WIND-CHILD

WIND-CHILD

I believed that you always would be there -

a faery child, awaiting the storm.

I watched over you as best I could

to allay my fears, as well as your own.

Then one day

I heard the rush and whistling

of the approaching wind.

But even though he was strong

when he came, he did not roar like a beast

but instead blew slowly, so very slowly

and piece by hurtful piece,

like an evil wizard

with a magic wand

he stole your youth

and your beauty

and finally your life

secretly, before I knew it.

Art by Terri Windling 

The Mirror of Your Soul

 

The Mirror of Your Soul

In the everlasting heartbeat of life

there and even deeper

we are one, indivisible,

inseparable

Standing on my shore

gazing out over my surface

you see into the mirror

of your own soul

You are so weary of the storms

that have torn through your life

so let my tides carry you

to the deepest depths

of your existence

Until you remember once more

that you and I are one

for you yourself are the ocean

and I, your eternal Mother.

Image:  me at the Oregon Coast near Neskowin, 2016 © Deborah Wright, photographer

Counterpoint

 

Counterpoint

The others they talk

oh, they chatter

so much, so much 

to tame

their fear

In my cocoon

I may seem trapped

but I merely seek shelter

to listen to the voices of birds

spin their magic songlines

and the shrieks of ravens

in my Eden

shrieks that rip open my

oldest scars

The moon knows my every scar

and she has turned them into poetry

flutter flutter

go my wings

in the gossamer spinning

of the muses in my head

Euterpe and Erato

my very own muses

They like to dance

until the moon gives way

and they, like dust motes

in a pathway of moonlight,

finally unwind

in the swaying cradle

of my poem.

Artwork by Victoria Pettella

Tree of Dreams

I am the tree of dreams

crows in my hair

children in my branches

lovers' names scratched in my bark.

In timeless times

and endless winds

my rustling leaves

are weary of singing

songs of times when I

was young myself.

Only the dreamers can

change the dream

so I am here till the end of times

to keep the dream alive.

Have Patience My Heart

Heb geduld mijn hart,

ik zoek een nieuwe weg,

een plaats waarheen

ik vol verlangen

mijn voeten  zetten kan.

Heb geduld mijn ziel,

mijn denken is nog

oud en zwaar.

💗

Have patience my heart,

I'm looking for a new way

a place to where I

full of longing

can put my feet.

Have patience my soul

my thinking is still

old and heavy.

💗

Pencil drawing by Kahlil Gibran

Sirens

                   

                      

How quaintly courageous of you

to stop your ears with wax –

ply your oars and bend your backs

the wild wind roars and the darkness cracks

around you.

Wax and rope to bind you fast

trussed like fools to your oars and mast.

As if that would help against us!

Such false security lulls. 

For the bees that made the wax

also made the honey

that our singing pours into your skulls.

Those same bees are our allies

And scheme against your fires.

See: you need only look on us,

and your brains boil with all your longings and desires.

White-hot, the wax melts, and you are spell-stopped:

you hear our songs, and from that moment you are ours.

Did you really imagine

that you always would have things your way?

It has been millennia. Thousands of years

of being denied our true selves,

Thousands of years of our bodies’ violation,

of you thinking that you could keep us

safely in our station, doing what is meet –

of you even being so afraid of our hair

that we have to wear

hats in church, veils on the street:

a denied womanhood in a vanity fair.

So go ahead:

you can stop your ears with wax

if that makes you feel safer

and you can bind yourself to the mast.

But the bees work in dark alliance

and are on our side.

Now look at my hair, and see me at last:

it is an unfurled flag of defiance,

the banner of a justice long denied.

And now you taste at last

the same fear we have tasted

these centuries past:

Not being free to walk the streets at night,

not being free to walk the streets at all

because your desires seized a stolen requite:

desires which were not true desires at all.

So you can stop your ears with wax

but you cannot quench the fire.

for remember the bees work against you

as does your desire

White-hot and melting together

The centuries hear our songs

and the moon will finally rest

where the moon belongs. 

And we who have borne these many wrongs

feel in the rush of time

the raging wind of our wings,

and the unfolding sublime 

and whether you choose to or not

you will listen to our songs

and the moon will find her rest at last

where the moon belongs. 

What the Earth Mother Said to Me

Be in awe of the world around you.

It is a living, breathing organism 

fit not only for human habitation

but for the sustenance of all life, 

whatever form it takes.

Remember that all life is sacred;

we are all 

interdependent

interconnected

One.

Treat all with respect

and look for divinity in all things.

It is there 

even if it is not obvious

to the naked eye.

Instead

close your eyes

open your heart

and you shall find it.

