Friday, December 26, 2014

New Year's Gathering









Candle circle at Hawkscry, New Year's 2012







         “Come, come, whoever you are,
          wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.”

 
We come New Year’s day, to Sandy Mush,
that Shangri-la, quiet always, but quieter still, this January day,
the rapeseed fields lying fallow, waiting for Spring’s yellow,
the old dogs and the old farmers beside their wood stoves.

         “Ours is no caravan of despair.”

 
And it isn’t!   Many old friends, one behind the other
to get there for sharing warm food and warm regards,
to share births, deaths, all the new, all the new.
The caravan shifts on the leaf-layered road,
and one tire goes ‘way out over the abyss.
“Stop the car!” and everyone hops out.
What to do?  But a neighbor has a come-along.
This has gone on before, so many times before,
at the end of a long dirt road, where we are our own future,
it’s only us, and what we can do,
stuck on the road in winter.
Twenty arms and hands, a dozen brains
ponder and work, trying this and that,
pulling here and tugging there,
until, voila!  the van is free with its big load,
a wheelchair and four eager passengers.
We’re free!

            “Come yet again, come!”  

   
Arriving up at the top of the road,
laden with food and one more good story,
we eat, hug, regale and gather around the flames, lighting candles for the world,
for our futures and all peoples’, 
for making it one more day in this body.
Out to the woods to dance beneath the grey, bare trees,
for Allah, for God, for the Goddess,
and to remember, as grey winter clouds lumber gloriously across the sky,
we are all here together in this.
We are all one.


          "Come, come, whoever you are,
           come, yet again, come."       (all quotes from Jelaluddin Rumi)


Annelinde Metzner 

Hawkscry    
January 4, 2012


Many thanks to William and Jane Stanhope for sharing their beautiful land in Sandy Mush, North Carolina for my writing, my spirit and my peace of mind.  


Listen to Annelinde reading "New Year's Gathering" here.


 






Many brains, strong backs and a come-along.












Friday, December 19, 2014

Coming Back Christmas







my family at the Catskill farm, 1957




One must leave one’s mountains
one must descend early in the day
through ice and snow, fog banks,
ripped up trees and branches helter-skelter,
one must leave one’s silent warm cabin on Christmas
and descend through the trees
down the long grade in fog, way down.
One must leave one’s silent cabin 

full of fire, full of sadness,
silent, remembering,
on Christmas one must come to family,
come down through the trees 

while smoke curls up through the woods,
come down to help old Tante by her stove,
down to a place with children, with messes,
with pots and pans helter-skelter in Tante’s kitchen,
where there will be singing and jigs playing,
“Ihr Kinderlein kommet” and the Crist-kindl,
chocolates in tree branches and sooty fingers,
the old stove that pops and moans,
family groaning around the table,
with resentments, accomplishments, aches and pains,
medicines and red wine and forgotten addresses,
all of us elbow-to-elbow, 

hunters and hairdressers,
poets and plumbers,
day-to-day survivors making do.
One must come in a hurry on Christmas,
come gladly to the loud rooms of one’s family,
full of judgments and kind advice,
full of wariness and unspoken joys.
One must remember to leave one’s quiet warm cabin 

full of sadness
and come down each Christmas, be pulled magnetic
to let one’s heart warm again unbidden,
with no plan, just you, and nothing else.




Annelinde Metzner

December 25, 2005







My son Peter around 1995



My aunt Elsie at age 100










Friday, December 5, 2014

I Have Sworn to Protect Her









I have sworn to protect Her!           
Miracle blue-green jewel of all the worlds,
ancient blue mountains, vast golden deserts,
hummingbirds in the jewelweed,
black bear in the raspberries.
I speak for Her!
I howl for Her!        
I howl, “Beware!”
to you who remove Her sacred mountaintops
torturing her body to get at Her coal.
I howl, “Beware!”
to you who go deep within her mineral layers,
scraping away at her core
for your own gain.
But no one gains by this.  She feeds us all.
I have sworn to protect Her,           
this day that She needs us,
when even Her vast blue-green oceans, teeming with life,
are tainted with blood, the black oil of power and greed.
This is the day, this is the hour.
She, long-silent, awaits our voice.
The signs of Her anger are everywhere:
desert, flood, tornado, wildfire, earthquake, typhoon, tsunami.
I howl for Her!             
I love my Earth as my own body!
I have sworn to protect Her!  


Annelinde Metzner
July 31, 2011


On Sunday, December 7th, I will be reading this poem and others in honor of its release as part of the We'Moon Datebook 2015.  It's the first poem in the book, near the Winter Solstice of 2014.  I am honored!  An excerpt also appears on the beautiful December page of the wall calendar, with Earth art by Autumn Skye Morrison. 
     Susa Silvermarie will also be performing her poetry including "The Girl God" which appears in the datebook,  and two of my songs will be performed by the wonderful Kim Hughes.