Monthly Archives: June 2017

Big

by

Akira

The tree is full this year.
Hailstorm and early frost
retreated. Branches held
tight to buds and filled
my shade, round and luscious.
Only a mosaic of muted rays peak
through ample arms holding
their inheritance, the DNA
of trees.

She is a dancer, substantial,
arms not bony but full of
life, elegant reaching, touching,
telling their story.
She is big, her stomach round
but throws no shade, only light
unexpected, someone who
is not supposed to be.
DNA proud and strong,
pops and taps consummate
her power.

The tree holds nothing back,
buds twice, maybe thrice,
if storm is strong, returning.
There is no fear, just pure
being, a place embedded in
Earth’s impartiality.

She makes space for those
who have been smudged.
She moves through this sphere,
no grief thrown.
She shines so others
can be.

 

 

Author’s Note:

For us.

Arika Armstrong

 

Roxanne  GayDoyle_Roxane_Gay_Bad_Feminist_850_593.jpg

Equilibrium

by

 

IMG_5538.JPG

Author’s Note:

To my lovely followers I must apologize. I want to let you know why I haven’t posted in quite a while. I’ve been busy on this project.

Another apology. This post is loooooong. However, if you have the time, I would love for you to stick with it….

After two months of writing every day – Poetry Postcard Month and National/Global Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo) – I finally feel comfortable sitting down and writing every day. As a matter of fact, I miss it when it doesn’t work out. I even get a bit grumpy. Not that all the work is good. That’s not the point. I am finding that the more I put down, the more I see. And that is good.

To continue to challenge myself, I am taking a class called Play It Forward sponsored by Tweetspeak Poetry. It is a twelve-week course to help shake me up a bit. I’ve been looking for new inspiration lately. I feel I’ve gotten too serious, or am on the edge of the nefarious “writer’s block.” And I thought this would plunge me into a deep cool pool where I can splash and play and see through some new lenses.

I was right about new lenses. We do play, but the work is deep.

We have weekly themes and an array of resources to experience. Also, taking an “Artist’s Date” weekly as described in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way is mandatory. This playtime has proven to be rich and fun.

A few weeks ago, our theme was “extremes” and after an Artist’s Date to the Denver Art Museum, I began this project. I plunged into the extreme of the Moon and her cycles – it was a full moon when I started – and my relationship to Spirit. I soon hope to have an Artist’s Statement to accompany the piece.

It combines my photography with my poetry, quotes and definitions. It combines science with Spirit and art. It is done in pencil, ink, and images are manipulated in PicMonkey. It is on recycled drawing paper sized 18’x24′. Framing TBD. I know what I want, but it is a bit larger than when I started out and I need to adjust.

It’s hard to explore the words from the photo. So I below are the images which my poetry encircles, and the definitions, quotes, and labels.

unnamed-4

Equilibrium

apogee/1

There are birds
at four thirty am
and I am beckoned
from my
deep colorless
silence
to join
in their raucous
anointing of
dawn.

apogee/2

Nil,
void. I
begin there and
I hear you.
From nothing, a
beat, infinite pulse,
our indissoluble
song.

equilibrium/3

In balance
I step hoop’s thin path
like a circus act
where there is no net
only balance
around I spiral
from center
to eternity
our parity

perigee/4

Coming near
closer with all I am
all I own
in the aloneness of being
in the amplitude of that
which enclaves me
I find you
where you’ve
always been
not out
but within

perigee/5

and we dance
to the rhythm
that hums and
chants our constancy
evergreen

 

Yahweh/YHWH
Breath of Life
When we are born,
YH, our first breath.
When we die,
WH, our final release.

 

Definitions

 plural noun: foci

  1. the center of interest or activity.
  2. the state or quality of having or producing clear visual definition.
  3. one of the fixed points from which the distances to any point of a given curve, such as an ellipse or parabola, are connected by a linear relation.

An apsis is an extreme point in an object’s orbit.

An equilibrium point is a constant solution to a differential equation.

A differential equation is a mathematical equation that relates some function with its derivatives. In application, the functions usually represent physical quantities, the derivatives represent their rates of change, and the equation defines a relationship between the two.

For any satellite of Earth including the Moon the point of least distance is the perigee and greatest distance the apogee.

