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.

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

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.

 

       

Just Friday

It’s forty-five degrees, and the water feels even colder,

But I splash in the foam like Aphrodite, 

even though I’m almost sixty.

And I’m NOT SHOPPING.

A kite is suspended in the sky,

so much wind that no one at all is holding the string,

and it stays suspended for hours,

and the kite is NOT SHOPPING.

A child builds palmetto fronds into an altar in the sand,

a  child NOT SHOPPING.

A boy out in the ocean paddles by on some board,

standing straight up in the ocean, 

looking for all the world like Jesus,

and certainly Jesus would not be shopping.

Two dogs whirl around each other,

joy sparking off of them like the flash of Venus in the night,

like the Pleiades in the dark moon night,

and today is just Friday, and no one is shopping.



Annelinde Metzner

Isles of Palms, South Carolina

November 25, 2011

The Darkness

Crescent moon

Coming together here, we warm each other’s hearts in the darkness.

The Sun, far away, yearns to embrace us in Her warmth once again.

But this is our time to journey into the depths of the darkness.

This is the time to surrender and listen deep to our souls.

This is the time to close our eyes, slow down and be lulled by the darkness.

Our blessed Mother Gaia dwells within the darkness.

Inhale the song of Her soul, Her soil, Her dark caves, Her rich dark humus.

Mother Earth welcomes you into the darkness.

Walk with confidence, all people, walk safely into the darkness.

Let us love the night, the moon, the stars, the planets, the Seven Sisters high above.

Revel in this other half of our lives, the darkness.

The beauty of the dark earth, the darkness of skin, the dark curves of mountain roads,

The Seven Sister Mountains in their powerful darkness, presiding over Black Mountain,

Our dark blood, our Earth, our deepest selves, the darkness.



Annelinde Metzner
November 16, 2010


On Tuesday, November 18, I will be giving a reading along with two other poets, Antiga and Barbara Gravelle, which we're calling "The Dark Goddess in Autumn."   We will begin with this poem as a responsive reading.   I like to remember that the darkness is positive and beautiful, just one of the sides of life.

Here I am reading "The Darkness."

Purchase Knob double rainbows caught on webcam!

Don't Live Here

Grandmother puppet by Lisa Sturz from "The Abundance of Mary" 2006 

Tourists buying postcards on Craggy Mountain never suspect me.

It’s always, “Time to get back in the car!”

just before my long, wild winds come up the hollow.

My winds always precede me.

Folks who have lived here long look for haints and boogers

when they feel me coming near.

But few have seen me. Maybe it’s my hair!

The chokecherry vines that form sort of a bouffant...

I love it when the berries ripen in autumn!

But few have seen me when I creep through rhododendron,

chokecherry and laurel for ornament.

I breathe the dark bass tones of the rhododendron thicket,

my skin like her bark, ancient, enduring.

My breath is in sync with her, unfathomable, unconquerable.

When you step into the dark places of the thicket,

your breath stops.

You’re whirled back to your own birthplace, before time began.

All over my hands are tiny red mushrooms,

rising from moss like a Mardi Gras village!

When you see my hands, you feel as though

you have swum up the bank of a rushing creek,

holding your breath until you emerge.

When you gaze into my eyes, my pupils fade into trillium,

blood-red blooms dangling at the rims, speaking in tongues.

My eyebrows are slow-creeping woolly worms, orange and black.

I float over the hills in a cape of Appalachian flowers:

Jack-in-the-pulpit, butterfly weed, flame azalea, bloodroot,

Indian pipe, chicory, pokeberry, cohosh.

My scent is of millennia of these green beings,

composting, seeding, bursting forth, decaying once more.

When you inhale my scent, you will remember your family.

Generations will array before you

in the distinct garb of your ancestors.

When you breathe my essence, you will fall and weep

at the millennia of lives willing to help you,

sponsor you, give you life.

I carry a staff of mountain ash. Don’t be afraid!

I won’t harm you! though my laughter alone

could squash you into the earth, mere compost,

cousin to the road kills, just another woolly worm.

My staff speaks of power, and that is what you fear,

citizens, tourists, quick-leavers, loud-builders, e-mail talkers.

In the landfills where I wander are your rusted bodies:

freezers, microwaves, last year’s computer.

Decades they require to rust or fade,

the plastic, the alloys, the silicon chips.

And I float to your door. I beckon you and your children’s children

when they wander too far from the flickering screen.

I speak of spice bush, yarrow, ginseng, jewelweed,

sassafras, Solomon’s Seal.

I pull you to the dark where you speak with your soul,

where life takes your breath away.
I make you pine for Life, scream for it.

I hold a mirror to this desire until all else is forgotten,

until you reach for life, until you’ll never give up,

until there on the forest floor we cry, together,

tears of joy.

