Wild Words: Ferociously Nourishing Poetry

Life's Longing for Itself

7/25/2021

In honor of Silas, my first-born child,
who leaves home this week
to heed Life's calling...

Your children are not your children.
They are sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He also loves the bow that is stable.

- Kahlil Gibran

A Tendency to Shine, for Summer Solstice

6/20/2021

Coatlaxopeuh: She who comes flying
from the region of light like an eagle on fire
a.k.a. Lady G
a.k.a. You!

If you prefer smoke over fire
then get up now and leave.
For I do not intend to perfume
your mind's clothing
with more sooty knowledge.
No, I have something else in mind.

Today I hold a flame in my left hand
and a sword in my right.
There will be no damage control today.

For God is in a mood
to plunder your riches and
fling you nakedly
into such breathtaking poverty
that all that will be left of you
will be a tendency to shine.

So don't just sit around this flame
choking on your mind.
For this is no campfire song
to mindlessly mantra yourself to sleep with.

Jump now into the space
between thoughts
and exit this dream
before I burn the damn place down.

-Adyashanti

The Whole of Creation

2/28/2021

The Whole of Creation by Emily Grieves
www.EmilyKGrievesArt.com
Used with permission.

If I began the story in the middle
you might be able to smell the nixtamal, the earthy lime
of corn masa, and the tortillas rising on the comal, warm
hands flipping them into being. You might be able to feel
the spot where my long golden ribbon pierces the crust
of the Earth, thrust down through oceans and tectonic plates
even before they were dreamed into existence, looped
and woven into the shape that holds it all into place. You might hear
the rushing of feathers slicing air as thousands of angels fall
through the gap in space that birthed it all into view, each one
bringing a thread to the weaving of life, the matrix of this new world.
You might smell the smoke of the tlecuil, the oven in which life
is cooked into living, matter kneaded into feeling, formed
and pressed with fingers, breathed upon, gazed upon, made
to be something new, something transformed
from nothing to this. And here we live now, in the whole
of creation, remembering, forgetting,
and remembering again, nestling into the weft
of the fibers, yearning to be touched
by her hands again.

- Emily Grieves

I have had the privilege of visiting the pyramids in Teotihuacan Mexico many times over the last five years. One of my favorite experiences has been getting to know The Dreaming House community, the place where I stay on my visits. They are my beloved family away from California!

The economy of the small villages surrounding Teo depends on tourism, and so the global shut down this last year has been absolutely devastating on them. If it would bring you joy to help sustain them until life is somewhat normal again later this year, we would be most grateful! 100% of your donation goes directly to families in desperate need of food. Here are several options:

You can donate directly via PayPal at: thedreaminghouse@hotmail.com.

Or, for a donation, you can participate in a virtual tour and story telling fiesta March 7th-14th. Find details at www.ExperienceTeo.com.

Or you can order a print of Emily's painting above, with or without the poem included, at www.EmilyKGrievesArt.com.

Thank you for your consideration!

Alberto and Veronica,
owners of The Dreaming House

The Beautiful Animal

1/17/2021

Painting by Jordan Henderson

By the time I recalled that it is also
terrifying, we had gone too far into
the charmed woods to return. It was then

this beautiful animal appeared in our path:
ribs jutting, moon-fed eyes moving
from me to you and back. If we show

none of the fear, it may tire of waiting
for the triggering flight, it may ask only
to lie between us and sleep, fur warm

on our skin, breath sweet on our necks
as it dreams of slaughter, as we dream
alternately of feeding and taming it

and of being the first to run. The woods
close tight around us, lying nested here
like spoons in a drawer of knives, to see

who wakes first, and from which dream.

- Geoffrey Brock

Will you consider joining me
around each full moon in 2021
in the sacred cave at Bodega Bay,
to dream and sing and listen and celebrate
with the seals and the fish and the ravens
and the waves and the rocks and the sand fleas?

Visit the Ecos de la Marea page for details.

Nativity

12/27/2020

What if...
inside of you right now there was
the precious treasured long-awaited radiant beloved You,
just waiting to be born...

