We notice the deer dancing while we sing and wail under the big tent. When a person offers a particularly potent share, the wind rises.  When someone invokes spirit, a raven laughs hoarsely.

We follow the outrageous demands of spirit. We feed the earth in ritual, 80 of us circled around a grief tree, a fresh cleft in the earth, which we fill with maple syrup, whiskey, grains, fruits, our stories and songs.

In our first days together, many among us stand apart. I see them, arms folded, standing at the edges. On the footpaths I catch their eyes, wary, scared, distrusting.

After the first night of song and ceremony, a rumor amongst the facilitators: Somebody left. A murmur of pain amongst us.

What does it take to call a man home?

A minor mountain of a man strutting around the circle roaring at us: I hate that you make me look at myself.

A storming, soulful man looking me in the eye, I wanted someone to come looking for me.

A man from the city, a tear tattooed to his eye, When you say everything is optional, you mean it. It’s genuine. It’s genuine.

A man on a long journey, a man we missed, a man we called a girl, and then a woman, before he corrected us. Can you hug me for 10 seconds, he asks.

#

Where am I in all of this.

I am the sheep dog minding my flock.

I am the hawk overheard, taking it in, sensing the need, sharp-eyed and relentless.

I am the cedar tree tall, leggy, and swaying. Rooted deep in the ground. My hands are boughs, my fingers are soft. When you are lost my branches lean down, my warm hand on your arm, my cedar boughs blessing your head with the caress you’ve been longing for, the caress you needed back then, but no matter, the caress that is happening now goes forward and backward in time.

This is how we heal.

#

More outrageous yet, that we would heal together. That men of European lineage might heal alongside men of Africa, across a chasm of wounding so vast we can only dream of the other side. That men of Asia, men from countries ravaged by this nation, would heal now on this land. That men who love men, gay men who we have lacerated with our inner loathing turned outward, would say, My hope coming to this was that I would be healed more than I would be harmed. But I can say that I was not harmed here.

And that those among us who defy our petty binaries, who live out the exuberant cacophony of nature’s full expression, those who we might call multiracial, genderqueer, trans, neurodivergent (all prose feebly gesturing toward poetry, toward truth)… That we might circle together, that we might cry together, that we might hold one another…

Somewhere prison walls crack

Somewhere a bullet dies in the chamber

Somewhere a tyrant’s heart shudders from a deep sleep

Somewhere a fist opens into an outstretched hand

Somewhere a man’s voice, a deep voice, says,

I’m not going to hurt you.

Says, I got you.

Says, I will fight for you.

Says, I will hold you until you are done.

#

I swan dive into the altar, I weep bodily and prostrate, a silvery nectar flowing from my eyes nose and mouth and painting the sword ferns we have lain there.

The voice in me that says, Evan you’re taking too much space, now exhausted from 35 grief rituals, doesn’t even bother.

My requests are outrageous. I need another man. Will you hold me like this? Will you sit with me in the grass while I show you pictures?

I wail in the arms of men, I call to god and to ancestors and to earth and I say speak to me, I can’t hear you.

And I hear back in a stillsmall voice:
These men won’t hurt you.

And when I wail, in my oldest and deepest pain, Nobody wants to be with me, I hear back, in the ironic drawl of a friend close at hand: That’s objectively not true right now, Evan.

And when, with the help of medicine, I truly porpoise into the abyss, the chasm of horror that was my original wound, my body convulsing with soul-grief, I feel them close: Strong arms, the stubble of a bald head next to mine.

I gasp, as am I falling to the place with no bottom, Hold me.

And I feel their presence – men, or are they men? Are they ancestors smiling back at me? Are they the earth’s delegates, are they the love I have cried out for, smelling of sweat, with strong arms, holding on to me as I fall, catching me, staying until I quiet. Patient, potency at bay, hands worn by work, but it is the warmth that comes through. Softness in eyes framed by sharp angular faces.

They stay until I rise from the altar, my offering complete. They accompany me across the threshold, back to the village.

#

I have carried two boughs of cedar from the altar back into the village. I bless the men who held me at the altar. The cedar becomes an extension of me, caressing their arms, their heads, their faces. They smile with pleasure, their eyes closed.

I turn to an older man and bless him. He smiles broadly and then begins laughing hysterically, ecstatically, wildly. I join him, because how can I not?

There’s a cosmic joke here, and we are privy to the punchline.

That men, the most feared creature on earth, scourge of all life, can do this as well.

#

On the last day we dance. We dance to Mister Rogers. We dance to Gnarlz Barkley.

I step away for a moment and return to the following tableaux:

A tight constellation of men around a central point, in the form of a sweet man in the throes of grief.

Often I am the first responder in these cases. I am a leader in the lost art of holding another. But here I am not needed.

For amidst the song and movement of the dance, one of us fell to earth in grief.

Later he told me, I didn’t want to cry alone again.

But one of us found him.

One of us held him. Then another, then another, then a gravitational pull of care called in this outlandish expression of collective love for one of us.

When I approached him, his eyes opened and locked with mine. I smiled and beamed love to him. In his eyes I saw fear, I saw disbelief. Then I saw surrender, as they closed.

I leaned down and made my contribution to the constellation. I added my hand to one of many that enveloped his. My other hand reached out and rested on his head. I wanted him to be just a little bit more held.

Later he said, I’ve never been held like that. I didn’t know it was possible.

I didn’t know it was either. Until the first time it happened to me. At a men’s grief ritual.

#

Afterwards, exhausted to a spiritual degree, I go to the river.

I dip into the velvety water, naked as nature, salmon babies nibbling.

I extend my hand to the fish, and they swim up to me. Beauty, beauty, beauty, I purr.

And then. I see a shock of red in the river, and I turn to look.

A rose petal in the river.

Men did that.