Annelinde Metzner

September 1995

Listen to Nels Arnold reading  "Don't Live Here" by Annelinde,  performed at "In the Mother Grove" in 2009.  Grandmother puppet by Lisa Sturz from our 2006 performance, "The Abundance of Mary.  (photo above, Norma Bradley.)
      Both concerts of my music and poetry are available as CD or DVD by going to the "BUY" tab at the top of this page.

Rhododendron thicket

Grandmother in October

Grandmother and Her clouds

I come to see Her, my Grandmother Mountain,
a pilgrim at Her feet, making homage throughout the year.
Today, in Her Autumn dress, 
maples already red-orange-yellow,
little touches of color everywhere 
among the dark firs and pines,
I come to see Her, and I breathe deep.
Still, still now, She is the pure ground, as calm as the eons,
even now as greed and domination rage in the world of men.
She lifts me. I’m Her toy.
She is so delighted to see me.
I giggle to be with Her, I’m a much-loved child.
Motorcycles roar by, boys holler at their games.
I gaze at my Grandmother, and She smiles,
loving us through the millennia,
sighing and inviting, a twinkle in Her eye.

Annelinde Metzner
October 5, 2014

Grandmother in October

Autumn from my back porch

Autumn from my front porch

Malala's Birthday Speech

Malala Yousafzai at the UN Youth Assembly

Malala’s Birthday Speech

“In the name of God, the most beneficent, the most merciful...”
          Malala Yousafzai in her birthday address to the UN Youth Assembly, July 9, 2013
 
A pink lacy shawl frames her dark hair and determined face.   She is sixteen!
Confident and convivial, she commands the podium in front of the world’s leaders.
Sixteen!   Malala has survived a gunshot at close range,
on her schoolbus in Pakistan,
a target of the Taliban for speaking her strong mind.
She has survived!

“Respected elders, and my dear brothers and sisters,  Salaam Aleichem.”
 
She fingers her delicate shawl, bequeathed from Benazir Bhutto,
one woman to another, a gift of strength
from across time and beyond the veil.
 
“This time, we women will do it for ourselves.
Thank you to God, for whom we are all equal!
I speak so that those without voice can be heard.”
 
Her mother wipes away tears.
Men in suits stare, making space in their consciousness for Malala,
for this empowered young woman who has enraptured the world.

“Weakness, fear and hopelessness died.
Strength, fervor and courage were born.”
 
The room breaks out in emotion-filled applause.
Imbued with ahimsa, forgiveness and non-violence,
her strength uplifts us all.

Annelinde Metzner
July 18, 2013

Three girls

Hawkscry clouds

In the back field above the apple orchard,
fern-scented, the pasture low-cut,
ancient boulders humming distantly at the edges,
we three girls, sixteen, giggled on our backs,
under the cloud-strewn summer sky.
They left us alone.  Who cared?
That blessed juncture when children are free,
past the need for guardians, but still not grown,
they could care less where we were, what we thought,
high on this mountaintop in early June.
We were carving ourselves a place, three girls.
The world held no leads,
“woman” meant not too much,
not a wide space, anyway,
and choices seemed so irrevocable,
not too far into our future.
But they left us alone, blessedly,
with the bulbous clouds changing shape each minute,
never remaining long with, say, an apron and a skillet,
but becoming, say, a witches broom, a magic mirror,
a scarlet dragon, or nets of silver and gold...
On a blanket in the high field,
we formulated no words,
but hourly worshipped the Queen of Change,
our future, and Hers, and maybe all women’s:
metamorphosing, shape-shifting, adjusting, changing,
altering ever so slightly and poof! a new vision,
carrying this blessing like a textbook in the sky,
the soft fern-scented lessons of nature’s giving.

Annelinde Metzner
July 16, 1995
Catskill farm

I'm posting this in honor of myself as a girl, for my Sisters of that long-ago time, and for all the world's precious young women in honor of October 11th, the "Day of the Girl."

Balsam clouds

Grandmother clouds

Grandmother clouds

Autumn Samba

The bite of fresh compost,
sharp leaf mold in the wind.
Goodbye to the galax,
farewell to the creeper,
“Adios” to the chokecherry vines.
It’s the majestic farewell,
the queen’s farewell.
It’s delicious, it’s numinous, it’s forever!
This is the goodbye of no tears but the rain’s.
Goodbye as relaxed as Guernseys in the alfalfa,
as relaxed as three women in a hot tub.
It’s goodbye, never more be seen,
and it smells like Paris perfume.
It lifts the feet. It’s Fred Astaire.
It’s a lilting “adieux.” It’s bagpipes.
It’s all the cousins waving.
Orange, red, a fandango,
it’s forever, it’s the end,
and if you twirl and spin your way down,
you’ve got the idea.


