by Leah Stenson

Published in Issue No. 280 ~ September, 2020

I’m sitting under a towering three-hundred-year-old oak on a summer afternoon, in a group listening to an esoteric astrologer expound on the evolution of the soul. I’m dazzled by his intellect, not to mention his good looks. When he begins to speak about the potential for the lesser ego to subvert the evolution of higher self—that is: when sexuality serves the lower self rather than the higher self’s role as the emissary of light—an acorn drops from above, hitting me on the head. I take this gift from the wise old oak as a reminder that I used to be such a sucker for passionate eloquence, especially when it came out of the mouth of babes or handsome men.

 

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Leah Stenson is the author of Heavenly Body and The Turquoise Bee and Other Love Poems (Finishing Line Press); a regional editor of Alive at the Center: Contemporary Poems from the Pacific Northwest (Ooligan Press) and co-editor of award-winning Reverberations from Fukushima (Inkwater Press). Her full-length book of poetry Everywhere I Find Myself was published by Turning Point. Her most recent work, Life Revised, a hybrid memoir, was published by Cirque Press in 2020. Please see www.leahstenson.com