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

Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…

In life after life, in age after age, forever.

My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,

That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,

In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,

Its ancient tale of being apart or together.

As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,

Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:

You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.

At the heart of time, love of one for another.

We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same

Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell..

Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you

The love of all man’s days both past and forever:

Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.

The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours..

And the songs of every poet past and forever.

Rabindranath Tagore

*

A Wordless Song

In the depth of my soul there is a wordless song 

A song that lives in the seed of my heart. 

It refuses to melt with ink on parchment; 

It engulfs my affection 

In a transparent cloak and flows, 

But not upon my lips. 

How can I sigh it? 

I fear it may mingle with earthly ether; 

To whom shall I sing it? 

It dwells in the house of my soul, 
In fear of harsh ears. 

When I look into my inner eyes 

I see the shadow of its shadow; 

When I touch my fingertips 
I feel its vibrations. 

The deeds of my hands heed its presence 

As a lake must reflect the glittering stars; 

My tears reveal it, as bright drops of dew 

Reveal the secret of a withering rose. 

It is a song composed by contemplation, 

And published by silence, 

And shunned by clamor, 

And folded by truth, 

And repeated by dreams, 

And understood by love, 

And hidden by awakening, 

And sung by the soul. 

It is the song of love; 

What Cain or Esau could sing it? 

It is more fragrant than jasmine; 

What voice could enslave it? 

It is heart bound, as a virgin's secret; 

What string could quiver it? 

Who dares unite the roar of the sea 

And the singing of the nightingale? 

Who dares compare the shrieking tempest 

To the sigh of an infant? 

Who dares speak aloud the words 

Intended for the heart to speak? 

What human dares sing in voice 

The Song of God? 

*

Poem and Painting

by

Khalil Gibran

Persephone Speaks

I knew

from my dreams of stone temples, death, and

a dark potent God,

that I would go. 

Slipping away from my mother,

I gathered my bridal bouquet from her fragrant fields

and sat alone

where Narcissus blooms,

watching,

waiting

for the earth to crack. 

Nothing….

Nothing moved but the wind on the grasses

and Apollo’s watchful eye.

So I reached for a blossom

and firmly pulled its roots from the soil.

Then,

something. 

Something...

came from beneath

and violently pulled me down...

down through a dark passage

of moist blackness,

and tangled roots,

until I lay beside the underground river, silent and deep. 

He waited for me there in the dim light...

Hades, dreadful Lord of the Underworld.

My mind, racing with fear, voicelessly cried out,

“Oh Gods!  will I die here?”

In the frozen silence

his powerful horses stamped and pulled at their reins,

their hot breath steaming the cold air,

but his eyes were steady and piercing,

formidable,

yet patiently asking,

“Are you willing?  Are you ready?” 

Something….

something made my blood run hot

and I reached up.

He pulled me close with one great arm,

and with the other

drove the chariot

hard into the river

beneath the murky waters. 

I cannot tell what happened in the depths,

you must go there yourself,

but I will say this:

I emerged completely changed.

Pregnant with new wisdom and new life. 

And so, I came into the Land of the Dead as their Queen.

The pitiful shadows there,

rejected and feared by the world above,

moved my heart.

Long I looked upon each one,

that I might understand

the pain of neglected children

wanting only to be seen and heard. 

I looked,

and I listened. 

It seemed only a moment had passed since my descent

when a messenger arrived from Zeus.

Thinking I had been abducted,

Demeter refused to tend the Earth.

Hermes had come to take me home...

a place I’d almost forgotten. 

Knowing I had to go, my dark God did not rage...

as some have reported..

but asked for my return, and in truth,

I had no wish to leave.

But, for the love of my Mother, and Life, I began my ascent.

For the love of my Husband, and Death,

I took the sacred pomegranate from his hand,

ate of it,

and promised him a part of every year. 

I came into the world through a sacred spring,

where the river rises to nourish the earth. 

All was desolate, barren, and cold.

Horrified, I ran to find my mother,

to show her I was safe,

to tell her what I saw.

With each step,

flowers burst forth,

and grass greened.

Demeter had felt my presence

and released the world from Winter.  