-gee Origin of the word: Gaia

Equilibrium, mental or emotional balance; equanimity

apsides, either of two points in an eccentric orbit, one farthest from the center of attraction, the other nearest to the center of attraction.

Quotes

They live in wisdom
Who see themselves in all and all in them,
Whose love for Spirit has consumed
Every selfish desire and sense craving
Tormenting the heart…
When you move amidst the world of sense
From both attachment and aversion freed,
There comes the peace in which all sorrows end.
And you live in the wisdom of Self…
The Bhagavad Gita

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. 
And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. 
The world will not have it.”
Martha Graham

We each have a tone or note that combines with the notes and tones of the rest of life to create a universal song.
Sandra Ingerman

When we surrender the need to figure it all out and cultivate the ability to let it all in, then our Earth walk becomes a sacred dance of healing service on the planet. More than the world needs saving, it needs loving.
don Oscar Miro-Quesada

Labels
foci
Earth
Moon
apogee
perigee

 

Thirteen Crows

by

Mom's Iris.jpg

Why do thirteen crows,
lifted high above my head,
circle round and cry out,
then proceed southwest to a
grey bank of clouds
hiding our late spring sunset?

Why do more follow, then more,
until they number
twenty one in count,
wings dip and lift
along their way
to the place of their final arrival?

What I think is the last
to bring up the rear,
this loner does gyre once more,
does she call for me
to join in dance, no…
another circumscribes
to lead them away,
his job to assure full assemblage?

In the midst of lawn mowing and
basketball thumps,
sky turns back to its stillness,
and why do I remember
to retreat to my purpose,
not fleet of wing
but solid surefooted,
mom’s iris in hand,
lone survivors of hail,
to find the vase
of their vestige?

Author’s note:

I was charged with the quest to ask questions.

At first I wasn’t aware of my questions. I was to think back to childhood and find the question that has woven itself through time. Why am I not aware one?

As a child, an only one, I played by myself, with a constant, one-sided conversation. I had no one to talk with but myself. Was it a flow of words instead of a question?

I was a good girl. I never questioned. There was no need. What little I asked for, I received. If I didn’t, I went on my way. I never remember an anger or pout for not getting what I requested. Did I ever ask why or why not?

After some thought, I begin to remember where questions did place themselves, as I listened in church. Ah, yes. These questions have always been with me.

Why is God so mean to make his son suffer on the crucifix like that?
Why can’t women be priests?
Why can’t I crown Mary instead of the daughters of the people who are on the “ins” with the priest?
Why are nuns so mean?
Why did the priest try to molest my grandmother?
Why are priests molesting children?
Why are women not equal to men if we are all made in the image of God?
Why…

It was only until a few years ago approaching my sixtieth year, I finally acknowledged these questions and answered them. Study after study, book after book, I finally found a small group who helped me.

The answers are within, not without. Look there, there is God.

And I walked away from organization realizing I had to believe their creeds, not God’s, but theirs, if I wanted to belong, and I couldn’t any longer.

I walked into nature, what little there is where I live, but more than I imagined. I journeyed and found tribe. I rattle and drum, sing and chant, and listen. Oh, mostly listen.

I found meditation and quieted my mind, well, I try.

And there it was, not God as he is defined in the world I left, but Spirit in all, especially me. Because I was made in love, all of us are. There is nothing to be saved from, nothing to prove. And brokenness comes from not being able or not wanting to know the light inside, deep inside where Spirit resides in all.

And the loneliness I once felt sitting by myself in an ornate building with white words from only men to enlighten, has melted into stream, and lifted up through branches reaching skyward, and found companionship in the eyes of a doggie who prompts, “Let’s go, mom, there’s sniffin’ to do!”

And the crows and the iris and the basketball and the lawnmower speak Spirit and oneness, duality erased, and that quiet whisper I now hear helps me know we are all are One, all will be well.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

“In this vision he showed me a little thing,
the size of a hazelnut, and it
was round as a ball. I looked at it with the
eye of my understanding and
thought “What may this be?” And it was
generally answered thus: “It is all that is
made.” I marveled how it might last, for it
seemed it might suddenly have
sunk into nothing because of its littleness.
And I was answered in my
understanding: “It lasts and ever shall,
because God loves it.”

Julian of Norwich,

from Revelations of Divine Love,
the first published book
in the English language
to be written by a woman. (1395)