I was looking at the High Priestess yesterday, which I have hanging in my office, and thinking about the strange journeys I’m taking in my dreams lately. Of course, the Oracle sees all.
water sings of how
the goddess ship shines
through the seashadow
of the moon
the language of sleep
swims beneath the skin
of time–
recalling mothermusic
in wind-whispered light
if I could
unknit, remove these
protective
layers—un
knot the tangled breach—release
all I think I know,
return to
pause—recollecting,
listening
to the air
breathing in voices, called by
the resonance of
forest songs,
expanding into
organic
wondering–
(time knows its own creations–
unburdened by clocks,
the display
of exactitude)–
instead, re
placing all
measurement with one quivered
spiraling motion—
I wish to
sing odes composed by
trees—to be
answered not
with thoughts or questions, purpose
or pondering—but
to embrace
my own ring-years—to
follow the
journey of
each tree season, entering
what only seems closed
because I
choose to remain un
asked—having
forgotten
how to merge, integrate my
elemental core
For earthweal, a shadorma chain about elements.
I’ve been taking my portfolios out of the storage room to photograph and archive all the art I’ve accumulated over the past 50 years. In my late 20s and early 30s I did a lot of collage in series, very different (as you can see) from what I do now. These are all from the Wood series. Besides the art there were also some (bad) poems written around collages. But there were phrases worth exploring.
I combined a poem from 1983 with one from 2018 using synonyms for Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday words, change and grow, and some of the words from Jane’s Random Word List.
The collages are interesting, even if they mostly don’t seem very wood-like to me now.
Nothing
remains, except
this quickened memory–
how brief and wondrous it was, that
first love
A cinquain for Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday, with the photo prompt above by Terri Webster Schrandt.
Frank @ Beach Walk Reflections posted this week about love. His meditations always make me think of music and I considered all the love songs I knew, and how difficult it was to capture the essence of love in words. This morning I put on Donovan’s Fairy Tale album and the first song, “Colours”, struck all the right chords, as it had when I first heard it 50 years ago, conjuring that time and space in my life when the complexities of the future did not yet exist. Ephemeral, but nonetheless still very real, even now, from this far away country where I presently reside.
My message from the Oracle. It made me think of two collages (based on a painting by Ilya Repin) I did for one of Jane’s long-ago prompts, but when I went searching I could only find one of them.
can you bring stars
to awaken my ghosts
into the eye of morning?
I am longing for magic sails
to open me out from myself
like a window of liquid time
so I can remember how the ocean
became unbroken—a healing breath
reborn—surrounded by salty air
It was almost black,
the river serpentine—
everything looked like it was
coated in silver, much bigger
than he imagined, as if
the surface was somehow
a river of birds. The moon
was right there, and every
part of it, calling.
It’s an ancestral memory,
a sound he remembers
from before he hears it.
How dark the water was,
prehistoric, too loud,
flung forward
as the wave broke.
The sky slips from peach
to garnet to blood.
Who can say?
Life is long out here.
Laura at dVerse asked us to alternate lines from one page in each of two books and construct a patchwork poem. My sources were:
“The Echo Maker” by Richard Powers, page 422
“Duplex” by Kathryn Davis, page 152
body mind time
collaborations
concealing
revealing
light line shadow surface trace
inhabitation
reshaped by
fragmented motion
like shadows
like mirrors
reflecting and following
the moon caught shining
left exposed
particles disguised
by outlines
beclouded
by time by futures eclipsed
by the dance of stars
A quadrille for dVerse, where De has provided us with the word star.
The Oracle’s message today called for the birdlings.
between night
and the hour that fills
the spirit
with wingsong,
be as if joined together–
skydancing the light
My message this morning from the Oracle. I woke once again to clouds, but the sun is shining now.
spring winters
deep beneath the riverpath–
a dark season
thicker than dusk
did you fall moonwandering
into the long night?
or were you too bird-rooted
and windwild to see? that
earth also breathes light–
full of treesong, growing in-between
The art is from NaPoWriMo 2018, when all my accompanying artwork was inspired by painter Joan Mitchell. I haven’t thought that far ahead this year; this April, I’ll just be visiting the archives for art I think.
stardust embodied–
matter merely a vessel
for luminous spirit–
did you find what was lost?
the spiraling center
returned to elemental form–
in life but not of it–
stardust embodied
opening into dreamtime,
orbiting the moon,
spinning to the farthest away–
matter merely a vessel
empty spaces crossing
infinite galaxies–
wings sailing oceans
of luminous spirit
a welcoming heart, a gentle touch,
warm arms to enclose you
in peaceful sleep–
did you find what was lost?
I did these embroidered watercolors and accompanying poem for the Kick-About prompt that asked us to look at the Père Lachaise Cemetery. My response was inspired by the Jewish Children’s Memorial, below.
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
In memory of all our lost children, all those without homes. The numbers grow larger every day.
K. 