Murmurations: Balancing Duality on Winter Solstice

A note from adrienne maree brown: Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a poet-prophet who is willing to look deeply at the world for wisdom and report back in the most beautiful way imaginable. She is the author of Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals.

Blessed solstice loved ones. It is winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, and summer solstice in the southern hemisphere—but for my ancestors from the center of the surface of earth, my Caribbean community of the equator, we are always balancing darkness and bright, and other dualities. This solstice blessing is inspired by the Carib story and constellation of Kuruman, a person so deeply tied to the tides of how earth and moon and ocean interact that they became a star. This poem imagines Kuruman’s wish to us, the family members still here on earth. Take this meditation as an opportunity to reflect on these three questions in what is (depending on where you are) the darkest or brightest time of the year: 

What pulls you? 
What are you becoming?
What is your wish?

kuruman

this is what happened
from a wish to become
nothing

i became everything
i became pull

i became the only thing
we did not choose

i became gravity

*

this is what happened
in the dream where
i was everything

i became ocean
i became deep
i became heaven
i became sleep

i became what peace
you could imagine

*

this is what happened

i became star
i became morning

i emerged far
enough away 
that i could see you

*

this is the wish

a desert of salt
wide

and that you cross it

this is the wish

a sky 
black 

and that it holds you

this is the lesson

earth
was never still

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Alexis Pauline Gumbs has written for Truthout, Left Turn, Make/shift, The Abolitionist, Orion, and Harper’s. They speak English and Spanish. Connect: Twitter

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