Dream Meter

Posted on February 15, 2021 by J

The piece to follow is so new, I might still be able to tell you a little about what was going on as it was happening. To begin with, these verses are cast in a special meter, one that came to me in Big dreams when I was a teenage girl. I only use it when I want to recall the mysterious feeling the dreams brought.

One stanza from the songs my dream-muse sang to me came to the waking world intact. I wrote it down immediately after the dream that brought it, so I am fairly sure this is faithful:

Oh, the snows are falling, falling

and the trees will never bloom.

I am not mistaken, calling–

I am travelling in tune.

The only part I was uncertain of–he may have said, ‘Mine is not mistaken calling.’ It’s probably both at the same time, where poems and dreams come from. Everything’s at once precise and shifty and fluid around here.

That poem came to me in 1976. ‘On Flying There’ came today. I wasn’t consciously thinking of the content of the original, only its rhythm; today’s content came very quickly, as if it had been waiting. And so it was–it’s obvious now that one poem refers to the other. The Other World knows what I am going to do before I do, because time is not real and holds no sway there.

The mystics have had plenty to say about paradox, and the language of paradox. I run into it too. We mortals take so many problems to our guardians, higher selves, deities, and many of them are genuinely hard to bear. For consolation, they show again and again that they have to the power, and so have mortals if we look quietly enough within, to flip a terrible situation inside-out by revealing its ultimate outcome. Frustratingly, the information to make that work seems to be out of range from here too much of the time.

According to the paradox perspective, most of the self is Elsewhere anyway, and knows that All Shall Be Well; maintain contact with it, and see, as if through its eyes, that the pain was a dream that has an end, and we are already at and beyond the end. Near Death experiencers have shared many accounts of horrific accidents–they say they were out of the damaged body before they knew what had happened, and only returned to it afterwards. Paradox conveys the ongoing revelation that all these dreaming illusions tend to have a 180-degree opposite that can flip into view at any time. Who does the flipping is the question, but we have as many answers as we have aspects of ourselves. Think of the wrathful Tibetan dharma guardians and their snarling, raging faces, their hands wielding dangerous tools. One must confront them in order to get past their forbidding appearances. As soon as one does, they reveal their ultimate compassion. ‘Ultimate’ seems to be as challenging to reach as one’s will has strength to reach it–until things flip over again.

I will probably be considering more dignified language than ‘flip,’ but that’s what was going through my head today around the time I sat down to work today.

15 February 2021

20

On Flying There

When you see her hand a little

farther out than yours can reach,

close your eyes and let yourself be

such a softly falling leaf,

the air beneath it pillows, cradles,

gently drifts it higher–high

as any bird with wide wings racing

home before her final sigh

escapes its mortal tenement and

meets it halfway through the air

she’ll next draw in, alive with essence

crossing from an everywhere

with creatures bearing blossoms by the

armful, smiling, singing sweet

confusion in a drift of shining

words her mind is glad to greet–

This is god’s own grand occasion

come to find its moment here

before she’s waited far too lately

long and lost the way most dear,

the one that led her past the altar

ancient lovers built to last.

They taught her how to fill her falling

leafy days with letters cast

her way by many friendly spirits

haunting now her flagging will.

When you see a hand a little

nearer venture, fall so still–

and feel the air beneath you lifting,

meeting with a different air.

Lover, in your skin–a drifting

leaf turns into flying there.

Poetry exists for itself, but if it has a purpose, this might be one–that those in any kind of pain, in need of a paradoxical sudden shift of view, should be able to find one here and follow it through–at least in a transient mental way–to a place beyond pain. It’s a window, and what I call a Paring. It’s also a practice. One gets better at it by being hopelessly patient and persistent.

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Mystery

Posted on February 14, 2021 by J

Here is a bonus for today–a little gesture of contrition for keeping all the interesting news to myself.

Before Epiphany, I was in a state of nervous exhaustion because of noise in my neighborhood and the unpleasantness of dealing with those who were causing it. We had received word that the main problem would be resolved at the end of January, so a friend and I planned to observe Epiphany together at my place. That day, during a very solemn conversation, the noise blasted us again–but no matter; this time they had disrupted not only our personal activities but something sacred, and we are praying that it will protect itself and us along with it.

This is part of how the Parings project began–with the need to protect sacred space and those who require it. This need is a contemptible thing to the sort of money-driven people who love to drive others to distraction. The idea is nothing new, and we’ve all thought of it in some way before; the point is to bring it all to more conscious attention and actively watch for these tiny, brilliant windows. It’s not so much adding a new lens to one’s way of seeing as removing lenses put there by others in their own interest, not yours. The tiniest of windows reveals a World.

When I feel a little steadier about my own part in this project, I will have more to say. In the meantime, I am returning to thoughts of the Poetic Mysteries as I once obsessed over them. From my current level of experience, I can state with assurance that they are even realer than I wanted them to be.