I am now a Goddess in my own right

and the world will no longer have eternal Summer,

I will not allow it.

There must be a dying off...

a descent into the shadowlands

to honor what has been lost

or killed...

and a rebirth from the seed of that

dark, moist realm. 

This is the Sacred Marriage of Life and Death.

This is the Secret of Creation.

This is the Eternal Mystery. 

*

by © Marilyn J. Meyer Owen

Painting: The Return of Persephone by Frederick Lord Layton

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.

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.

The Voice of the Ocean

Recently I visited Cape Lookout State Park on the Oregon coast:  a large peninsula which juts out into the Pacific. Standing at the entrance to the Cape I had a view of the ocean to either side, both to the north and to the south. On the north side lies a spectacular steep-sided bay which almost, but not quite, cuts the end of the Cape into an island. Being in such a place made me feel that I was standing at the edge of the world, and what lay beyond was all unknown and still to be discovered.

Now let's imagine that this landscape is a landscape made of time - which in some real sense, it is. Let's say that the coast lying to the south is the past, and the coast to the north is the future, and where I was standing on the peninsula is the present moment. This is the familiar landscape of time in which we all stand, with the past flowing through the present moment towards the unknown future. But there is another 'time' beyond this: the 'time' of the great ocean itself. To the ocean this 'past-present-future' time is meaningless. The ocean is eternal.

In that magical place that I had stood, the world around me seemed to offer me a lesson: a reminder of the eternal - and oh, how easy it is to think of the ocean in such a way! The unhurried waves role onto the wide beach, and the waves are themselves just the surface signs of the currents and undertows which flow unseen beneath. And even though the depths of that ocean remained hidden to me, the moving waves hinted at what might be happening below its surface: migrating whales on their long journey down to the southern feeding grounds (Earlier in the week I saw them spouting offshore!) and other creatures of that watery world that live out their lives in the silence of those blue depths.

Now overhead a bright harvest moon is shining, big and pale gold, the colour of ripe grain - just the way a harvest moon should look! The seasons turn, the waves which I hear from my window as I type this roll in to the wide sandy beach, as they have done for a thousand years and more, and these reflections on my visit to the Cape can be harvested. Unseen below the surface, the great whales slowly onward under the moon. In my imagination I can hear their songs echoing from the depths like the great voice of the ocean itself, and I feel that, simply because I am thinking about them, a small part of me is journeying with them through that deep blue eternity.

On the Shore

 

Almost exactly one hundred years ago the photographer Edward S. Curtis recorded with his camera an elderly Chinook woman gathering clams on the Pacific shore. The woman, we believe, was the daughter of the great Seattle, and was known as Princess Angelina. Now a century later, just a little farther south of where that photograph was taken, I stand on that same shore gazing out over that same ocean.

That photograph which Curtis made has inspired and informed so much of my life and my own writing and poetry. It is the archetypal image of a lone woman standing on the shore. Even a short while ago and half a world away I could not have imagined that I would be standing here, but a dear friend has made it possible, and the wished-for unthinkable has happened. The pathways of our life’s journeyings, whether they are those which happen on a map or which take place inside ourselves, are in the end always unpredictable. We know this so well through experience. We make our plans and the gods smile at our naivety and send us off in another direction entirely. At times that other direction is something other than we would have wished for, and yet on other occasions – as has happened to me now – it can bring rewards the more remarkable exactly because they were unexpected.

How many other footprints have been left on this same Pacific shore where I now stand? Princess Angelina’s certainly, but also those of Sacagawea, the courageous young Shoshone woman who was the invaluable guide on the William Clark and Merriweather Lewis expeditions of exploration. It was the wish of Sacagawea to see the ocean, and – just once – she did. And what of the many 19th-century settlers who with their wagons followed the Oregon Trail west? Finally to have reached this same shore where I now stand must have seemed like a blessing indeed after facing and persevering with the many dangers and hardships of their long journey. But to those settlers the ocean also clearly defined the limits of that journey: unlike the frontiers of the land it was a frontier that was absolute. Thus far, said the Oregon shore, and no farther.

