by K-ET

The alt.religion.shamanism newsgroup, in its final active years, carried not only journey accounts and practical discussions but occasional verse. K-ET, a Scandinavian practitioner who had been part of the community for years, posted this poem in February 2008 — a spare lyric about a spirit-beloved who speaks through trees and birds and light, and about the cost of living with that kind of attention. The poem arrived in the same thread as the writer's account of a neurological accident that had severed them from their inner life, leaving them, as they put it, locked outside a house they could see but not enter. The poem is what remained.

There is a presence in the wood
which rises as I step —
the wind which speaks in the flowers.

It is the voice of my beloved,
who dwells in every instant,
who glows in each mote of the sunlight.

She speaks to me in disguises,
in spirits of trees and birds,
and though she knows I will forget,
She makes an audacious promise:

"I will always be with you."

There's no polite and clever conversations anymore
I've been rendered a social cripple by spirits
I might've had a future, I might've been somebody
but instead I'm a nobody without wings

You are already enlightened
all the rest is commentary

Colophon

Posted to alt.religion.shamanism by K-ET in February 2008. Message-ID: ZJ%wj.4216$[email protected]. The author, a Swedish practitioner, had been contributing to the group since at least 2005. The poem appeared during a discussion about spiritual experience and social isolation.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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