This small lyric has the happiest of all possible endings, if you know where to find it:

14 February 2021

19

What’s Become of You

Smaller words come falling after

larger ones have spent their force.

She lay in the solemn midnight

darkness with another horse

and when they both fell sleeping faster,

faster dreams attended them.

In the morning, both were women

soaked from lifted veil to hem

and not alive nor had been ever.

Such a pity, but it’s done.

Everywhere outside, no moonlight;

only drenching-daylight Sun.

Above the body of the lover

no one wanted till she died,

a spirit utters love becoming

silent as her nightmare bride–

smaller words and smaller ever

after till they disappear

and all the midnight air lies empty.

Lovers, but there’s no one here.

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Valentine

Posted on February 14, 2021 by J

Happy Valentine’s Day! A curious holiday, a minor saint’s feast day become a popular and very secular celebration of love, and usually romantic love at that–are we happy, we who are without partners? Are we celebrating today?

Not to keep anyone in suspense, but yes! One happy thing about getting old is that, as one’s reproductive system ages out of relevance, one’s sense of love grows and expands very much outwards. Years ago, I knew menopause was approaching when I realized that I had again become aware of things I had been overlooking: the many, many kinds of green plants called ‘weeds’ growing and blooming right underfoot, the tiny insects and other creatures living fascinating lives in amongst them, and most of all, the number of adorable small children who crossed my path that I barely even looked at–a habit that set in when I realized as a much younger woman that I did not want to bear children and did not want to be seduced by their cuteness. And the many, various ways that things can be beautiful, if only for an instant–hands and faces of course, but also a stray bit of light shining on one bright metal on an otherwise dirty railing; a bird so close by you can see through the side of its eye. These are like little glimmers of light from elsewhere, light that bears secret messages. The secrets are open; only those who are meant to read them are sometimes closed.

These tiny glimmers started speaking to me more and more until I started to ask if there was an overall message I should be listening for. I saw swirling snow, then individual snowflakes in their intricate uniqueness (maybe? new research says snowflakes may not be unique at all), then massed together again on the ground. Look closely, and the individual snowflakes still sparkle in the light. The light from where? Aye, elsewhere.

Time isn’t real where true stories come from, and no sign forms a line that doesn’t finally prove a circle. Remember the stories of hailstones that, when split in half, seem to reveal a womanly profile, even that of the Blessed Virgin? This is a phenomenon that has been reported any number of times. Broken-open windows into a place overlooked before. Imagine–if the Virgin really sends hail as a sign to those who pray to her, who ask her, Make your answer so clear I can’t miss it, please, and then the hailstorm comes, knocking down crops and breaking windows–what must her answer be? I am wondering because lately we have had freezing rain, and half the trees on the hillside outside my window have broken branches. Interpretation is difficult in so many ways, especially the part about telling the truth.

Even so, the glimmers, the little flashes that seem to reach through and grab one’s attention–if that attention is available–are becoming more important to me. They have a name, one that came immediately when I asked for it: Parings. Parings, because even something as humble and simple as a stray nail paring on the floor can become the Moon and show you something shining through, if the moment and your awareness are right. When you start seeing them, soon they multiply; after a while, they settle into a vast field, as of snow–a field as broad as all the world, filled with gleamings to remind you that time is not real and that you come from Elsewhere.

Except, of course, that this world is part of Elsewhere. It’s good to stand in more than one world at a time. If ‘this’ one is celebrating Love, what might the other be doing?

Here is a bit of new work. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Whisper

She will have willingly shown you her secrets, her face in the mirror, your own in her eyes,

but will you have been still enough to have seen it? And listened, a word to the one growing wise

on her tongue even as you desired so to kiss it? With all of your mouth, and your voice joining hers?

Where is the silence you sought when she taught you the longing the passage of long time confers

on those caught in its endless illusions–though you are her friend and, at intervals, even her child?

Why are you crying so loudly you try but can’t hear her? A sob in your throat growing wild–

that’s a noise she can’t bear, if you tell her she caused it. Taut and constrained and it hurts till it bleeds–

you can’t keep on coughing so hard; when the fever descends where it’s left you alone with its seeds–

it will always remind you of how you fell ill out of loneliness so far from home, where she waits.

What if you looked at your hands in your lap and discovered them braiding the two of three fates

the old reader foretold when you offered up silver? What if you saw your own hands working hard,

and nothing to show but a dreadful confusion come over them both–but a whole blooming yard

green as nightmarish poison condensed to the point of a knife in the flesh of the poisoner’s son?

She’s in the halter and bridle you braided and now that she’s worn it, your work is undone.

You looked far away when you left her to choke on the words you could not of your own power say.

Watch as she dances, her feet on the air as she falls till it catches her, that which holds sway

because you, mortal human, are never the author; you cast your own shadow, and follow it far.

When she leans over the table on which she’s seen scattered the ashes of many a star–

she reads their remains as if clues there would sparkle and dazzle the eyes of your mind–but will she

have shown you the whole of the truth as she knows it, or merely the whisper you need it to be?