Annelinde Metzner         September 2001

Listen to Annelinde reading "Autumn Samba:" 

The poem "Autumn Samba" appeared in the Autumn 2011 issue of Goddess Pages edited by Geraldine Charles. 

Autumn leaves at our feet

Sacred Swim

Lula swims the French Broad

Here on the banks of our own river,
here in the divine Blue Ridge,  the French Broad,
here where we gathered to worship Her, Oshun,
Mother of the River,
here in our town, and here too
in Nigeria, Osogbo, sacred to Her,
we gathered by the river, to sing, to drum,
to dance our love for Her, for each other,
for the beauty of the day, for the golden honey,
for the rippling waters of our river, and Hers,
we came to be Hers, to live our lives with Her,
at our own river, the French Broad, and for all the rivers,
for the Oshun river, for the Mekong,
for the Mississippi and the Yangtze,
we came to sing, to pray, to call out to Oshun,
and yes!  to swim,  lover of the river,
immersing in Her, feeling Her currents,
as so many of us watched and swam along,
together as one, one with the swimmer,
and Oshun, Her ripples, Her currents,
Her smooth stones, Her coolness and warmth,
one with the birds and the leaves falling,
the offerings we cast upon the water,
one with she who swam all the way,
all the way and back again,
with us, with all of us, loving Her,
loving our Lady, swimming with Her,
swimming for the love of Her.

Annelinde Metzner
Blessings on the River
August 26, 2011

Above is a photo of Lula Moon, who was inspired to swim across our French Broad River, during our celebration of the sacred day of Oshun, Ifa (Nigerian) Goddess of the River.

      Oshun is a Yoruba orisha who reigns over love, intimacy, beauty, wealth and diplomacy.
For the second year, inspired by priestess Yeye Siju Osunyemi, along with the Wild Bodema Drummers and the Mother Grove Temple of the Goddess, my choir, Sahara Peace Choir, has helped celebrate Oshun and all rivers, and supported the Oshun Grove, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Osogbo, Nigeria, where the people celebrate Oshun on the same day.  


For more information on the Ifa religion, follow this link to "Soul Seeds" by Rev. Anthony David, a UU minister in Atlanta, Georgia:  Soul Seeds

Yeye Osunyemi and others in prayer by the river

By the River                       

I returned to the riverside park,
the day quiet,  a few dry leaves blowing,
the river glassy, more like a lake really.
The lovely park which is all river, all Her,
Her power and majesty manifest,
just some grass and a sidewalk
plus Her, the River, magnificent.
There in the quiet by the tree of seven stems,
not a shred remained, but the memory of all this,
Oshun holding us gladly, still gazing and singing on the shore.
The voices chiming forth Her name,
the drummers and the drums,
the priestess bowing right to the ground,
the dancers, the smiling families,
the babies held high,
the worshippers offering their golden honey
for Her, for Her they moved to the river’s shore,
for Her they poured out their golden love,
their needs, their pain.
For Her someone doffed her clothes
and swam to the other side!
We gathered there by the river,
in the name of love and no more war.
We called out loud to Oshun,
for joy, for water, for our lives,
and She sings there still, calling back to us,
remembering our names.


Annelinde Metzner
Blessings on the River, Woodfin Riverside Park
September 15, 2010 










 

What She Is

We live in small spaces, working, eating, sleeping.

Do we know what She is, really?

How, in Arizona, She explodes up from the ground

into mile-high red rock, the Cathedral, the Hands,

or She implodes far down into Her own belly,

displaying Her inner self without secrets,

silent, awesome, vast, powerful, infinite?

Or how She riles Her cold Pacific, 
daily washing the Western shore,

turquoise and lapis, 
boulders thrown like pebbles hither and yon,

sea weed and sea lions rejoicing,

whales diving and blowing air as they pass year by year?

North, how She sets forth giant trees,

so wide and tall that each is a world,

each a life for a thousand species, 
Her silence immense and eternal?

And how Her blood, Water, 
crashes over rocks through Colorado,

worshiped by the Hopi, drop by drop,

measured enough to grow corn on the dry mesa

or wild enough to scrub the arroyos clean again?

Do we see how wide She is, how vastly new?

Do we gain that joy She intended for us,

privileged as we are to be Her guests?