The distant waves which even now I hear from my window as I write this have rolled in from another east: from Japan, from China, from Indonesia. The ocean as well has its journeys, and the patterns of its travelling currents are more predictable than the patterns of human travels. And what of my own footprints which I leave here on this shore? They will have been washed away by those journeying waves even before today’s sun has set, and certainly long before I myself travel back home to the Netherlands. And yet I have peace and take strength from knowing that, even though our timing might be different, they at last have joined those of Princess Angelina and Sacagawea. What the waves erase so easily finds a more enduring place in the memory, and it is there that my fragile footprints in the Oregon sand will remain.

A Lover's Call

Where are you, my beloved? Are you in that little 

Paradise, watering the flowers who look upon you 

As infants look upon the breast of their mothers? 

Or are you in your chamber where the shrine of 

Virtue has been placed in your honor, and upon 

Which you offer my heart and soul as sacrifice? 

Or amongst the books, seeking human knowledge, 

While you are replete with heavenly wisdom? 

Oh companion of my soul, where are you? Are you 

Praying in the temple? Or calling Nature in the 

Field, haven of your dreams? 

Are you in the huts of the poor, consoling the 

Broken-hearted with the sweetness of your soul, and 

Filling their hands with your bounty? 

You are God's spirit everywhere; 

You are stronger than the ages. 

Do you have memory of the day we met, when the halo of 

Your spirit surrounded us, and the Angels of Love 

Floated about, singing the praise of the soul's deed? 

Do you recollect our sitting in the shade of the 

Branches, sheltering ourselves from Humanity, as the ribs 

Protect the divine secret of the heart from injury? 

Remember you the trails and forest we walked, with hands 

Joined, and our heads leaning against each other, as if 

We were hiding ourselves within ourselves? 

Recall you the hour I bade you farewell, 

And the Maritime kiss you placed on my lips? 

That kiss taught me that joining of lips in Love 

Reveals heavenly secrets which the tongue cannot utter! 

That kiss was introduction to a great sigh, 

Like the Almighty's breath that turned earth into man. 

That sigh led my way into the spiritual world, 

Announcing the glory of my soul; and there 

It shall perpetuate until again we meet. 

I remember when you kissed me and kissed me, 

With tears coursing your cheeks, and you said, 

"Earthly bodies must often separate for earthly purpose, 

And must live apart impelled by worldly intent. 

"But the spirit remains joined safely in the hands of 

Love, until death arrives and takes joined souls to God. 

"Go, my beloved; Love has chosen you her delegate; 

Over her, for she is Beauty who offers to her follower 

The cup of the sweetness of life. 

As for my own empty arms, your love shall remain my 

Comforting groom; your memory, my Eternal wedding." 

Where are you now, my other self? Are you awake in 

The silence of the night? Let the clean breeze convey 

To you my heart's every beat and affection. 

Are you fondling my face in your memory? That image 

Is no longer my own, for Sorrow has dropped his 

Shadow on my happy countenance of the past. 

Sobs have withered my eyes which reflected your beauty 

And dried my lips which you sweetened with kisses. 

Where are you, my beloved? Do you hear my weeping 

From beyond the ocean? Do you understand my need? 

Do you know the greatness of my patience? 

Is there any spirit in the air capable of conveying 

To you the breath of this dying youth? Is there any 

Secret communication between angels that will carry to 

You my complaint? 

Where are you, my beautiful star? The obscurity of life 

Has cast me upon its bosom; sorrow has conquered me. 

Sail your smile into the air; it will reach and enliven me! 

Breathe your fragrance into the air; it will sustain me! 

Where are you, my beloved? 

Oh, how great is Love! 

And how little am I! 

*

Text and Artwork

by

Kahlil Gibran

Predestination

In  my
 mind I need only to hear

that soft rush and sigh

of imagined waves at my feet,

feel the wash of wet sand

and hear the harsh cry of sea birds.

In that imagined moment

I am there once more.

I search for her, my eyes straining

in the white light of a thousand morning stars

as the sun strikes sparks from the breakers.

And I wait, and I wait

to glimpse her amazing Otherness.

At times I wonder:

will I see her now?

Although secretly I know the truth:

she will be there somewhere

for she waits for me also.