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brokenshells

Posted on January 21, 2021 by J

Recently, the same theme has come up over and over in my work, and that is that someone is searching for me. That I would be searching is the way it usually goes, but this time, I am the one being sought. I can hear them calling, but I don’t know where they are or where to begin looking or answering. This all reminds me of something from ages ago.

When I first went online in 2000, I had long been as obsessed and involved with poetry as I am now, so of course my early explorations focused on finding others who were working along similar lines. This has never been very fruitful; surely there are others, but mostly of them are hiding or I am looking in the wrong places. Once or twice, though, I found someone. This is about one of those poets and times.

I had a Web site that featured a lot of my then-current verse and some essays. I had access to some basic site statistics–the IP of each visitor, their location, pages viewed, and any links by which they entered and left the site. Fairly early on, I noticed that someone had visited a few times for a long time, viewing numerous pages. They had entered by a link which I followed back–to their own site.

The site was called brokenshells, and as I recall–perhaps incorrectly–the URL was argeneth.org. The owner/author shared a brief list of sites they liked, which included mine as Dream Island. He turned out to be Thomas, who lived near the sea in Wales. He published his own poetry on brokenshells, and I loved it. Thomas’s mind was so subtle and he saw through so vividly. He provided an email address on his site, and we exchanged a couple of messages. Not more, though, and then one day it was gone. I wish I had downloaded the whole thing; it might help me find out what’s become of him. He must surely be working; at least he seemed pretty committed then. You know how it is. One just wonders.

This all came back to mind just now because my work lately has been full of bits of stories and one that just came through featured a fly-blown dead body who was able to talk to me. He was friendly. I did some trance-work to learn more, and he met with me, led me across water and uphill through a sacred grove to a peak, and showed me there the great fossil shells left from what was once the bottom of the ocean. The shells, scallops and clams gaping open, formed vents that allowed air to pass from the peak to the cavern rooms far below. These let flies from the man’s body get in, until an earthquake shifted them. Then the flies all died and turned to snow. That sort of thing sometimes happens here.

Now I have so many threads to follow–so many new projects and stories and plans. I have been away from my post here for a while, but more because I don’t know where to begin than because I’ve been idle. It will eventually explain itself. In the meantime, as I have told you about the man who’s just appeared with stories to tell–this is what they sound like when you hear them through me:

21 January 2021

8

The Shells at the Peak

It looked like a window–she’d wanted a window–and so she peered through it, and here’s what she saw:

It wasn’t a maggot; it wasn’t a splinter; it wasn’t a the husk of a fly eaten raw

by a spider; it only could be what it was in the end, as you know. As it was, so it is:

a casting of shells over stone, with some few of them broken, and bones–nearly all of them his

where the life-force once leaked from him all in a rush and she felt it, as far from his side as she was.

Deep in her heart as she knelt by the altar she knew what she heard was the gathering buzz

of a fast-hatching brood–they were eating the body of sacrifice where it had fallen and lay

within range of the subtle vibrations of tiny grey wings as they tainted the green world of day

disappearing behind them as all in their flight they explored till, exhausted, they died and stayed dead.

I shall attend to my nightmares with slow, patient grace till the sight of a man’s fly-blown head

is an oddly familiar reminder that this dream has traveled a very far way to tell tales

he will take to his grave unless somebody listens–a sick man who’s casting a spell between rales.

I counted the space between stars by the ticking of clocks turning over inside him last night.

I looked into one of the silentest absences there at the center, where no lovely light

lay tenderly shielding its children from harm when the man raised his hand to the Moon on the rise,

and with one lyric line, so enchanted my oncoming madness it shifted–it changed its disguise–

but I knew I had taken it in, and would hear it forever; it echoes in these lines of mine.

Sometimes I tell myself ghost stories–sometimes I scare myself badly, and cross a drawn line

I can’t go back across by myself. When my bones are as cold as the grave but I’m live, and can’t die,

he’s so often brought me his mantle of green and the window I find in his near-sighted eye

though I’ve driven him half to distraction. He then turns to face me in full, and it’s world without end–

but it’s also so lonely out here on the peak where a wave of his hand, and we cease to ascend–

where over the stones at the height and the center of this risen mountain once rose ocean swells.

Open like mouths that have never stopped singing, a pearl-mother garden of paired fossil shells

breathing air through the earth to our chamber–cannot you still hear them right now, as I promise you will?

Once you woke up to a face on the pillow beside yours that shone with the green underhill

of the glad source of all our enchantment, our absolute blessing of love so familiar and mild–

as tender as pearl-shell surrounding an orphan whose wept himself sore, the poor motherless child–

there were desperate flies who were lost angry soldiers and hungry ones too; they all let themselves go

in the presence of what even they understood was supernally real. As they turn into snow

and a resting place deepening, growing in visible pallor by on-rising moonlight, my lored

and impeccably present companion stands by me as rivers and oceans of new light are poured

through the cracks in the shells into this, our shared chamber of ancient, select, and arcane song in reels–

little ones dancing alive to the menace of too many dizzying wheels within wheels–

too many lovers with too many absences ending at once–too much falling all night–

and someone who’s taking too long staring through a shell-window–she’s found a strange, far, tiny light.