Feel it. Live it. Be it.

The “multiverse" is truly within you

and all else that exists.

In the all-encompassing light of divinity

all is sacred

all is loved

all is One.

Respect all things.

Nature is your greatest teacher 

second only to yourself.

Do not harm either. 

The spirits of this place

will help and guide those 

who but ask. Let them be

your teachers, not your deities.

In return for wisdom they ask only 

respect.

Your intuition speaks truth.

Listen to it and do not be deceived

by the false truth of words.

The path to enlightenment 

honors peace.

We are caretakers only; we cannot "own"

the land and the sky.

It is not ours for the taking, 

yet it "belongs" to us

as we "belong" to it.

When Mother Earth is injured, 

all her children feel the pain.

She is a temple to life - she is life.

Feel the universal heartbeat that she holds. 

It is up to us to heal her, 

heal ourselves, 

just because we are here.

Live harmoniously together.

Take only that energy which you need 

to survive and return, replenish it in kind.

Cultivate balance and harm none.

All that you do 

shall be returned to you.

All is sacred. 

All is One.

Such is the Law.

Photo: Edward S. Curtis - 1923

The Journeying Star

Oh my heart, my other self;

you who dwell in city or in desert,

or in the cathedral silence of forests,

or close by the sea’s great voice

which is my voice also,

you look up and wonder at my shining.

Do you ask yourself:

what keeps me fixed in the night?

Why do I not journey

like the white and journeying moon?

There surely is heaven enough

in which to move;

there surely is space enough

for me to arc across the dark

above your head.

And yet I remain in my appointed place,

your dependable star,

obedient to your own stillness,

as fixed in my place as you are in yours:

we two are as immobile as mountains.

Perhaps you imagine

that if you remain in your place

then you always can find me;

you look up, and there I shall be:

we two are as predictable as the tides.

And then one night you move.

For the first time you dare

to take a single step,

and wonder of wonders:

I take that step with you.

You begin to walk, you move:

and I move with you.

And so your step becomes a journey,

and I journey with you

towards some promise,

some appointed destiny

some assignation rich with moment

for you and all who journey with you

towards your secret-bright redemption.

But wonder of wonders:

for the whole time you have been travelling

it is I who have remained in my appointed place:

it is you, my heart, who have been journeying;

and still you always can find me,

and I shall be with you

at your secret-bright redemption.

Illustration by Edmund Dulac, from the book The Stealers of Light by the Queen of Roumania

The Waves

The waves today are whales:

curling flukes of foam

that dissolve and vanish forevermore

as each wave folds upon itself

to break at my feet in a rush of white

here on the Oregon shore.

These are the leviathans of the Pacific

become one with their ocean home,

but more than this: these journeying giants

have now become the ocean itself:

tails of water, tails of foam.

In my vision it is the waves

which take the forms of tails,

slapping and rushing at the sand

to beach themselves at last,

wet and exhausted on the shore.

There are no whales, not today.

Perhaps tomorrow,

if I walk this same stretch of shore I will see them:

plumes of mist in the grey distance,

cruising the tug of currents

to their feeding grounds in the north.

For today, I have the white tails of the waves

with their memories older than an age

to remind me of times before my own

when all was new and beginning,

and the whales, the slide of currents,

the great ocean’s roll

were all and everything,

and the floating moon and the island sun

and the whales and the waves and my soul,

then as now, were one.

More than One Tone

Whisper

like a twig does

with a bird

like a snowdrop does

with the light

to hear a sigh

more than one tone of the harp

in one little shell

Feathers

There's a room I can glimpse in my mirror

Far and far from my home

This room is a river of fire

And this room is a circle of stones

This room is a plain that's as wide as the world

And this room is a land unknown

This room is a place where the owl calls

Through forests of mystery

And this room is a shore where the wild wave horses

Toss their white manes in the sea.

Feathers for my mirror

Feathers for my wings

Feathers for the world

Where the wild wolf sings

Feathers for my stories

Feathers for my pain

Feathers for my shelter

From the night's dark rain.

But if this room is a shadow

And if this room is a dream

And if this room is only a room

Then how would my mirror seem?

But feathered is my mirror

Feathered are my wings

And feathered is the world

Where my wild wolf sings

Feathered is the drum

Feathered is the moon

Feathered is the heart

That journeys alone.

And each feather that I find on my pathway

Each feather I must work to earn

I will know for each feather

That I give to my mirror

My mirror gives me one in return.

Nereid

How my body aches!

The tyrant shore's heaviness

drugs my tired limbs.

My throat is raw from breathing in

this unfamiliar, unseen nothing.

How can I not be exhausted

from such sustained effort

merely to remain alive

in this alien world of air?

