My toes root in the steamy center

in red hot magma I listen,

to the birth moans of the mother

to the silence of a worm,  to the splash of the mighty whale.

I am earth.

 

I am her  echo,

A barnacle on her back, (our back.)

We are integral, earth and I.

A great sea of  blood binds us,

a  glowing orb in the universe

unceasingly conscious and evolving fast!

 

I touch our forehead to the soft ground.

I am an earthling. a part of her, not her child

but, as her, I  go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mr Banks has been laid low.

Gone is his skip and prance.

The vet prescribed muscle relaxers

and the animal communicator says that he

is carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders

and that I should tell him” to just let it all go,

to just take care of himself for now

and that the color yellow would help him.

 

My mother believed that one should be “of good courage”

“Don’t whine, mope or cringe”  she’d say with humor

but still she meant it!

Talking today, with my sister, Jan

we agreed that too much positive is exhausting,

and  that keeping  our chins up can be tiring

It felt good to share  my worries and fears

As they had gotten bottled up and my stomach hurt.

 

Our mother had two young daughters to care for

while my father was gone for four years during WWII.

I think of her courage

and also her breaking points that surely she had.

 

When she was old and so was I,

I would  ask her

So mom, “tell me about your underbelly of the whale”

It was like oiling a rusty gate but out would come……

her feelings. What a joy for me to know her.

 

 

 

 

Except from” Girl Meets Class” by Karen Gillespie

 

My Aunt Cornelia gave  me a book on grief.

It spoke of the various stages a person

had to suffer through before they healed from a loss.

It was a roundabout journey.

You might think you’ve conquered denial

and graduated to anger,

only to find yourself shoved back into shock.

It seemed unfair,

like a game of sorry when someone landed

on your square

and made you start all over again.

 

Michael Brown calls this the “emotional salad”.

You can check out his  YouTube ,

Michael Brown, Processing emotions, Fear Anger and Grief.

 

 

 

 

 

 

” I call this bread” and breath deeply

Not, “This is bread!”  said with a swagger.

Can I be respectful of salty molecules,

their relativity, their fluidity?

Respectful of  the order caused

by not knowing even one thing , for sure.

 

The Hopi word tunatya,

the causal aspect of the cosmos,

viewing the world as events rather than things.

The fermenting activity toward fruition,

forever pressing upon the manifested

The action of hope, pressing forward.

The maturing of plants.

The forming of clouds, their condensation into rain.

The careful planning of the garden,

building shelter,

All human thought

hoping, striving, especially prayer.
The honoring of  process,

a becoming,

a happening

a physics.

Curious and intimate

Knowing the world as an action not as an object,

(a thing that I own and can name).

 
Sally King April 16, 2020

Poem inspired by linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf

and Charlene Spretnak, States of Grace. pg. 93

.

Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.
Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.
Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:
No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.
And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:
To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks

Flew off on bright wings.

ANTIDOTES TO FEAR OF DEATH by Rebecca Elsen

 

While in incubation

The unformed butterfly heart of the nation,

somersaulted

like the hang- man in the tarot deck.

Upside down she tumbled into the unfamiliar,

viewing life’s constructions

with revived creativity.

“What now?” she whispered.

 

Her mother always said  after one of her tirades,

“Oh,  but what about the mystery?”

 

Is the empty cup empty

or filled

with a suspended, animated new substance,

as yet unnamed,

nourishing  all who sip?

Hello my beloveds,

“Round and round we go

We hold each other’s hands

We live our lives in a circle

Our love is strong, the dance goes on.”

 

I am finding turkey feathers on my walks

and bolding I wear them in my hat,

proud to carry their message,

Which is…….

“No one wins the game

unless the whole of the People’s needs are met.

A person who claims more then her share is looked upon

as selfish or crazy or both.

The poor, the aged and the feeble have honor.

The person who gives away the most

and carries the burdens of the People

is the one most respected.”

 

from Medicine Cards, Jamie Sams

 

 

 

 

 

We have begun our alignment with the yang feminine

The womb that pushes.

It is the natural procession of things

that the time of the phallic, yang, masculine  is ending.

We can no longer indulge in “opposites” as our defining awareness,

as the yang masculine would have us do.

Life and death are not opposites.

 

Mother earth is  pushing  the new energies,

with the help  of Pluto, the lord of the underworld,

whom  astrologists say is activated now along with Saturn.

(The same planets that were in the sky  during the Spanish flu in 1918)

 

Clues to this time of change can be found in the underworld.

Our guide is  a yang feminine Persephone

who willingly  choose to descend.

She is the maiden of spring, attending the tiny  green shoots,

who felt the pull of crone work.

Deep in the underworld,

she became a  guide for the dead,

pointing them onward out of their wandering.

 

The womb that pushes is the exertive yang womb

Death bringer and live giver,

one womb.

“Death seen from the personification of the dark yang womb,

this death and rebirth,this perfectly timed push

that brings forth new life from destruction”

 

 

Quote and guidance from Genia Pauli Haddon

Uniting Sex Self and Spirit.   Clay piece by Caroline Douglas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We received a bat house for Christmas from the boys

And on this spring day we have plans of installing it under the eves.

Bat is re birth, according to Jamie Sam’s  Medicine cards.

And this is a birth folks if ever there was one!

There is no going back,

the pregnancy  is here.

Backward is a breech birth

Stuck is stillborn.

It’s time to use our minds, courage and strength

to insure an easy birth and quick delivery.

Surrendering  to new life.

I am an ancestor to the future

nourishing seven generations to come.

Every decision, every thought

is to create a state of stagnation

or rebirth for those who follow

on the red road of life.

 

I heard the caring in my brother’s voice this morning

when he spoke of his friend

and that was enough to let loose the tears

I’ve been carrying for days.

The  sanity of tears, when we love so much and are afraid.

An admission of fear will open the gate to the heart.

 

John and I recently attended an introduction to the practice of  Centering Prayer.

The priest who stood before us said, “Hi my name is Jerry and I’m an alcoholic”

He sits everyday in a 20 minute practice called Centering Prayer

sharing  that his well being  has  improved with the activation of the  inner life.

Centering Prayer was developed by a monk named Tomas Keating.

There is a documentary on Amazon

Tomas Keating, A Rising Tide of Silence.

(If it’s too long for you, just watch the last third.)

 

I’d like to hear from you,

sallywhiteking@live.com

for an elder’s point of view.