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Oriflamme

Posted on January 9, 2021 by J

Sometimes I ask for a vision or a beginning phrase in the morning before rising, something from the nightside to bring waking dreams into the day. This morning, I saw and heard horses–many of them, ‘massing.’ Everything always means more than one thing, so they were gathering in numbers like troops, but for a ritual purpose–some sort of dedicatory mass. The word ‘oriflamme’ spoke itself as I saw the letters form in my mind’s field of vision. Nothing else–I had no idea what to expect when I sat down to work. What you see next is what happened:

9 January 2021

4

I Call My Own

The horses are massing along the near border–the wild ones, who never would tolerate men.

How distinctive, the sound of your voice in the uproar–it carries me back to the way we were then,

when our general sense of our place in the herd was still largely untested. It’s been tested since.

Between us, we’ve borne a hard workload of speakable torture–enough to make any saint wince.

A rider on one of the horses–he cannot be mortal; the horse would not bear such a one–

has suddenly raised up the true bloody standard–the oriflamme–under which no horses run

but the ones who, afire with the spiteful unholiness mothered in heat by the sunless resolve

of a species of ongoing horrible story behind the red flag sacred forces devolve

into shuddering chaos–and then–complete silence. Nobody fallen will rise up again.

When she goes out after dark and walks ever so carefully down the red dead-body lane

overarched once by high orchard-branches in flower–now she will never see petals drift down

or their earlier vast pollen-clouds–she has only a long hollow pathway through scenes grey and brown

crooked columns of refrozen snow for the moment, a sad way to go for a nymph of the spring.

Maybe by day’s end she’ll lie so surrounded by hooves, she’ll be swimming, red flag on the wing

in the dust of the road as it runs into ditch-water, drowned either side–Was she destined to lie

beating away, like the heart of a bird on the back of a mare through a lunar-blue sky–

Those horses would never consort with the likes of mere mortals before–is there change in the air?

Only the Moon in her eyes showed the blinsight behind her how flourishing–how sweetly fair–

her kind face in the dreams of the weary combatants, resting between painful breaths on a name–

and then raising the standard again–this one blue as the Moon in the time of the healing blue flame

that awoke her before it was dawn to the masses. The horses as were, children born to one mare,

were carrying well-laden branches of apples and blossom together and climbing the stair–

the first took forever–and then the next series in spiraling form as they swarmed higher still,

gathering pace with their own slackened reins in their teeth as they laughed and let love work its will.

When apples turn red in the Sun of late summer, but blossoms keep coming, and winter no more,

she sits by the fire with her children all round her and tells them the tales of imperial lore

and the legions and standards–how heavy the battles, and how long the wars and their failing campaigns–

and the flags trodden dead underfoot by the maidens whose mother means nightmare to those who want reins–

along somebody else’s stretched neck–but pure kindness of gentle regard as the weather turns mild

in the fresh air of blossoming spring to the lovers who first came this way seeking after a child

who ran laughing before them and led them to–learn how the lore of strange weather can turn on a line

of such vanishing fineness–She tells you, the horses–they’ve never loved men–but for one I call mine.

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Epiphany

Posted on January 6, 2021 by J

Everything grew too much over the holidays because of the neighborhood issue I have alluded to earlier, and it affected my health pretty badly. Friends recognized that I was beyond merely stressed out, and got help for me. All’s well, but it was a very strange passage, and I am still partly in the middle of it. The lesson so far is–gratitude, obviously–but something else as well.

This is something I have been trying to articulate for a while. We all want big-time Enlightenment, Revelation, whatever you prefer to call it; if we are on an active spiritual path at all, of course the big show is on our list. But we know to look out for the great in the small at all times, because that is how spirit usually comes through. Simple to say; more difficult to enact.

My insight runs along these lines, but it focuses specifically on beauty. ‘Beauty.’ The Beauty of the Romantic Poets. I respond to it, even though I have never really known what it is. I now wish to reconsider whatever I might have thought I knew.

‘Beauty’ was special, exceptional by definition. It meant something that was aesthetically perfect, or nearly so. Ordinary people with pleasant, attractive features could be pretty, but not really beautiful, because beauty would not mean anything if there were that much of it. So I screened out most of humanity when I considered The Beautiful. And most of everything else, as well, always holding out for something really rare. That would be a sign that I was right in my ideas, and should carry on screening.

And then I went on a several-decades-long poetic journey. And–here I am. Having seen and heard more amazing outlandish beauty than I will ever have time to slow down and talk about in prose. And wanting little more than to be ordinary and do ordinary things among people who never screened all that out in favor of something supernally weird. Or better still, people who did, but returned successfully, and now see what they were looking for everywhere they turn.