Patiently she waits

as she has waited for a day,

or a year, or a thousand years,

knowing that I will come,

knowing that our meeting

has already been inscribed

in the fixed patterns of stars,

even though those same stars

are now dimmed by the day’s white light.

How could I not love the sea?

I, a landsman with a mariner’s heart.

How could I not love the very thing

that I know is so dear to her?

How could I not love her true home?

Those secret blue deeps

gave birth to her,

and to me also; but for that

I must journey further back in time:

much further, to a world of silence

and ancient corals, and the beginnings of us all.

Her amazing Otherness fills my life,

fills my heart, as I have chosen her,

as she has chosen me,

for I have as my wife

The Woman from the Sea.

*

Written for me by my dear husband David

to commemorate our 30th wedding anniversary

Today, 7th May, 2016

*

Dancing under the Gallows

May 4,  Rememberance Day 1945 - 2016

In honor of Alice Herz-Sommer who has been a true inspiration to me.

"Music is God. In difficult times you feel it, especially when you are suffering."
~ Alice Herz-Sommer

I first came to hear of Alice Herz-Sommer in January 2009, while I was browsing through the biography section in our local book store, and this book, written by Melissa Müller, almost fell into my lap: "Etudes of Comfort" - and inside I read the original title in German: "Ein Garten Eden inmitten der Hölle - Ein Jahrhundertleben" (A Garden of Eden in the heart of hell - a life that lasted more than a century). 

Born in 1903 in Prague during the Habsburg monarchy, Alice grew up in a liberal family where authors, philosophers, painters and actors were regular visitors, among whom were Freud, and Kafka, who was like an elder brother to Alice. As a very young girl she discovered her love for music, and at twenty she was the most famous pianiste in Prague. She travelled through Europe to play in concert halls, until the Nazi regime ended her career. When her mother was deported in 1942, Alice fell into the deepest depression. To hold on to life, she decided to study all 24 piano etudes of Chopin.

Twelve month later, in 1943, then age 39, she and her husband Leopold and their 6 year old son Raphaël were deported to Theresiënstadt (Terezín). For propaganda purposes, Theresienstadt was the only camp in which children were not taken from their parents. It was a 'show-camp' for visitors from the Red Cross, simulating a rich cultural life amongst the inmates. As Alice recounted the experience: "We had to work all day. I only played when I had a concert. Music is so wonderful, it brings you into another world. You are not here anymore."

She gave over one hundred concerts in the midst of hunger, fear and death, and so gave strength and hope to her fellow captives. For her son Raphaël she created a world which helped him to forget camp life as much as possible. Her husband, who played the violin, was sent to Auschwitz in 1944. He died of typhus shortly before the end of the war. After the war she and her son returned to Prague. When Israel was founded, Alice moved to Jerusalem with Raphaël, who became a famous cellist. In 2001 Raphaël died in Israel during a tour. "He used to come every day to eat," she reminisced, "and he was still sitting afterwards and we spoke for hours. Wonderful relationship. He learned from me, I learned from him."

Alice Herz-Sommer had seen the worst life has to offer, having survived the holocaust and owing her survival to the talent she had been blessed with. She was a world famous pianist, recognised amongst musicians like Gustav Mahler (whom she apparently described as a "difficult character"), Antonín Dvorák, Josef Suk, and Vítezslav Novák. "I played especially Czech music, and they were thankful for what I did. Everywhere in the world I played Czech music. People loved it."

Even at the grand age of 107 Alice continued to play for three hours every day: "It's the most beautiful thing I have." Her favourite pieces were Chopins études and Schumann's Fantasia in C Major, which are also the ones she found the most difficult to play. But she started with Bach – "the philosopher of music." She worked hours to learn it by heart. "Bach is the hardest thing. Extremely complicated. I write it down sometimes, out of memory." 

"I have had such a beautiful life. And life is beautiful, love is beautiful, nature and music are beautiful. Everything we experience is a gift, a present we should cherish and pass on to those we love."

Alice Herz-Sommer expressed and conducted herself in the face of death and destruction with grandeur, spirit and humor. She died in London at the venerable age of 111 years,  Februari 23, 2014

Ocean Murmurs

In the light where you stand

There are no boundaries

between you and me;

only the white wakes

that mark the course 

of wandering seafarers:

lines all too soon erased

by my journeying waves.

