Spiritual Gumbo

Recipes for a race war that never comes.

Gumbo. Rich with deep notes of cinnamon. Sassafras.

The plant that grows on the edges of the woods
where we always ran.

The sentinel that kept guard, the custodian to the darkness,
it lets us pass whenever we need to go in.

It did not keep us out.

Powerful medicine. It is the seasoning that we need
to administer, sparingly, bowl by bowl, not by the whole pot.

Midwives knew. Sassafras eases the pain of childbirth.
It lets us surrender; it lessens the discomforts
when our time has come.

Filé is the way we will minister to the wounded spirits.
Filé the way we will tend to the broken hearts, the means
by which we will shelter the warriors, hide the poets, let the dancers move only in the shade of a deep glen, a sudden clearing in this dense and seemingly impenetrable forest of angry words, and armed ancient hatreds born of fright.

Fear of scarcity. Fear of tenderness,
fear of soft human vulnerability.

Sassafras cleanses and binds. Binds ourself to each other, binds our spirits to our wings. Plant medicine lets our egos fly free and away, to where we cannot shoot ourselves or each other.

When it is over we will hand out bowls of spiritual gumbo, seasoned liberally with sassafras, and by the time we make it to the wild clearing in the midst of these dark woods
our souls will be free.

Together, to gather, to savor the wild spiciness of liberation.