The point was not the rare, perfect, complete, enduring Beauty. The point, if there even is one, is simple that Beauty is everywhere. No one is perfect, and wouldn’t stay that way if they were. But the world is full of perfect, beautiful wrists, and eyelids, and little fingers, and little, unbearably perfect square-inch bit of skin behind knees and so on and on forever. The great is in the small. Tiny lawn flowers are as wise as roses and lotuses and far more likely to cross your path in a friendly way.

But there’s knowing, and there’s knowing. It’s all reverberating pretty strongly for me right now; it will sink in. When it has, I intend to watch out for the beautiful when it signals from any place, and weave it in. As always. But more consciously. And patiently. Poems always get there first.

6 January 2021

1

Epiphany

She sat with her head down for such a long time I grew worried, but when she looked up and all round,

she saw mirror-images–plate-glass and spheres that were silvered in slivers and smashed on the ground,

and she understood all in a flash from the smooth curving razor-sharp side of an orb as once was–

there’s a margin for lyrical error, but knowing the beautiful is as the beautiful does–

that is cheerfully–everywhere here in her suddenly-recognized presence–like snow on the lawn,

a drift of unknowable numbers become solemn innocence littered by gathering dawn-

light sparking the literal millions of angles held out as to capture the warmth coming through–

with no thought of thawing, just innocent knowledge of oceans of rain and soft, new-fallen dew–

and I understood what she was seeing as well: The horizon’s too far and the light is too strong;

the few who can carry their own lantern there nearly never return with a full line of song;

they dwindle their scanty resources as fast as they rush to discover they aren’t even there,

the sensitive singers who dreamt of a throng of admirers who’d find them alight in mid-air,

and then soared through the flames in the brief middle-distance and fell to the Earth in a thin rain of ash.

This is no nurturing substance; it leaves a faint stain, then it fades; it’s a fallen eyelash

on the face that’s been turned to the last place it countenanced beauty–so precious and rare, was it real?

Only the last gleam of faraway starlight behind her fine profile permits her to feel

it might rise again from the stray bits that shine where the early Sun strikes for an instant–if she

waits patiently nurturing faith beyond faith that the Light she once saw is the light she will see–

if he opens his own eyes the way he’s been waiting to know his long vigil will soon end in tears

as the beauty he dreamt of beholding has oceans within it whose rising will soothe–weary years….

Then she nodded again, and her lowered eyes stared at the tiny white flowers amidst the glass snow.

Forming a web shooting out like chain-lightning–wherever she looked, bits of beauty would glow,

the living in league with the lovely man-made, on a green stretch of lawn she once danced on–and would.

Then she’ll walk on and grow weary all over again, but the end of the story is good

as foretold–because she’s brought her whole will and shoulder to drive it toward nothing less–and she’s won

enough of a gallant concession the sky of the midnight stretched over her wants to let run

till he’s visible, leaking a little strange light from a far lyric province known only to him–

and its rightful inhabitants. Maybe they tell their own tales of the visitor, one slightly dim

by their standards, but brilliant for having discovered so much of their secretive journeys and ways–

as well as the dreamt-of location where someone sat watchfully waiting, her own wreaths and lays

having long been prepared for his eerie arrival–the tiny spark-lights, in the grass, on the ground–

A beautiful stranger reveals his true face in each one. When she listens, the faces resound.

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Christmas Eve Blessings

Posted on December 24, 2020 by J

This has been a bit of a mixed holiday so far, but that’s all right. I’m not Christian, so it isn’t really mine anyway. Christmas is meaningful to me, though, and I always like to dedicate some work time to drinking in the spirit. Christmas Eve is especially sacred. So many devout souls are praying all at the same time for the birth of the Prince of Peace. The Kingdom of Heaven feels a bit closer. We might still heal, after all.

Because of neighborhood conflicts mentioned earlier, this has been a season of mixed blessings. The process of pushing back has cost me a great deal of anxiety and stressed, and caused me to do some hard and deep thinking. I can feel so many influences at play. At this point, I can pretty much do one thing, as you see here. I am an unworldly person who has no intention of becoming an activist at this late date–I am far more of a quietist! But I can dedicate my work to the service of healing, and that is what I have done.

This is an audacious thing to say, within the hearing of others. It scares me a bit. It involves a commitment to listen a lot longer when others are telling their stories, for one thing. I have always preferred to work alone and to get inspiration through cracks and sidelong glimpses–‘leaks.’ That might never change, but I remember what it was like years ago when I was less reclusive, and everyone wanted to talk about their exceptional experiences. Such strange things happen every day. I want to work toward healing peace and quiet, within and without, for every person who needs it to be able to hear the voice of their spirit and soul. Spirit whispers back, it’s coming closer. When the present peace is healed, peace will heal you.

Still not a true believer–I just sit down to work and let it happen. This happened today:

24 December 2020

24

Healing Peace

We’ll search every world for the most healing magic and tender it carefully here, where you hurt.