Photo by Robert Rowen-Herzog, 2007.

No man reaches where the moon touches a woman.
Even the moon leaves her when she opens
Deeper into the ripple in her womb
That encircles dark, to become flesh and bone.

Someone is coming ashore inside her,
A face deciphers itself from water,
And she curves around the gathering wave,
Opening to offer the life it craves.

In a corner stall of pilgrim strangers,
She falls and heaves, holding a tide of tears.
A red wire of pain feeds through every vein,
Until night unweaves and the child reaches dawn.

Outside each other now, she sees him first,
Flesh of her flesh, her dreamt son safe on earth.

- John O-Donohue

The Dream in the Garden

12/6/2020

Huge thanks to Wild Words' first
guest poet, reader and artist!
Francesca Preston
www.francescapreston.com

clothespins in elderberry ink
print by Francesca Preston

if music is the sound of fingertips
hitting a jug
in which someone once
carried water

mother
what purpose
in my growing beyond
your dream of my birth?

many times i’ve watched you
have it, the dream in the garden
where i emerge:

an old wooden clothespin
with cornsilk hair

you clip me to your breast then,
as if to jumpstart it

and after throw me away
for a reason i have not yet figured out

mother i was born with a body
thickly settled, dense
as a pomegranate

not a fruit steeped in the syrup
it will taste of

i was already hard
with the things
i had selected for myself

inside you i was
choosing and discarding
without lifting
a finger, i was

like the girl
in the department
store, deciding what
to steal

- Francesca Preston

perhaps you'd like to join Francesca for a new year of making & feeling under unusual circumstances...January Jam! every third day of the month of January, containing poetic reflection, invitations to stretch the deep-seeing mind, & the opportunity to receive while winter hibernating. a fee of $25 includes an optional mini-consult on a 2021 project of your choosing. for more information contact Francesca via her website at www.francescapreston.com

Visitor

11/29/2020

Vision Tree
Painting by Alex Grey

I am dreaming of a house just like this one

but larger and opener to the trees, nighter

than day and higher than noon, and you,

visiting, knocking to get in, hoping for icy

milk or hot tea or whatever it is you like.

For each night is a long drink in a short glass.

A drink of blacksound water, such a rush

and fall of lonesome no form can contain it.

And if it isn’t night yet, though I seem to

recall that it is, then it is not for everyone.

Did you receive my invitation? It is not

for everyone. Please come to my house

lit by leaf light. It’s like a book with bright

pages filled with flocks and glens and groves

and overlooked by Pan, that seductive satyr

in whom the fish is also cooked. A book that

took too long to read but minutes to unread--

that is—to forget. Strange are the pages

thus. Nothing but the hope of company.

I made too much pie in expectation. I was

hoping to sit with you in a tree house in a

nightgown in a real way. Did you receive

my invitation? Written in haste, before

leaf blinked out, before the idea fully formed.

An idea like a storm cloud that does not spill

or arrive but moves silently in a direction.

Like a dark book in a long life with a vague

hope in a wood house with an open door.

- Brenda Shaughnessy

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (excerpt)

11/22/2020

Flinging open my heart’s gaudy maw,
Bodega Headlands, California

...thank you zinnia, and gooseberry, rudbeckia
and pawpaw, Ashmead’s kernel, cockscomb
and scarlet runner, feverfew and lemonbalm;
thank you knitbone and sweetgrass and sunchoke
and false indigo whose petals stammered apart
by bumblebees good lord please give me a minute...
and moonglow and catkin and crookneck
and painted tongue and seedpod and johnny jump-up;
thank you what in us rackets glad
what gladrackets us;

and thank you, too, this knuckleheaded heart, this pelican heart,
this gap-toothed heart flinging open its gaudy maw
to the sky, oh clumsy, oh bumblefucked,
oh giddy, oh dumbstruck,
oh rickshaw, oh goat twisting
its head at me from my peach tree’s highest branch,
balanced impossibly gobbling the last fruit,
its tongue working like an engine,
a lone sweet drop tumbling by some miracle
into my mouth like the smell of someone I’ve loved;

