Trillium Odes

 

 

 

 

I wanted to see how often I've honored Trillium in my writings.

Turns out I've written 11 poems to Her.  I've picked out 5 for this ode today.

 

Wake Robin

Blood-red trillium,
      with your sumptuous variegated leaf patterns,
      arising in big colonies early, so early in spring,
      amid dry leaves and old twigs,
Triple Goddess, you sprout from the dry earth
      innocently, as if it were every day
      ancient knowledge comes forth into our sight.
You lie barely visible at our feet,
      one of the old ones, short and well-adapted
      to the forest floor, a gnome
      with a new red cap.
But no pretty pink here, nor lacy white.
      You are of the blood of the Earth Mother herself,
      and even Her rich warm blood has beauty,
      and she will not hide this, our Mother.
      She bleeds, and Her blood is beautiful.
Wake Robin, wake us to know
      where e’er we walk, She feels and knows.
      We kiss the Earth, but She bruises, too,
      in bloodroot, in trillium, in fracking, in clearcut, in war.
Wake, Robin, don’t be a fool!
      Here is Life’s own rich display, ineffable,
      the upward thrust, the very orgasm of Spring.
She is here today, for you, for us,
      crowding upward for us here,
      but once only.

Annelinde Metzner
Flat Creek, North Carolina, March 23, 2012

As Spring unfolds                                      

As Spring unfolds, thousands
     of newest buds light up like flames
     upon each dogwood branch, each twig.
Thousands!  All lit from within,
     chlorophyll newly opened like a babe’s emerging crown,
     lighting up green on the tips of each twig.
In the woods, the newest Solomon’s Seal
     curls open, leaf by leaf,
     near the unfurling spiral of the fiddle-head fern.
As if to say, “I’m flowing once more,”
     the bloodroot, each leaf a different shape,
     sprouts white despite its sanguine roots.
The Trillium is back!  aware, proud of Herself
     and sure in Her threeness.
Birds in pairs sing all the day,
     impressing one another,
     bedding done in their newly assembled nests.
The Mayapple spreads wide its umbrella,
     dozens and dozens on the forest floor,
     waiting for us, waiting
     for our joy to join their ecstasy.

Annelinde Metzner
Black Mountain
April 17, 2014

 

     
 Reclamation                                                      

A pile of rubble, rusty springs, beer cans, car hoods,
strewn in the back of the old country place.
You could relax on an old car seat!
And now, walk amid crystal fountains,
hostas, trillium and Buddhas.
Sunlight dapples a leaf here and there.
The sound is tranquil among the trees,
the waterfall and the neighbor’s chickens.
Reclamation.
And what do you hide?
What is there, thrown to the back yard, out of sight,
that has rusted and accumulated each year?
What have you given up,
where have you lost hope and left,
despair winning out over possibility?
Nature is our teacher, and She is the master,
the source of true resurrection.
How easy, how effortless
to love this Earth,
the woodpecker, the spring peeper,
and give Her a hand to return again.

Annelinde Metzner
Mountain Light Zen Garden
May 31, 2014   

 Pearson Falls                                       

How did it feel, the discovery,
   before the stone steps carefully laid,
   before the thoughtfully placed and sturdy railings?
How was it that first day, the first human here,
   inching slowly through the thick undergrowth,
   following the sound (everywhere!) of falling waters,
   at long last to arrive and gaze upward,
   one's breath taken away by the height
   of the sheer rock face laced over with
   a wondrous curtain of water?
Time enough to ponder,
   to absorb, to just be,
   like the moth perched here on my writing-page,
   like the toad among the ephemeral woodland plants.
"Let it go!" She teaches me,
   as I sit and gaze.
"You will never know the whole story,
   what brought us to wherever we are now.
Let the relentless power,
   more precise, more intelligent, more patient than you,
   bring justice wherever it's needed."
I put my hands together, giving thanks,
   and sit with the trillium, the bloodroot,
   the wood thrush close by,
   breathing the water's unceasing wisdom.

Annelinde Metzner; Pearson Falls, April 29, 2021

What if you had to leave?                                            

This high bank of trillium, purple, pink,
the three wide leaves
a generous hand beckoning;
the unraveling Solomon's Seal,
suspending its tiny, potent buds;
the still air and
the crow’s loud assessment;
a turn down the trail-
and if this leaving were forever?
What if you had to leave?
Madly do you love Her, your Mother of the mountain woods?
Do you yearn to roll up inside of Her,
a wooly-worm in winter?
You will.
One day you will.