Annelinde Metzner
Cross-country road trip

August, 2003 


Listen to Nels Arnold reading "What She Is" at a performance of "In the Mother Grove" in 2009:

The sun comes slowly

It’s morning in the forest,
the sun coming in slowly, ray by ray,
bright yellow, burning through mist over the treetops.
I bathe in the new rays, lit up yellow,
each leaf and blade slowly warming, warming.
As Saule’s generous light sinks deeper,
deeper into my bones,
I want to move, write this poem, start my day.
How simple are the needs of this world!
Stoneflies pop up from the ground,
a bumble bee floats to the next blossom.
I float too, in this rich, fresh air,
wanting to breathe deep, to get it all,
to be saturated with this sweet coolness,
cleansing my being.
How simple, how easy are the needs of this world!
The rays of the sun, the generous Saule,
the ever-rushing freshwater creek.
Saule gives of Her abundant light.
I move my hands to this page.
This is all we need, every one.

Annelinde Metzner
Rattler Ford
August 15, 2014

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

Boys practice drumming in Cameroon

Dancers on an Israeli kibbutz

Raqs Farqi, belly dancer

Bharat Natyam dancer of India playing Krishna's flute

Snowbird

Felicia Florendo, Eastern Band Cherokee, dances at a pow-wow

Evening, and the thick drone of cicadas blankets our sleep,
punctuated by twitter of titmouse and woodpecker’s call.
This is Snowbird, the redolent Appalachian home
of the ancient Cherokee, four thousand years here,
Kituah, and home still to this Eastern band,
escaped from forced relocation, the Trail of Tears, 
and hidden away.
This air, this mystery,
mountains so old, each stone a book,
and this Cherokee spirit everywhere,
matriarchal home of the clans:
The Deer, the Wolf, the Bird,
Wild Potato, Red Paint, Blue Paint, the Twister.
Here still, the native speakers, knowers of the old ways,
medicine keepers.
Who danced here, who dances still,
who finds the bloodroot and the sassafras,
a plant for every illness, as was told?
The tears of the Ancestors nourish each step.
This fresh creek, cold as January on this August day,
places me in that ancient era
when bird and bug and bear and I were one.
Cherokee!  I give thanks
that your spirit suffuses this place still,
your love, your surefooted knowing,
your oneness with this mountainous Motherland,
our home, thank you!  Our home.

Annelinde Metzner
Santeetlah Creek
Graham County, North Carolina


Snowbird Cherokee

---

Snowbird is different from other Cherokee communities, and the absence of tourism is only one way in which Snowbird is different. Most studies of the Eastern Band have focused upon the traditionalist Big Cove community of the Qualla Boundary. Yet, Snowbird has a higher percentage of both fullbloods and Cherokee-language speakers than Big Cove or any other Eastern Cherokee community. Snowbird also has a high percentage of native craftsmen and some Indian doctors with a knowledge of medicinal plant. The reservation lands are scattered into individual tracts of land along Snowbird, Little Snowbird, and Buffalo creeks, not consolidated into a huge land mass like the Qualla Boundary.

The Snowbird Cherokee Indian population of Graham County, about 380 people in 1980, has ancient origins, as does the rest of the Eastern Cherokee population. The Cherokees have probably been native to the southern Appalachians for at least four thousand years.* By the beginning of the historic period, the Cherokees numbered more than 20 thousand them one of the largest Indian nations in North America north of Mexico. They lived on land or held hunting territory in modern states: Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, the Carolinas, and the Virginias. The mountain and hill country offered varied resources for subsistence, and the Cherokees, through cultivation of corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, and other crops, as well as gathering, fishing, and hunting, achieved a highly successful generalized adaptation.

In an aboriginal Cherokee town, sweathouses, gardens, and rectangular, gabled, wattle-and-daub homes clustered around a square ground. On the west side of the square ground stood a council house, legendarily seven-sided, on a small temple mound. If the town were on the fringes of the Cherokee territory, it was probably surrounded by a stockade as protection from enemy warriors. The household was the basic unit of Cherokee social organization. As was typical of southeastern Indians, residence was matrilocal; thus a newly married couple lived with the wife's family. Legendarily there had always been seven matrilineal clans: the Deer, Wolf, Bird, Wild Potato, Red Paint, Blue Plant, and Long Hair or Twister. From the individual's perspective, 4 of the clans were most important: one's own (which was also one's mother's and maternal grandmother's), one's father's (which was also one's paternal grandmother's), and each of one's grandfathers'. While many people today on the main reservation are not aware of their clan affiliation, most Snowbird Cherokees are.

Cherokee religious and ceremonial life centered around seven festivals, many of them reflecting the interest in the annual cycle of farming. One of these festivals, the Green Corn Ceremony, persisted into the early twentieth century. Seven was a magic number to the Cherokees as evidenced by their seven ceremonies, seven clans, seven-sided council houses, and the seven sacred directions (north, south, east, west, up, down, and here).             Anthrocivitas post by Starbuck, 12-02-2010

Santeetlah Creek