moon

Anamnesis

Imagine your rivers calling
to the stars.  Imagine sleeping
beneath a midnight sky dreaming
through the unfiltered crescent moon,

your vessel rocking, lullabied.
Imagine your rivers calling,
echoing songs of vast darkness,
remembrances of ancient seas.

Imagine floating on silence,
the stillness between your heartbeats.
Imagine your rivers calling
you back to beginnings, the womb

of elemental conception–
currents of matter and spirit
inside indefinable light–
imagine your rivers calling.

For dVerse, where Grace has provided the quatern form. You know I like poetry with lines that repeat.

Oracle

Open the word list; allow the words to
roll around in your mind for awhile.  Pay
attention to the ones that jump out, that
correspond to intuition.  Observe;
listen; rearrange.  Coherence can be
encouraged, but best to follow Her lead.

Colleen asked us to write a syllabic acrostic for Tanka Tuesday from a list which included the word oracle. I have regular conversations with several of Her manifestations. And as Kate recently asked me to clarify what to do with the Random Word Generator (aka Oracle 2) that I post on Sundays, I decided to use my acrostic to give some general instructions. But really there are no rules.

The top collage uses the Collage Box Oracle, which is just a box of words I’ve cut out of various places that I pull out and arrange in a similar fashion to the Magnetic Poetry Oracle (seen in the second collage and here on Saturdays). For my acrostic I’ve used words from this week’s Random Word Generator as inspiration.

Our surroundings are always singing to us–all we need to do sometimes is be still and take the time to listen.

what do we really know?
the emptiness of space
the rhythm of light

the apparatus of death

Another stark message from the Oracle. But she also reminds us that even from inside what seems sometimes like endless darkness we can work for change.

with what shadow whisper
could the goddess soar
the skyship through this sea
of raw blood tongues
that scream only in the language
of me?

it is never too late
to ask why
after must be like before

sing as if you were one with moontime–
shining light into these black waters
of stilled life of a thousand unmet needs

“Beware of greedy leaders…they take you where you should not go.”

paradigms

the dark shifts into
wakefulness—I open eyes
to the clear calmness
of the moon—she understands
all languages of the night—

how to repattern
the spectered endings into
way stations—a pause
between shadows cast backwards and
those strung with celestial light

Off prompt for NaPoWriMo but on prompt for Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday where she asked us to capture a moment in the tanka form.

secrets follow

My message from the Oracle. The beginning came easily, but the rest transformed itself several times.

almost as if
here were wandering
between a path
and a shaded longing,
night becomes the murmur
of the birdforest wind–
the one that asks who,
listens like songlight–
the aftermath of why
within this tree-tendrilled moon

I hope to get to the NaPoWriMo prompt later today–but if not, this will have to suffice.

conclusions

vagabonding, I spin–
adrift on the edges of time,
casting reflections
like an afterthought—

adrift on the edges of a time
that whispers of ladders to the moon,
my chimerical bubbles burst,

casting reflections
steadily westward until
they become an abstraction,

like an afterthought–
carelessly lingering in the dreamless
realm of the rising sun

I’m sure you could calculate it mathematically, but the seemingly random appearances of the moon outside my window is a mystery to me. These were taken at dawn this month from my bedroom window, which faces south–but sometimes it sets outside my kitchen window to the west, and I see it while making coffee. Sometimes I only see it early in the night or in the middle of the night when it wakes me shining through the window. Sometimes it grazes the buildings, sometimes it’s so high in the sky I have to get right against the widow and look up in order to see it.

I like the way that last photo becomes an abstract composition of geometric forms.

Colleen asked us to to write about the view outside our window for Tanka Tuesday. I’ve written in the trimeric form. I’ve also used words from the Random Word Generator.

And here’s a recent sunset from the bedroom as well.

I’m lucky to have lots of sky.

Mezza Luna

I pause on the edge of dark, on the edge of light, my direction halted by uncertainty.  Between is a narrow ledge, a threshold balanced on an abyss.  Am I coming or going?  The end is also the beginning and all my questions are merely maps without roads.

I have become abstracted by an imagined journey in which seeking transforms into finding.  In which the visions that ripple my consciousness turn out to be real.  But what if matter is as transient as thought?

half-awake, spirit
splits, expands—crescent-mirrored
into cosmic tides

Frank at dVerse asks us to write a haibun referring to the Mezza Luna, the half or crescent moon. When I was looking for art for the post, I came across the collage at the top, which I used for another of Frank’s moon prompts a year ago.

I am always photographing the moon, so I had plenty of photos to choose from as well. The mirror effect in the first photo is caused by the window through which I shot the photo.

the stillness of why

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

Nowhere

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

harbinger

I had a long and complicated dream about Sue Vincent last night. I’m still trying to disentangle and figure it out. But the Oracle always knows what’s on my mind. After I visited Her, I looked for some art I had done for one of Sue’s prompts to accompany it. I knew immediately this was the one to use.

above
the rain do dreams
swim on light?  is that how
moon music recalls the language
of sea shadows
singing?

the blue of
darkness is
a blank canvas

from translucent music
comes
the shadow
of hope

moonbird rising
toward
the center of deep
light