Annelinde Metzner, Ox Creek Road, May 15, 1998

Run toward your creative life

 

Cabin window at Hawkscry

Run toward your creative life with all your might
even when, and even because, tears stain the very surface,
the fiber of your creative being.

Isn’t this your truest self?
Isn’t this a pristine beach,
more wild than winter, more vast?

Doesn’t the joy breath of your inner life
smell fresher than new-washed cottons hung in the air?

When the long day finally ends,
and I come close to the inner self,
I pull back the veil.

Annelinde Metzner      
June 2006

Lagoon at the Baba Center

Pine cones

Piano at Wildacres

Sand dune at Ocracoke

Hurricane Christmas

 

 

Black Mountain is bustling.
Tourists are back, Christmas shopping,
peering in shop windows.
But I'm going beyond the lights and tinsel,
just a few blocks,
to my sacred ground, the Friends Meeting House.
It's not long ago, three months,
our little Swannanoa tore through here,
along with the waters of little Flat Creek,
all of it raging, raging.
Dug out the earth right up to the back door,
decimated the Korean church,
and the group home is a pile of rubble.
It had rained for three days, before the storm,
water, water, picking up more and more,
lifting water up from the Gulf of Mexico,
swirling it into a rage of wind and rain.
The birds flitter about,
and I know the heron will come through here soon.
The meditation rock is carried off somewhere.
My sanctuary, my retreat, my place of prayer,
my hallowed ground,
place of music, laughter and praise.
All gone, all gone.

 Annelinde Metzner

Black Mountain, December 24, 2024

 

Many of my poems in the past three months have arisen from the disaster we've experienced here in Appalachia, Hurricane Helene.  The help and spirit we've received from all over the country have been incredible, but I couldn't help but make a reality check this morning, Christmas Eve. 

A Communion of Candles

 

No power for eight days,
and now I feel a joyful anticipation,
-something chthonic, something about fire and light-
each night as I sit at the table,
two candles lit.
They give just enough light
so the vast darkness around us
is not spoiled, not violated
with endless, voracious glow.
Just these two halos of light,
wax carefully dripped to hold them,
burning each night to maybe an inch of their height.
My pen feels quieter here, the words flow
as though a pipeline direct to the Universe,
as though the waters of life power through my pen.
I've finished two candles today,
small blue stubs, wax drippings hardened,
but I can't throw them away,
as though those words that flowed from their warm lights
through the ink of my pen
leave traces still sounding in the ethers,
recorded in small lights.

 Annelinde Metzner

October 5, 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pretty Saro

 

 

"Down in some lone valley, in a lonesome place....."

These Appalachian mountains drew me in,
irresistibly enticed me like Calypso calling to Odysseus,
magnetized me before I ever knew it.
I was drawn here to this powerful feminine vortex,
spinning us all inward into creativity,
and a type of madness.
Oh, bring it on!
I knew, in my thirties,
somehow these mountains were giving me that,
giving me the green light,
the giant "YES!" to the new, the creative, the visionary.
I was nurtured in the lap of the Great Mother,
Grandmother Mountain spilling out Her generous strength,
as She has done through millennia.
And yes, we are still here.
Perhaps the wind and the rain are Grandmother's doing,
noticing the dust on the table, deciding to clean it up.
Perhaps this exquisite newness, the painter's palette,
the untuned string,
opened to me as they have to other beings
for thousands and thousands of years.

"Where the wild birds do whistle and their notes do increase...." 
(from the old mountain ballad, "Pretty Saro") 

Annelinde Metzner

October 3, 2024

Here in my beloved Appalachian Mountains, all we beings have experienced the devastation of Hurricane Helene on September 27, 2024.  Many poems have poured from me since then, undoubtedly arising from the ancient soul connection the Mountains have given me.

Rhododendrons at Craggy Gardens

My grief, my love for the world

 

Balinese dancer

I watch the dancer, one arm framing her face,
one hip drawing upward in the belly’s rhythm.
The dance of mature women, Raqs Sharqi,
born of the sensuous music of the Middle East.
Her hips pull us into infinity,
an inward-outward shout of beauty and desire.

In Cameroon, babies learn music
while strapped to Mama’s back.
Coming of age, boys leap high,
beaming with the village’s newfound respect.