....and thank you the way my father one time came back in a dream
by plucking the two cables beneath my chin
like a bass fiddle’s strings
and played me until I woke singing,
no kidding, singing, smiling,
thank you, thank you,

...and you, again you, for hanging tight, dear friend.
I know I can be long-winded sometimes.
I want so badly to rub the sponge of gratitude
over every last thing, including you, which, yes, awkward,
the suds in your ear and armpit, the little sparkling gems
slipping into your eye. Soon it will be over,

which is precisely what the child in my dream said,
holding my hand, pointing at the roiling sea and the sky
hurtling our way like so many buffalo,
who said it’s much worse than we think,
and sooner; to whom I said
no duh child in my dreams, what do you think
this singing and shuddering is,
what this screaming and reaching and dancing
and crying is, other than loving
what every second goes away?
Goodbye, I mean to say.
And thank you. Every day.

- Ross Gay

For the Sleepwalkers

11/15/2020

Collage by Cindy Wood, www.cindywoodart.com.
Used with permission.

Tonight I want to say something wonderful
for the sleepwalkers who have so much faith
in their legs, so much faith in the invisible

arrow carved into the carpet, the worn path
that leads to the stairs instead of the window,
the gaping doorway instead of the seamless mirror.

I love the way that sleepwalkers are willing
to step out of their bodies into the night,
to raise their arms and welcome the darkness,

palming the blank spaces, touching everything.
Always they return home safely, like blind men
who know it is morning by feeling shadows.

And always they wake up as themselves again.
That's why I want to say something astonishing
like: our hearts are leaving our bodies.

Our hearts are thirsty black handkerchiefs
flying through the trees at night, soaking up
the darkest beams of moonlight, the music

of owls, the motion of wind-torn branches.
And now our hearts are thick black fists
flying back to the glove of our chests.

We have to learn to trust our hearts like that.
We have to learn the desperate faith of sleep-
walkers who rise out of their calm beds

and walk through the skin of another life.
We have to drink the stupefying cup of darkness
and wake up to ourselves, nourished and surprised.

- Edward Hirsch

A Place Like This

11/1/2020

Painting by Amelie Locke

Once it was in my dreams, a place that could home angels.
Their spirits and beauty captured in a moment, so pure and white.
A building, surrounded by draping plants and rolling slopes,
covered by small olive trees and lavender bushes.
A building stretched, touching the sky, not reaching the clouds,
yet they leaned over, rolling down the slopes
enveloping the worshipped state of mind.
Drinking its sweet milk, admiring its white columns,
watching the love angels dance,
while bathing in the sun's gaze.

In my dreams I am always taken back to a place like this,
my hopes end here; peace, love and hope fill my heart.

I am the clouds, I watch and admire, I see the angels,
I see the rolling slopes covered in fragrant flowers,
I run down the hill,
I watch the people living simple colorful lives.
Every upcoming step is a mystery,
they do not seek to satisfy their needs by traveling to achieve it somewhere else
but mold what they have, carving their lives out in the hills surrounding them.

Feeling the safety of the tall revered temple that stands on the hill,
hold them, embracing them,
filling the empty holes they once felt inside when they questioned the great meanings.
Their loved ones living close, down the street
in that slender Italian stone house they spoke their first words in.
In their arms the light of their life gurgles,
a halved toothed mouth smiling up at their gleaming faces.
This bundle of joy,
part of a new generation of beautiful souls.

As you walk through the stony streets, towards the mountain top
the smell of cigarette and coffee dwindles,
pushed away by the vibrant notes of geranium and lavender.

These paths hold generations of memories, and memories yet to come.
Some day when I return, I'll walk these streets
listening to the stories held by the rocks,
their emotions, the happy and melancholy,

Maybe one day it will no longer be a dream.

- Amelie Locke, January 2019

In honor of Amelie Locke
August 14, 2002 - October 1, 2020