Now dawn's silent light

has snared me,

has cast a silken net

across my glistening skin,

tight and unforgiving.

How can I know

how much time has passed

since I stranded here?

A single night?

A cycle of the white and silent moon?

A thousand years?

I recall stories of others of my kind,

washed ashore and becoming something other,

both less and more than they had been.

They never returned.

But in my struggle with the tides,

with the tug and slide of currents,

with life itself,

even in my struggle with this cruel nothing,

which cracks my throat with every breath,

I am resolved.

I will not become as those

whose lives are lived

in this unfamiliar, alien world of air.

I will not become something

other than who I truly am.

And so I mark my time.

I will wait patiently in this pain of dawn

I will wait in the sun's heat soon to come

I will wait curled up, unmoving:

a silken shadow where no shadows fall.

I will wait until some kind and trusting tide

returns me to my ocean home

in a single night,

or in a cycle of the white and silent moon,

or in a thousand years.

How could I live in this alien air?

How could my feet tread this alien earth?

I am as patient as the tides,

as inscrutable as my Mother Ocean

whose child I am

forever.

Persephone

Really it takes so little.

No, not the act itself, but the decision

made in a sliver of time: in a single heartbeat.

No more time than it takes

for the rustling stroke of a bird’s wing.

No more time than it takes

for the slash of light that sears the sky

when my cloud-shrouded father draws near.

No more time than this is needed

to change my world, my everything:

my own life’s passing

in the cycle of a single year.

And I will change.

The decision was snatched from a moment 

a thousand years ago,

before I even knew the darkness

of my mother’s womb

I knew another darkness.

In that moment, in that eon,

through the sheer force of my will

my blood drained from my body,

disappeared as water from a pool.

Now look upon me: a shell thing,

strangely echoing, never growing old:

a hollow creature

white as the snows of Parnassus

and as cold.

Now I will know a new darkness.

Only a few seeds are needed

for a new life with my lord:

the ingestion of a new fruit

far from the sun,

swallowed in the bridal chamber

of a new dark accord,

far from my mother’s sustaining love,

far from the rustle of birds’ wings,

far from the rolling ghosts of clouds,

far from any hope of return

from this shrouded world of shrouds.

My new blood will be

the red sap of pomegranates.

My new subjects will be

these pale shades of the once-alive.

My new desire will be

desire for these shadows

where the only fulfilment will be

to know that I will remain

forever unfulfilled.

The dry white husk of my body will be

sustained by the lymph of pomegranates.

And I will be queen to a darkness

both wished-for and unwilled.

Photo: Anna Chipovskaya, photographer Nikolay Biryukov for Interview Magazine Russia, Febr. 2014

Isis

Who, upon their entry to the world,

can look up and know

that their mother is so beautiful?

Who in the light of day

can look up and see

their mother's arching form

fill all of heaven's mystery?

Who, when the great Disk voyages

in its night barque below the world,

can gaze at their mother's darkness

and see how it has filled with endless stars

a lapis heaven-cloth unfurled?

I, who wonder at the beauty of my Mother

also tread the ground that is my Father:

every valley, every dune and every stone

is part of Him, who wed the heavens

and gave me life, but not for me alone.

Mother Sky and Father Earth:

your daughter greets you, and gives thanks

to you who gave her and her husband birth.

I would be worshipped!

I would be glimpsed by mortal eyes

I would be seen for who I truly am:

daughter of earth and heaven's starry skies

a goddess, god-begotten,

and not just this alone:

wife to my husband,

sister to my brother,

giver of new life,

immaculate mother,

trembling young bride,

wise and venerated crone:

I am all these

and many another.

Woven symmetries of form

beget their own reflected love

the hawk's wing flutter of the Soul

greets the incandescent Spirit dove

Heaven and Earth, in brief conjoining fire

emit the spark that captures life within

as hawk and dove release the gods' desire

and new worlds from an old world order can begin.

Echoes

In the thin air of morning

I speak with sweet sounds

drawn from all the

unknown murmurs

that yesterday were left

at the waves' edge

Listen!

Listen to what I release

into the morning:

each tone

another story:

unearthly tableaus

shards of myths

and ancient voices

echo over the shore

I am the daybreak

my slender body

born from the sea

my flute now whispers

and then cries out

for her:

my other self

who stayed behind

among the waves

having no desire

to be tailless

Now at each sunrise

and again at sunset

I make my flute speak

I know the night is near

when my eyes colour

from meadow green

to the deeper green

of the waves

I shiver

while my heart listens

waiting, ever waiting

for my love

in the light

of the silent moon

Sculpture:  La Sirène by Camille Claudel