Seize the day. Drink the moments. Follow the clouds. Love life in it’s profundity and its mundane.

This birthday I give thanks for the blessings born in an imagination which knows no boundary and unfolds itself in stories, poems and prayers. What greater gift could there be?

What rituals and celebrations do you create to honor your life and the life around you? Let’s have a conversation. . .