In Bali, the gamelan orchestra cues the dancer
with clangs and thumps,
the bodies telling stories of monsters and gods,
each movement of eyes, and fingers, and feet
a perfectly timed posture of sacred geometry.

Oh humans, oh, humans, can’t you love all this?
Can’t you love the way we’ve created the world,
each culture born of each unique place,
and each of us expressing in our own way?
Doesn’t this beauty tear at your heart,
that everywhere we draw up our Earth’s strength
through our feet, through our hands,
and we thank Her with leaps and turns,
ecstatic to be stretching our bounds?

Oh people of our Earth, can’t you love all this?
The exquisite mudras of Bharat Natyam,
nuances of the courtship of Radha and Krishna, her love?
The kibbutz youth, leaping to dumbek and flute,
‘til joy bursts like fireworks from the chest?

Oh humans, oh infinite diversity,
aren’t you breathtaken, aren’t you amazed?
don’t you treasure each other, for the vastness
of what, together, we are?

Annelinde Metzner
Black Mountain
August 23, 2014

     Grateful that this poem will appear in the We'Moon Datebook for 2020, and I will feature it this Sunday at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Swannanoa Valley. 

  (Update-  this poem appears this week, December 14 to 18, 2020.)

Boys practice drumming in Cameroon

Dancers on an Israeli kibbutz

Raqs Farqi, belly dancer

Bharat Natyam dancer of India playing Krishna's flute

Flying Is Just Learning by Doing

 

Flying is just learning by doing.
Three ospreys (then more, then more!)
announce themselves with a raucous caw,
spread their wings wide,
and fly out over the mile-high expanse,
Thunder Hill.
Right over my head they come,
so I face into the sun,
and then the moon, a tiny crescent.
Raaaack!  they cry
to get my attention,
and I see, with the high mountain wind,
the slight shifts of tail feathers,
rudders in the wind,
the bend and curve as they rise higher and higher.
I remember, in those dreams,
you can fly higher and higher,
just go!  You have your wings,
the wind will take you, you can bend-
Flying is just learning by doing,
after the first great thrust into the air.

Annelinde Metzner

May 20, 2009 

I sat with the bees

 

At the foot of my Grandmother Mountain
with my walking sticks I walked
up through fields of silent green and gold.
I found an old stone and sat
gazing out to Her pointed peaks,
Her Grandfather side.
Bees sang to me, continuing
their endless, ageless song
from yellow to yellow, full of pollen.
I sat in peace and gratitude.
Gathering chi from this sacred place,
giving the chi to my heart,
I sat with the bees
until meditation took me over.
Opening my eyes,
again and again I gave thanks.

Annelinde Metzner

August 16, 2024
(at Grandmother Mountain) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Magdala, Tower

 

Mary Magdalene by Brother Robert Lentz

Magdala, Tower, Queen of my days,

You are not Spirit, not Ether, not Will ‘o the Wisp.

but flesh and blood, a woman like me,

and my teacher.

I see You in burgundy-red, the Blood-Root flower,

the Wake Robin, deep red trillium of the mountains,

the royally curled and woody flower of the Spicebush.

You are so real.

And when You walked on Earth,

the steps of Your beautiful feet were firm.

Priestess, daughter of Isis,

Well-trained in lore and wise,

how I crave the touch of Your oil upon my face.

MM is here!  Mary Magdalene,

here for Her own millennium,

and the voice You bring has no shame in who You are,

who we all are, Woman, strong, deep,

burgundy-red and sexual.

You walk in the power of the Sacred Night,

here to walk wherever You must,

through Love, through Transformation,

unto Union with the Divine.

With Your powerful arms

and Your dark-red hair glinting like amber,

You guide us all through these darkest of days.

Mary Magdalene, You stand grounded

even as we hang in torment,

with Your strong and womanly Priestess arms

ready to carry us through.

Annelinde Metzner

April 17, 2012

I set this poem to music as an art song for piano and voice.  You can watch a performance with Kim Hughes, soprano,

here from our 2018 concert, "Feminine Faces of God," at St. James Episcopal Church in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

I'm reposting this poem in honor of Mary Magdalene on Her feast day, July 22, 2024.

