She's Still There

Grandmother in the blooming rhododendrons

Poison ivy blisters our legs,
bugs get in our eyes, under our tongues,
it rains on our best notebooks,
it’s too hot-
and all the while,
even as we scratch and slap and spit,
Grandmother lies face up in the sky sun,
arms spread in the daisies
and the blood-red myrtles,
nose in the clouds,
inhaling and exhaling our lives,
breathing our lives throughout the millennia,
infusing stone with the spark of stars,
singing mystery into the hollow spaces
where the thousand things
daily vanish.

Annelinde Metzner
July 1, 1994



Recently at a retreat at Wildacres, I reviewed my many years of poetry composition and came across this one, one of my first "love songs" for Grandmother Mountain, known popularly as Grandfather, whom I experience as an ancient, wise, feminine presence, grounding and offering energy to the Earth with Her arms outspread.

Grandmother's View of the world

Daisies

Wreathe of abundance at St. Mary of the Hills

Grandmother in Her glory from the Blue Ridge Parkway

Voices of Gaia III

Gray Wolf

I have a silver-furred clan.
Grandmas and nephews
and cousins twice removed.
We keep each other in line
and we survive
here in the cold reaches of Canada
down to Minnesota.
We raise pups and talk,
howl and roam,
and when I twitch my eyebrow
at what I hear you say,
why, my heart is reverberating
in a wild dance with your soul.

Annelinde Metzner
June 1992 "Voices of Gaia"

Key Deer   
                                                       
I am a solitary being
even among my own kind.
I step with caution from the mangroves
and the hardwood hammocks,
expecting the open meadow,
finding instead the fast machines on asphalt
who run us down so heedlessly.
I step carefully and alone
through silver palms and mulberry
observing without comment
the passage of time.

Annelinde Metzner
June 1992 "Voices of Gaia"

 

Sunrise in the forest

Water from the East

Sunrise in the forest- water from the East.
More and more beauty breaks into my awareness!
Sunrays slant through, yellow-green in the mist.
Moisture drips from the high branches, drop drop drop.
A boulder’s hollow space makes bass sounds in the creek.
Five trees on the island listen to this cacophony all year long!
Overhead, Perseid meteors zip zip zip.
I take a seat at the theatre of my imagination.

Annelinde Metzner
Mountain Light Sanctuary

View from my cabin

Voices of Gaia II

Prairie smoke

Prairie Smoke      

Flower of the grasslands
unfurling pink plumes
in dry, inch-thin soil.
Geum triflorum.
The wind blows gently through my sweet feathers.
Shamaness, mistress of illusion, shape shifter.
I grow in soil but cast a spell of mist,
drift like smoke.
Now you see me, now you don’t.
I’m never where you expect me to be.
I may grow into your consciousness when you least expect it,
misty flower of the grasslands.

Annelinde Metzner
"Voices of Gaia"  1992

Field of prairie smoke

Karner Blue butterfly

Butterfly   
                                                                 
On the Midwest prairie
the bright-spotted Regal Fritillary
dines on a banquet of violets.
Wild lupines feed the Karner Blue
next to a runway at the Saratoga Airport.
Bay Area elfins will lay eggs
only when the sun is bright and the air calm,
succulent sedum nearby.
Yes, we are regal, the Butterfly Queens.
We richly deserve your admiration.
We are finicky and difficult.
We require a wild garden paradise.
You may keep your dull sameness
and live without us.

Annelinde Metzner
"Voices of Gaia"  1992

Regal Fritillary

Here are two more from my collection of poems in the voices of endangered species, called "Voice of Gaia" of 1992.