Laying Bare the Bones

by Joseph Robinson

From Laying Bare the Bones -- "The act of giving up life one bone at a time gives broken-bodied, flesh torn, rotting away, to the point of sheer ecstasy. Pondering the chill, the fading light beckons me home, before I too become annihilated by the darkness. Turning around towards the setting sun, Spirit whispers to me, ‘the way to live an awakened life is to let all feed upon your heart’. "This collection was born out of a deep longing in response that which is ever so common in the world known as suffering.Nothing was special about any of this except it was happening to a part of me which completely bought into it as true.A gift of travel was gratefully extended to me to join a journey into the wild spaces and places which are now highlighted in this work.We went into the wild by land, ship, music, culture, language, and ultimately by foot. Entering deep, where no one had tread for decades.Some of us awakened early to dive the cold waters and dream into light the wild warm currents and what they brought to the fjords and coves on the edge of two massive continents. With one pushing and shoving the other hard enough mountains are formed actively and ignites a ring of fire that covers over a third of our planet. This ring fumbles and beaches in reaction to the grinding plates. Frantic indeed.So place this humble broken pilgrim in that sacred space, and what arises is nothing less than an existential crisis. The wild worked into my depths and I was game to take the invitation and just go with it. I had lost nearly everything by then so, I had nothing much to lose.What I got in return for this brave act to step out unto this both ancient and newly evolving wild place was nothing less than to be reborn a new within it.I am not alone, not in my suffering, nor in the exaltation of the participant of a kind of truth which applies to nothing less than the entire known and unknown. That which can't be named, only experienced.Then comes the puckish poet full of naive enthusiasm wearing an earnest heart, who cares deeply as to try to put the experience to words.These love poems to the wild and the revelation they reveal document my personal transfiguration. (What other kind is there?) These perspectives are not typical but put fourth the vulnerable voice and sing the songs in such a way as to be a kind of invitation in four parts. This is a humble offering of a sacred practice in which to listen, feel, join, and then sing what arises, to literally howl with nature. This is a call to join in the conversation of our time and our world.

126 pages, Paperback

Published May 5, 2019