You’ll feel it the moment we’ve safely retrieved it from where it’s been hiding in deep graveyard dirt–

in the body of land at the heart of the most shadowed forest. She’s humming her most soothing song,

and she has been since healing began. You are here because you have been hearing her hum all along.

And yet–if she still hasn’t found it, and still isn’t satisfied–what could remain so amiss?

Once you lay dreaming a scene of late August, an overcast sky, and a feeling of bliss

that not quite overcame you but gathered in waves until you were the shore and the shore flowed away.

She’ll hold you within an ecstatic embrace when the healing that hides in the vision at play

in the fields of the most fertile mind has been harvested root, branch and seed, and prepared for your use.

See your original essence restored–though we’ll spare you the scars of the well-plaited noose

that gave rise to a more florid vision of beauty between air and land, where the light becomes strange

and vast hosts of memories reach forth and beckon and each one might mean a new way to derange

what been balanced precariously for too long–but discriminate wisely, with help you can feel

leaking through between fibers of linen and wool and the wood you were made of, a tree made of steel

to the lightning that sought you but struck its own self. Then the tree becomes supple and yielding once more

when the storm passes by but the rain settles in and it’s warm here inside; let the wild weather pour

all it has. When it’s over, we’ll gathered the vessels cast over the sand, little bowls of grown shell

in which we shall collect and preserve–more than ever, you need our protection; we’ll tender it well,

but you also must listen as hard as you’re able: The salve will leak through every hour of the day,

but it works so much better if you are receptive to words not your own and the prayers others pray

when they also are drawn to and over the border of what they can bear and what must happen next.

All the best blossoms alive in the glade between letters and words in the lines of a text

that was borne across fields by a desperate woman who woke in the earliest hours sick at heart

because she was within the grim reach of a place where foul vapors pronounced their intent–darkness art–

extracted and purified many times over till so many strong healing elements swam

to the surface and waiting hands swept them toward open shells–you’ll soon learn how devoted I am

to the work we’ve been doing together; it’s grown so much harder since we have seemed parted; we’re not.

Look to the droplet of luminous oil in the lamp of the shell and, with stillness at thought,

wait–only silently wait for the moment. Balm of the last world we’ve yet to create,

precious, extractable inherent substance beneath the sad skin of your present lorn fate–

listen to what you’ve become in the meantime, between open air and the landing below.

If time once betrayed you, it’s now in your favor. You’ve healing now leaking–but soon in full flow.

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Signal to Noise

Posted on December 22, 2020 by J

In my dream-awake mode of composing poetry, almost anything can be made good use of. Interruptions from the day-world are not precisely welcome, but they can be incorporated into a story–sometimes. Other times, they come as hostile acts–perhaps directly from unkind human beings, perhaps from something more abstract and pervasive that deliberately inserts itself between pray-er and pray-ee, artist and inspiration. Anyone reading here already knows what I mean.

The work I have shared here comes readily if a few conditions are met. One of these is that the time before me be open-ended, so I can lose track and get lost in the work, should that happen. Another is that my environment must be quiet enough that I can stay focused. These are both a problem because a local business neighbor is extremely loud on a regular basis, doing something completely unnecessary to their success. My neighbors and I are trying to get them to stop. They did it again today, so we are not being listened to.

The daily needless disruption is serious and the attitude behind it is worse. To be shown, over and over, how unimportant and meaningless mere human lives are when a business is just operating as usual is a bitter lesson to learn again no matter how cynical one already was. Please understand–this is not a huge corporation; we all know each other. They would tell you they are progressive, community-minded people. A lot of life-force is being sapped from me by the anger this causes, even though I thought I knew how to protect myself. In story-lore, I’m up against the bare edge of something old and ugly that hates everything beautiful, and it has noticed my work and will stop me if it can. The current struggle over offensive noise is the real-life story behind some of the themes in the poems. We know all stories have dark passages and dangerous characters. This conflict is affecting my life and health too directly. What does it matter how many times I can sit down to compose and retrieve yet another presto-change-o happy ending, if the obstacle of needless noise that squats in my path will not go away? Will it continue until I am too ill to work? There’s no place to move to beyond the sound, and anyway, should I have to?

This sharing is part of the process of caring more directly and effectively for the quiet and peaceful folk of this world, the ones who still know their souls and what can happen when apparent separation is no more. In the best of all worlds, no one would knowingly harm another because they know they would also be harming themselves. This world could be better today if we could trust one another to live by that now.

I cannot trust the loud business neighbors, but some of the others are lovely, and do their own beautiful work. We will rescue something good out of this struggle–but never forget that we should not have to. We will all work and live more happily when peace is restored, as we did before it was broken. Even the loud ones will, too. If only they understood what their unkindness is doing to themselves. We at least will heal, somehow.

Please light a candle for the kind, good people of this world to be held in peace till they find their way Home.

Blessed Holidays to you all.

