Awakening

Something was born
in the flushed light of this morning
embraced the listening secret
that need never speak
fish-mute and as silver
moon-shining soft as first feathers.

Would we could we
make home in this woven grass nest
too big and damp for birds
with windows onto the slow painting
of landscapes tree-bowing
to the wind’s rhythmic urgings?

I remember times before
where ghosts walk now
they whisper

dance upon the green grass
dance away the dark into day.

Life and joy are not supine peaceful pleasures
but fierce as oceans wild as open skies
demanding as the voice of a newborn child.


I am posting the Oracle’s message to earthweal’s open link.

Sweet sadness

The Oracle sent me an unexpected message. Not sure what to make of it.

I dream of milk and honey,
water playing on smooth stone,
diamond droplets.

I smell the scent of roses
climbing to the sky
a thousand summers high.

I cry for the child grown into a man,
who no longer needs the comfort
of my hand to hold,

and the sun of his growing,
strong and tall as roses,
is shadowed by this sweet rain.

Strange nights

photo ©Jessie Eastland

This is about the dark dance
the ghosts that devour eternity
green nights that growl low
beneath northern lights
and you who wake
when the morning is still a dream
and the ice not melted on the black water.

Red sun rises
bleeding into clouds
flowers decay beneath the blue
and the eye of the black hole sweeps over this earth
sucking its heart from the grass
the steely smoke of city skies.

You ask where the fire went from the night sky
and is there always poison in the smile
of those who call themselves gods.

I have no answers
I never found my way home
the dance left me in a slipstream
where birds are stars and stars are ghosts
and we all fly wild as wind
into that green night.

I’ll wait for you there.

Morning song

The song springs like light on the sea,
driving away the purple shadows
of lingering dreams.

Dawn sings, pink-petalled,
in the winding ears of shells,
and the blood in my head
rings with forest birds.

I ask, what did the moon whisper
in the still of the night,
in the water-tongue of storm and stream?

Listen to the dew diamond-drop, she says,
into the bowl of the first rose of summer,
to the feather-soft falling
of the robin’s egg, new-hatched,
to the rain soothing the burning skin of the sky,

watch the answer grow
in the steps of the red goddess,
in the rising milk of the ewes,
the green juice of the trees.

And in this wind
that blows in the morning,
sails the moon and the stars
across the dark sea of night,
I hear.

Magnets repel as well as attract

Once again, I knocked on the Oracle’s door and read the first page in the book, and the words that jumped out were the words I never use. Before I concentrated on finding the poem, I noted down some of these unusable words, then the words that I could use, just out of curiosity.

Words that never inspire:
boy egg butt peach puppy lust sausage candy cake bug baby angel sex pie caramel

words that always inspire:
dream lie head play say run raw spring spray smear skin still want water sky drink voice

words rarely used:
men woman god goddess sister brother son concrete

Conclusion:
I am drawn to the abstract and natural, and I am totally uninterested in food, divinities and heart-warming or just plain human relationships.

The painting is by Odilon Redon (again).

Heartache

This broken sky pours its sadness
to sop and slop hollow earth,
its salt tears gnawing.

You ask, can wounds heal so deep, so far,
if we reach into the blue
and close the lips with a kiss,
listen to the words and remember the song?

We’ll dance, I say, let the breeze bring comfort,
fly over flower-grass spangled
with cast-off stars of old night,

open the window
to the stream of waking laughter,
and join the singing voices of eternity.

Look beyond the shadows

Blue as above,
a dream lies crushed by indifferent feet
to the music of rain falling,
wind sighing and tides rising.

I ask will they return
the languid days of insouciance,
of moon-dancing where the storms never come.

She whispers light as mist,
so low I can barely hear,
The singing sky has lost its tongue
wind blows away the words
and blood runs black
as shadows on the sun.

But I feel the touch of fingers in my hair
she shows me light, poppy-red,
water flowing to an untroubled sea,
the ship beyond rose-tinted rocks
and you waiting.

Together we will be enough.

Change coming perhaps

beneath these trees I sit
waiting for the storm
listening to its dark beat
carried on the wind
echoes of heaving waves

dull grass
deep as repressed desire
rolling grey as winter oceans
and the ghosts of lost sailors
calling

I listen for the night leaving
in the blustery sky
where ice melts slow as fading stars
and feel the earth wake
flower-red

Just be, now

Be as you are
beneath the layers of seeming,
where spring water runs in your veins,
and diamonds are just dreams,
intangible as music of the moon
and the storm’s scream.

Don’t do, not yet, there’s more.

All things wax and wane
life ephemeral as the purple hue at sunset
as wind trembling poplar leaves
rain-whisper and the moist brush of mist.

Time gathers all back
into the first cradle of beauty
blood bone sadness and joy
and the hope of creation.

Impending birth

I remembered that today is Saturday, Oracle Day and she gave me a lovely one!

Behind the banal, the breath of a child,
scented with the meadows of the other side,

red sky and blue laughter among the ghosts,
mother, father, through the mists, drawing you close

to break like day, like waves on a shore in green and gold,
pulsing with the light of the world, the music of the heart,

and your mother’s belly bleeds flowers
with no thorn, night-velvet, star-bright—

no words too wild
to poem this birth.

Sky ship waiting

I asked the Oracle for her thoughts on the end of the year. It was a strange message with a strange ending, but appropriate I suppose for this strange year.

Bloody sky bed heaves,
a swollen sea above,
and behind the mad clouds,
mother moon rises, a rose opening,
casting her sweet shadows
through the whispering rain.

All about is black and bare,
gowned in dark water running,
but there is light shining,
singing in a thousand tongues,

and as the rose opens, pink petals
turning to purple as they fall,
I hear her speak.

You you you are here and now,
hearing the year’s music
smoothing the path to spring.

The sky ship awaits
to steer us through the storm.

As we were, we are and will be yet.