Bohemian Collective - Summer 2019

ᅂhe
G၉oaminဨ
ᄴorၸal
by Sara La Rosa
@herstrangeangels • saralarosa.com
ᄇeep into the latest moments of evening,
before the full summer dark has settled
herself, wide-hipped and fleshy on the
land, the air is thinning. The heat
has lifted, sucking the blue from the sky, leaving lavender
streaks like mist to creep among the buildings, crawl along
the asphalt roads and seep into the skin at the knees, the
pads of fingertips and the furthest fringes of our eyelashes.
The gloaming has settled itself onto the trees and in the air.
Time between time, this world between worlds. I hear the
ancestors singing, here at the slender waist between day
and night. A constant, rolling, sweet summer breeze picks
up, carrying the voices of spirits. My spirits. Yours. Those we
belong to and whose cosmic threads are woven in our veins.
The light is purpling now, edging toward dark and the night
that so quickly follows. Birds have stopped calling and the
little bats have not yet arrived to feed. This is the liminal light
time. The middlelight, nestled betwixt sundown and twilight.
There is no sound but wind in limb and leaf. Only the trees dare
to speak, answering the whispered song as it moves through
their limbs; a lover long-starved of the beloved’s touch, an
ancient summons, a sun’s kiss on the face of the moon.
These are the moments destined for sensual movements.
The languid greeting of leaf and air. There is no dancing in
sun-washed rays and joyous breezes. This time is for the
approaching night, who drapes and drags her long train of
vivid black across the grasses and hills.
I sit reverently rapt in this elegant descending darkness,
watching nature make love, slowly.
The passionate sounds of merging are themselves listening
deep ~ into us.
We are no mere audience. We are the enchantment; asked to
enter this temple of Time Out of Time, to make of our heart a
naked offering of fire in the face of this wild interlude. Sacred
participants; both guest and initiate.
The softening light is itself an approaching darkness that
brings the tang of sensuality along her spine, moving like
tartly-spiced silk across the fine hairs of arms and legs.
The blending shadows prohibit sharp eyes, favoring blurred
edges and thoughts that overlap with touch and unfinished
sentences.
The gloaming in the air is both mirror and invitation to our
own simmering want. A temptress living in the cage of our ribs
calls up a warming ember below the toes and tells us to put on
the soft peach shawl, the moonstone ring, the gentle watercolored
fabric that flows around our thighs like currents,
pulling and teasing us in directions of pleasure and prayer,
communion and coiling fire.
We are lit within, like a hidden candle behind cool palms,
seeking warmth in the dark.
Our skin in the dusky air becomes porous to the words and
loves of our grandmothers’ grandmothers ~ their lovers, their
children, their secrets, their desires.
We cannot be separate from their living heat in this darkening
light.
Their own lives have formed our own. This gloaming gift of
summer days reminds us of our birthright and holy inheritance
of pleasure ~ sometimes moaning, sometimes secret sigh.
This non-time is their portal into our ‘now’ world.
Or perhaps it is a portal for our eyes into theirs.
Either way, our gaze is drawn into the eternity stream that
light travels in sweet intimacy with her dark lover. We are
their love~child, the summation of seasons inside one living
skin, a sometimes-chaotic collection of red organs and delicate
systems that dance and sway with moods and molecules.
It is all a love~making~love... ad infinitum. Love without end.
These glorious moments are ever the invitation into
shadowscapes. The hidden self, kept secret even from our
own eyes, emerging snakelike, new-skinned, ruby, writhing,
longing for acceptance. Longing to take steps. Longing to
uncover, undress, unfold.
Will we?
The gloaming portal holds the question gently, and our
grandmothers’ grandmothers hold their breath...
18 bohocollective.com
bohocollective.com 19