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Solstice Fires

Posted on December 21, 2020 by J

A joyful Solstice to all!

Lately, most days I set to work with a bit of a vision or dream-blip to start with. Today I had nothing in particular, so that’s what I began with. Immediately, I started seeing ferns–lots of them, a fringe many yards deep around the edge of a forest. No more than that at first, and then….

Rain poured down all night, and hasn’t yet let up. It’s good to be inside where it’s warm and safe. Heat of the Sun, heat of the core of the Earth, and those of us who require temperate and watery conditions trying to find a place in between–such are my Solstice thoughts. The moment of Solstice has already passed; the Moon is still waxing.

Dreams have often sparked poems, but I don’t have much dream recall these days. So, I dream awake. As with sleep dreams, anything is grist. Solstice, solstice fires; my neighbor has been casting beautiful iridescent bowls out of molten bismuth, and one is on my altar; a dear old friend was an all-around smith–black, silver, gold; my family’s story and mine began in the cave-riddled karstal mountains of West Virginia, where fossil ferns are often discovered in seams of coal. And, as they are lovers, the story of Venus and Vulcan lends an ancient aura to the overall scheme. Some very, very old trouble still keeps them from their full waking reunion, but we are remembering as fast as we dare.

Have I explained about ‘the wires and lies of the mind?’ This is a long-recurring image. Many of us who have had liminal experiences consider the physical brain and nervous system to be receiving devices rather than originators of awareness. Radios, in a sense, carrying a message from afar. The condition of the body and brain affects the clarity and accuracy of reception, so if all is not well, broken and mistaken ideas can take the place of genuine understanding. The ego-mind is subject to confusion and often lies to itself to protect its perceived safety and comfort, but the lies won’t stand long-term. Best to remain a bit detached from the whole process whilst it’s under way. Easier said, but it can be done. We’ve been working on stripping out the lying wires for a long time; the poems are evidence of that.

21 December 2020

21

Coal-Fern

How different the world will have seemed, all our false dreams discarded and wires all unwound and pulled out.

There’s only the one stream with meaningful winding; the clear running water that flows round about

the stones of the path at its deepest depression will never stop moving downhill till it’s carved

a series of beautiful chambers, a seemingly endless array of glad rooms to lie, starved

and half-paralyzed, buried inside–any dim hope of rescue a sad superstition–no good.

All down the mountain and under it, hard rains of winter wash over the evergreen wood

on the slopes of its sides and the caverns below. There’s no world but a language made visible here.

Under these very old trees grow the others, more ancient by many a long cosmic year–

split a seam in the coal that threads all through this region, and find what remains of the forest here still.

These were all evergreen leaves; every season they cast a green glamor. Your eyesockets fill

with emerald light when your look at them lingers. They’ve so much to show you, you can’t look away.

What will you know when you go home again that you didn’t know then and don’t know yet today?

Where the fields were electric with after-storm glow and the trees swayed in winds like the breathings of souls

the two of us lay in a glow of pale twilight, our pulses as hectic as cantering foals

over swards of particular foliage–how will I tell you, the memory haunts me too hard–

they ran through the ferns to the trees where they turned and eyes met and engaged and with sharpened hooves sparred.

They hated this part of the story the moment they knew they were living it over again.

Blood on the leaves and the ground and their garments were rent and their own very flesh bore the stain

of the dreadful mistake they seemed doomed to repeat for the ten thousandth time in the very same–cave,

down where the coal-seams of forests that were serve as world long enough for a soul with no grave

and no gravity anywhere plain earthly daylight has touched with its powers of odd inverse sleep.

Only in this soothing bourne of the beautiful softness of eve’s casting shadows that creep

through the dreams of the lovers who’ve grown far more vivid for having lain nightly in love’s search for lore,

watching the coal-fires glow through the stone where the ghost of lost sunlight’s been minding its store,

and only among the long-memoried fronds of a summer that turned into winter but not

into colorless darkness–will glorious gardens recall them to why this glad land was their lot,

even all the sad while a drawn wire made of metal it still doesn’t recognize–grew hot and glowed

till it melted like snow and the river resulting ran under the mountain and there overflowed

the old banks of the earlier stream-course. It still isn’t water–that takes cosmic years–yet to run–

but these lovers are tireless when stories unfold like the leaves of the trees and the ferns in the Sun

at the heart of the underworld’s first smelting furnace. Who with a crucible works without rest

where living ferns blaze out of coal and resume being beautiful, deep in your own burning breast?

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Lunacy

Posted on December 19, 2020 by J

Lunacy

The piece to follow came yesterday, after a hypnagogic vision in the morning. The vision was very simple, but clear: I glanced down at my hand, and noticed a small, vividly green caterpillar walking across my skin. Luna moths are among my favorite creatures, and we go back a long way, but we don’t have them where I live, and I miss them. So when I saw a green caterpillar, I thought, right, Luna, what is the phase of the Moon? Waxing crescent. The poem came swiftly after that.

