My message this morning from the Oracle. My dream last night included lots of children–laughing, singing, and telling each other stories.
when the universe was young
born from color
and rhythm-kissed voices
singing open with ferocious joy
sacred fools danced into always
flying like cloud ghosts
dazzled with star magic
who lost the way to eternity
the secrets of sailing ocean skies
the heartbreath of how we are?
She did not remember the way, but she remembered the times, the place. She wanted to connect present to past. She did not know how or where to begin, and yet she needed to try to construct that bridge. Words were all she had now.
Two ways, really, even though she always pretended they were the same. Or maybe it was only her longing that failed to understand that they were two, not one.
She had been dreaming of a river. A man, a boat. Trees, weeping, or was that her own voice, crying on the wind? It had been summer once. Flowered. Sweet.
But here was the river again, littered with fallen leaves. What magic word would turn back the seasons, dispel the haze, repair a lifetime that had already disintegrated into dust?
Was she coming or going? In her dreams a voice kept repeating you have to choose. But between what? Who? Did she get to choose who would be waiting on the other side of the river? Or was she to be the one left waiting?
to begin,
become the current–
sing its song
Brendan at earthweal has more to say about rivers this week and poses the question: What voyages are found there, which deities are vast in its depths? It made me think of my response to the Kick-About #61 prompt, which was Molly Drake’s haunting song, “I Remember”.
I wasn’t aware of Molly’s connection to Nick Drake, but when I learned that she was his mother, Molly’s song immediately made me think of Nick’s song “River Man”. I took the feeling I got from both songs–a kind of remembering intertwined with uncertainty, loss, and the passing of time–and wrote the above prose poem, adding a haiku coda for earthweal, and some water art from my archives.
I visited the Oracle as usual early this morning, and her words so much reminded me of the NASA photos of Jupiter I saw recently that I did something I haven’t done in a very long time–I painted a piece of art especially for her words, rather than searching through my archives. It’s still wet, so the colors may change when it dries, and it doesn’t exactly resemble Jupiter, but it’s the spirit more than the exact image that I wanted to capture.
The cosmos is endlessly and unbelievably beautiful, despite the havoc humans may be imposing on our tiny and insignificant blue planet. A little perspective does the psyche good.
born in the blush
between air and breath
like laughter dancing naked
over oceans of ferocious life
the voice of the universe
embraces the holes
in our foolish desires
sailing them open
into a vast sky of magic nights
surrounded by dazzling stars
The sea gathers me in, keeps me between, a creature of neither water nor land, held forever inside spirals of moontides, echoing back into what is neither mine nor self.
Around and around the waves spin me along the path of an immense Möbius loop. I oscillate on the edge, barely there, beyond human sensing.
Deeper, extended, enhanced. I am in need of rendering. I am in need of being opened until the stars wrap around my core, untill all of me is whispered into music like light.
I absorb the flickering of images—felt but unseen, channeled within each breath, ungraspable. Always this interpolation, this blurring of what lies beyond as it merges into the finity of my body. Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings me into the place where my boundaries fall into the cosmic abyss.
For the dVerse prosery where Lisa has given us a quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes:
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:—
–from The Chambered Nautilus
The art is courtesy of various prompts from the Kick-About.
I tried to photograph the lightning–
the flash between the layers of sky—
(no thunder)
clouds streaming over the moon
how many miles distant?–
far away, too far away to hear—
a silent film that eluded my camera
so I let it go and let it shine
in bursts through the window
into and through my eyes
the color was salmon, maybe
yellow, maybe pink—a pastel
shimmering against the dark
eventually the moon disappeared
behind the false storm,
and only the city lights glowed–tiny
squares of refuge against the night
For this week’s challenge, Brendan at earthweal asks us to interrupt our usual programming with flashes and booms of this extraordinary power. Lightning falls: what are we going to make of that?
The Oracle is pensive this morning.
flowers are another always
that open and
then must be remembered–
they need love to bloom
like life itself
the language of a child
is a song filled
with wishspiritdreaming–
voices of belonging and finding home
I’m going to be taking a few weeks off–if we can all avoid the latest Covid wave, visiting with family, and taking care of some things I need to do. I’ll be back sometime in August.
Who provides the soundtrack
when the film ends,
when life is a series of missteps
made in solitude?
Who sings to you
(of love, mostly of all)?
Who puts wings on words
and conjures crows?
Who opens the day with robinsong?
Who walks with you like the wind,
rustlesoft through trees?
Who tells you that you are and are
beyond what you yourself can see?
Who puts your name in a sentence
with a smile, sailing it
on the rippled paths of rivers?
Who tells you what you could be
instead of what you are not?
Who gives you each day
as a gift meant to be shared?
Who reflects your eyes into the vast
silent sky and never questions
the validity of their light?
Who holds you together
and echos your voice across the void,
vibrating through your bones
until they are centered
in its starstrewn tides?
Who hums you the moon?
Who is always waiting no matter
where you go or what you do
to welcome everything about you
home?
For earthweal, where Brendan poses the question: What is this wild language in the deep forest back of our mouths? Mine is evidently riddled with more questions.
I fold my
questions into cranes
and send them
flying on
the wind—what hands will catch them,
pull them down, greet them,
unjumble
and complete their dreams?
wide, deep, clear,
cast to sky,
they celebrate–streams of stars
danced in waves of moon
A shadorma quadrille for Merril’s prompt of celebration at dVerse. I also used the words she generated from Oracle II. Above is the almost-full moon shining through my window last night.
My message today from the Oracle.
beneath the still shadowskin
sleep recalls the ache of summer skies
shot through with black tongues
I cannot sing now
in the music of moontime–
nor do I dream
in the language of the shining sun
how I ask and why?
if whispers the bloodwind
inside this mad motherless storm
K. 