My waves dashed and roared

as ashore you built your dreams

of fire and of pain

as at night you sang your songs

of sorrow and of gain.

I am a cradle of waves

for the one who dreams,

a mirror for the one who dives

and sees her own face

reflected in my own.

And my shells sing the stories

of these two faces

and these two lives:

the one who dreams

and the one who dives.

Listen, just listen

to the ocean’s voice

which is the only voice

through which I can speak to you

which is the only voice

through which you can hear me.

Lay your head on my shore

and take your time

take all the time you need

just lay your head on my shore

and hear my waves break

bringing you far stories 

with their murmurings.

Let me caress you, calm you

as the soft breathing of my waves

shifts the thin line of foam

from ebb to flow

giving light back to your face.

And the waves break

as the ocean breathes

and my shells speak

of ages past and an age begun

when the light and the mirror 

and the dream and the dreamer

are one.

Overview - Underwater Sculpture by Jason deCaires Taylor

Mare

Mare

On the strand

My gaze towards the sea

With you I feel at one

Words drift towards me on the wind

Then dryly fall

Dry as the sandbar in the distance.

A splash of sunlight on my shoulder

The muffled wash of incoming waves

Above which the shrill laughing

Children's voices tumble

And in the midst of all this tumult

The discovery

That stills all else to silence:

The great ocean

That seems to have no end.

Mare

A splash of sunlight on your shoulder

Your hair that shines

From the glinting, spattering water:

A mermaid.

I pick up the shell

That lies at my feet

A house, a deserted house

Of an animal:

Angel wing.

Sometimes I feel like the animal

Sometimes the house, the shell

Together with you.

Mare

Later, much later

The image drifts up once more

On the ocean of my dreams

Takes on different forms

But never, never again

As on that day

On which you and I

Formed an unshakeable one-ness

With the ocean

As in an ancient covenant.

God's Daughter

I am in love with God’s daughter.

She smiles at me in the glancing sunlight through the trees

She smiles at me in the tender thrust of an opening bud

She whispers to me from within the perfect singing of the small birds.

She loves me always.

I whisper: why does no one know your name?

I whisper: why are your tales not told?

Why are the stories forgotten?

Why are there no songs?

She sits with me, cross legged

And opens her eyes for me

My heart beating as I gaze into those eyes so soft, so true, so lovely, so loving

She answers me only with her open eyes and says:

You know the tales so true, 

you know the songs so lovely, 

you know the tunes so simple, 

so delicate so precious, 

they are not lost they are not lost, 

they are safe within your unspoken heart.

Safe within the unspoken night, 

the unspoken moon, 

the unspoken dawn,

we await the unspoken love of man.

Do not worry my brave son, my beautiful son, do not worry ..

The unspoken night is upon us and tomorrow dawns the newly spoken day

*

from 

Song of the Second Wind 

by Samuel Stillmore

Ave Maria

Ave Maria

Ave Maria, ave, ave!

Who has not sung this greeting

and entreated with heart’s weakened breath

for miracles fleeting?

Inexhaustible Well of Life

Mother Immaculate, Perfect One.

Did you your own misgivings feel

as mother to the Son?

Why do I not feel compelled

to worship you in childlike trust?

Perhaps because my own life’s course

treads a different and less certain dust?

Perhaps because the mother who was mine

kept distance in her own remote belief

as in unnourished solitude

I stood in silent grief?

Or perhaps because, a mother now myself,

I cannot work the miracles I need

to save my children from their pains 

and the rough desires of others’ greed?

Do I seek my own immaculate self?

Is that what binds me to you?

That you, in spite of everything,

allow me to draw near you?

Or is it that I wonder

at your own unquestioning belief

to bear your greatest miracle,

and in turn to bear your greatest grief?

Is this why others sing your name?

That in the arms of Grace

in sweet submission you agreed

to bear that blessed Face?

Oh Sweet Surrender, oh Sweet Awe

who teaches me the way

to live and also to let go of life:

Ave Maria, ave, ave!