This phase of Rain Harp is still new, but a few kind readers have noticed. Thank you! Most of you have something in common immediately–you are lunatics. In a good way! Your titles and avatars often feature the Moon. I’ve been a lunatic for as far back as I can remember, and that is far enough that I remember how upset I was to think of humans setting foot there, the one place we thought could never be desecrated. But poets and lunatics in general are resourceful. We tracked and mapped and discovered the source of the real Moon, the one we were always taken with, within all the sacred lore of the Moon and our own understanding. One day, there will be human extractive resource industries on the satellite that orbits the Earth. Those uninvited can never extract what they can in no way perceive.

Synchronicities and precognitive blips happen often during composition, and one of the advantages of blogging is having a place to record them publicly. As I was working yesterday, the word ‘redoubt’ came up, and I decided to check the definition because I knew it had a military usage which might affect the poem. This brought up links to articles about a film entitled ‘Redoubt,’ by a filmmaker named Matthew Barney, someone previously unknown to me. One of the first links stated that the film is a modern retelling of the myth of Diana and Actaeon. Diana–more of a Moon connection. Curious, but I was still at work. (I am deliberately experimenting with disrupting my own concentration these days, hoping to find a muscle that I can strengthen–I used to insist on working straight through without pause.) As I was composing, mention of metals came up–noble or base, thin surface plating versus a ‘live’ core. As usual, this made no particular sense in the moment, but I trust that poems know how to make themselves at this point, so it got written down. After finishing, I read more about Barney, and learned that he had become quite involved with the process of metal electroplating in his work. I turned to the topic of luna moths again, and learned that they eclose from their cocoons–hatch, that is–using their cremaster, the hook that anchors the cocoon. Matthew Barney created a huge art installation and film series in the 1990s called Cremaster. I do not recall having seen the word before.

What does all this mean? Not as much as one might suppose, usually. Most people who have observed synchronicities over time simply take them as signs that one is on the right track in the moment. Artists who are really delving deeply into their sources end up having shared sources anyway; that’s been going on as long as art itself. It pleases me to have this to share today, though, as tuned-in lunatics seem to be many around here.

Female luna moths eclose so heavy with eggs, they cannot fly. Neither the male nor the female has fully developed mouth-parts. They do not eat; they mate and die. Their lives as caterpillars are their real lives; the moth-body might as well be a fairy tale to them, for most of their time.

18 December 2020

18

Vale of the Flightless Friend

I just can’t imagine, I started to say–but I can, since it’s happening; simply work back

from what’s right here in front of you, pay close attention, let the thing lead you along its own track

to your sad present person, and there’ll come an answer to what you imagine will be–a mistake

if you go it alone, but a glad sort of venture if someone goes with you. You’ve lore to un-fake;

great hoardings of various ancient made-objects with valuable properties, though some aren’t real,

and you need them to teach you their qualities willingly; rummage around amid ashes and feel

what’s magnetic and what is perhaps noble metal by how it affects first your skin, then the nerves

underneath, where they carry the rapidest messages: This is no more than a worker deserves

who is steadfast as you–feast your eyes on the glitter of mounded-up crystals and faceted glass,

and know what grew deepest in earth and what mattered at last after someone made pass after pass

at the formula bringing a spectrum of wonderful colors through fire to your eyes and your room.

Earth taught you first the combining of elements under duress in the hot smoky gloom

of the chamber of secrets–the final redoubt in which change is inevitable and immense.

Summon the part of your mind that’s been wandering–this is about to make terrible sense

of the questions you’ve been incubating all winter as if they were little round luminous seeds

searching patiently where they were laid as if you were the garden and they, the long pathway that leads

to a realization about to break through the thin sharp surface-plating and touch the live core

where you’ve always been waiting, vibrating with endless excitement that all the most genuine lore

of your long lives combined has been safely contained in a silken enclosure like skin, but not yours.

When you go back to visit the store-room some time in the future, bring your next search out of doors;

you’ll have found it before you’ve drawn breath, let alone turned the latch to admit you where nothing remains

but some rough brittle fibers surrounding a blank hollow chamber. Recall your own long birthing-pains

every moment the heart in you beats on too rapidly; then only look to the leaves nearest by–

and what you can’t see is the reason he wants you so much. The green lover who’s learned how to fly

has but one fierce desire that will drive him to find her wherever she waits with her burden to share.

She knows where she is, but she’s scared to move forward; there’s glass litter, jewelry, an odd metal air

that makes breathing an unsought adventure, and finally–there–all the rest was but ash the wind’s blown

away, and it’s left us a virtual palace of magical artifacts. You’re not alone

with the sorting to follow; he’s circling over your head by a few scanty inches, or less.

After the eeriest series of changes, he’s still as spring-green as he was; would you bless

the ground, or the air that supports him, as long as it kept you in beauty the length of his tale?

All is not mere metal gold; even now, there’s a luna moth over the gloom of this vale.

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