Wild Words: Ferociously Nourishing Poetry

Mother Raven

1/8/2023

We cannot live without the night,
gossamer veils of emptiness.
The Goddess is black,
but each pore of her body
emits a rainbow.
Motionless, she watches
beyond care, yet flows
like a river of healing.
Doesn't dark energy circle us all
like Mother Raven?
Take root in your grief.
That is where the sun is born.
Ascend through a bolder falling.
Her womb is immaculate silence.
Her void is moist with stars.
Yet she who cradles them all
has become your breath.
Haven't I told you there is wine
in the void between thoughts,
Joy and sorrow mingled in one cup?
Now taste, and who knows
if tonight you might not finally
embrace the fierce beauty
of your beaten heart?

- Alfred K. LaMotte

Lean In

7/31/2022

Your Great Goodness from Works on Copper
by Sara Honeycutt

Lean in loved one
To the center of the circle
To the metronome
That beats all hearts together

Allow your breath to ease
As you watch
Each inhale
Sweet with life
Bowing to this moment
Each exhale
Loosening the grip of form

Begin the listening
From deep within
Clarity, slowly emerging
As pause makes room
For the light of wisdom
To rise from fog's damp obscurity

Recall through your bones
The collective knowing
That's been a part of us
For a million years

You are the vessel through which
The yet undisclosed is spoken
The soil upon which
Love blossoms
And life remembers herself again and again

- Lynn Robinson

Hawks

3/13/2022

for Luna

It was late afternoon and we were standing
on the deck overlooking the gray swath
of the Pacific, when my friends’ daughter,
then four, turned to me and pointed at the hawks
flying in the distance. I can call them if I want,
she said, tilting back her head to let out a long,
fierce caw, which floated up over the marsh
and above the trees. At first, nothing. Then--
a slash in the distance. And in the next moment
there it was—nearly above us, wings spread wide,
the color of rust. And then, another, the two floating
in silent circles while she sounded her cries.
The primal cry of the human, raw and plain.
The call to prayer, the weeping at the wall,
the singer’s highest, most broken, note.
Whatever it is we send up into oblivion, waiting.
Haven’t I, too, called out? Haven’t I beseeched
something winged to do my bidding?
And here she was, calling, and here they came,
in answer, this hinged assembly, hovering
toward us on the wind. Ten? Twenty?
Enough to darken the heavens above
where we stood, weighted in place, pinned
by a cover of raptors. Bone swallowers,
snake eaters, sharp-sighted angels of prey,
their scaled feet clutching the empty sky.

- Danusha Lameris

The Scripture of Circle

1/30/2022

Female Strength by Helena Arturaleza Schotman

There is no refuge
No destination
No resolution
Only This

Blessed are the fruit of my womb
Blessed are the cycles that have no end
Blessed is the Wound
Blessed is the Hole

Blessed is the space that holds you always
Blessed is this unfinished life
Blessed is the eternal and unchanging
Blessed are we who bear the unbearable
who carry our cross from first to last breath

Blessed are we who know the relentless mercy of the
Mysterious Other
known only when we sacrifice our reaching

There is no refuge
No destination
No resolution
Only This

To you who are the Birther of Samsara
and the doorway to Nirvana
To you whose Love
is the bridge that flows between them
To you who holds the mirror of perfection
inside the crack of imperfection
whose Road leads nowhere and is everywhere

To you whose breast is the refuge of no refuge
To you whose passion dissolves all ignorance
and whose innocence reveals unstained beauty

Enveloped by your Grace
With nowhere to go
Around and around
Heart to the Ground

Here
I
am

-Maya Luna

What is Left to Say

8/29/2021

Painting by Amelie Locke, 2018.

The self steps out of the circle;
it stops wanting to be
the farmer, the wife, and the child.

It stops trying to please
by learning everyone's dialect;
it finds it can live, after all,
in a world of strangers.

It sends itself fewer flowers;
it stops preserving its tears in amber.

How splendidly arrogant it was
when it believed the gold-filled tomb
of language awaited its raids!
Now it frequents the junkyards
knowing all words are secondhand.

It has not chosen its poverty,
this new frugality.
It did not want to fall out of love
with itself. Young,
it celebrated itself
and richly sang itself,
seeing only itself
in the mirror of the world.

It cannot return. It assumes
its place in the universe of stars
that do not see it. Even the dead
no longer need it to be at peace.
Its function is to applaud.

- Lisel Mueller

You didn't come here to get mangled

3/7/2021

Painting by Rashani Rea

You didn't come here to get mangled
by the gleaming machinery of the Mind.
You didn't come here to get welded and forged into a
Republican, Democrat, Sunni or Shi'a,
to get angry at your jagged shadow in broken glass,
or see your own reflection as approaching disaster.
You came to be astonished by a dust mote.
You came to find the Maker of all things
embodied in a dandelion.
You are here to be torn by laughter and pain,
then healed by the tang of a berry
on your wild tongue.
There are no right angles, no straight lines
in the serpent body of the earth.
Valleys, rivers, and hills are the only borders.
Dark-eyed Mother Raven looks down
and sees them as restless waves in the ocean
of Holy Matter.
What makes this planet sacred
is the unfinished circle, not the wall.
What guides us is the wayless curve
in a labyrinth of fallen alder leaves after the storm,
a cloud that stains the soft rice paper sky,
brushstroke of geese in flight.
Why waste another moment arguing
for or against
when you could slip back down a beam
of breath, soft as moonlight,
into the silent radiance you Are?

- Alfred K. LaMotte

Eagle Poem

1/31/2021

Photograph by Kreated Media. Used with permission.

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

-Joy Harjo

Mother Raven

Lean In

Hawks

The Scripture of Circle

What is Left to Say

You didn't come here to get mangled

Eagle Poem

Archives

Categories

Mother Raven

Lean In

Hawks

The Scripture of Circle

What is Left to Say

You didn't come here to get mangled

Eagle Poem

Archives

Categories

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