Mary Magdalene by El Greco

Mary Magdalene by Carlo Dolci

  

Medieval Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene by Carravaggio

Mary and Jesus stained glass in Scotland

A Madonna for Martin Luther

 

Madonna at St. Johannes Lutheran Church

 

Early, early, on a Charleston Thursday, 

Springtime on Anson Street,
full of surprises as only old Charleston can be,
I come upon a corner of St. Johannes Lutheran Church.
I blink my eyes.  She is here!
Lovingly set against the whitewashed wall,
blue-robed Mary with her tender heart
glows among the roses.
Lutheran Church, church of my family,
church of no feminine image of God,
where our forebear Luther expunged
even patient, loving Mary
from our spirits, from our liturgy, from our prayers,
where in my girlhood, though at Easter we all carried flowers,
no women were imaged divine in the Protestant Church.
And here She is!
In the church’s farthest corner,
She smiles radiant against the whitewashed wall.
Someone has set two bluebirds,
blue birds of happiness at Her divine feet,
and a broad bubbling fountain nearby
reminds us of Her joyous abundance,
spilling over through all our days.
Here She is!   Martin Luther, do you rejoice,
do tears of redemption spill from your eyes,
our Divine One in Her place again?
She is here!  She is here!

Annelinde Metzner
Charleston, South Carolina

April 2012

 

 

I save the world by loving Her

 

Cabin in Sandy Mush

I save the world by loving Her.
April in Sandy Mush, the new green apple leaves,
so soft, each flutters a different way at the slightest breeze;
the butterfly, fresh out of the cocoon,
careening downhill, already a crackerjack
at navigating with her iridescent wings;
the blackberry blossoms, full of themselves,
wide open to the hungry and meticulous bees.
The air is filled with buzzing things, delirious with the sun’s warmth.
Even a cloud floating high seems to smile with delight.
It is true, I know, someone crouches somewhere in a room,
cut off from the world,
fervently praying that the next gunshot, the knock at the door
does not come his way.
I know somewhere, a mother walks miles for a jug of water
diverted from her village to sluice the mines.
I know the world will end, or so they say.
But Gaia exhorts me, “Look at me!  Take notice!
For you I have perched these roses on their stems,
for you I bring the striped grasshopper  to set beside you,
and the wild turkey walks, stately, through the woods.
Are you listening yet?   For you, four wide-eyed deer
come to gaze at your body while you sleep.”
I cannot ignore her, I cannot turn away.
It is my job to love Her, and She is vast,
and long, and wide, and huge;
I save the world by loving Her, and in this way, She saves me.

Annelinde Metzner 

Hawkscry  April 13, 2012

Many thanks to William Stanhope for allowing me to write at Hawkscry.

Sandy Mush farm in April

Dogwoods at Hawkscry

Eclipse Moon

Solar Eclipse 2024

 

Moon, my moon,
my mysterious moon,
who waxes and wanes,
who taught women to mark time, your time,
a mutable, non-linear time,
increasing, decreasing,
flowering and dying,
regenerating again and again,
like our blood, like our breathing.
Oh Moon!
Do come with your great mystery.
You, who in this dark moon phase
does not appear at all in the sky,
yet you will cover up the Sun!
Oh my moon, do,
come quickly, come today,
moon of women, of the sacred womb,
the sacred body of women inviolate,
sovereign being, true teacher of resurrection.
Cover up the sun, yes!
Cover up that Aries sun,
shouting "me, me, me!," oblivious,
that sun obsessed with dominance.
Cover up the sun, if only for a minute.
Show what your soft feminine power can do.
Give us a new story that all will know and understand,
a bright shining metaphor.

Annelinde Metzner

Sharon Spring, April 8, 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Returning

 

Azalea in my front yard

Each year more precious,
the rebirth of Spring!
As if now, at my age, I have my doubts,
mired down in tasks and obligations,
living just day-to-day, sunrise to sunset.
But this! The joy of brand-new life,
a quickening in the brown Earth,
and in my soul.
The lilac is back,
each bud bursting into four-petalled sweetness.
Deep in the dry leaf mold,
bloodroot arises from the forest floor,
its sap vermillion, exploding with life energy
into unique white variegated wonder.
Dandelions resume their relentless growth
with a yowl!
Trillium emerges, complete,
ready to live a miracle of grace.
And I too burst forth.
Spring flowers gorgeously in my chest,
silencing my fears,
pulling me back, whee!
into my place in the wonder of living.


Annelinde Metzner
April 8, 2016

Trillium

Bloodroot

Chickweed

Baby jewelweed