Sculptress of Forgotten Form

During the winter season, I would travel with the Duhalar reindeer people and stay with an old shaman called Tsuyan. On odd days of the waxing moon, she would go into a trance and transform herself into a reindeer bull, flying off to a place she called the Dark Heavens: a twilight world full of light, sounds and voices from where the ancestors reveal their hidden messages in the form of birds and beasts. ‘We exist in relation to three things (she would say) …nature, animals and the memory of ancestors. Once we forget, the guardian angels abandon us and we invite demons to take hold of our destiny.’ – Hamid Sardar

Her ungoverned hair and heliarc gaze
speak to a fierceness
beyond the curtain of power,
the unbridled desire of moon and tide,
to have her whole self be known,
whether or not she dances in solitude.

In the storm driven ocean
and delicate blue camas,
on the cliffs above the sea,
her yearning is present,
a delicate hand extended
to one who will love
her fury and her peace,

and the way she carves herself
as sculptress of the forgotten form,
in the disappearing beauty
of her wildness.