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.

Boys practice drumming in Cameroon

Dancers on an Israeli kibbutz

Raqs Farqi, belly dancer

Bharat Natyam dancer of India playing Krishna's flute

Shiva Ratri

"Maiden, Mother, Crone" by Tamara Adams

Call and response.
I slip into my alpha waves.....
     "Om Namah Shivayah, Om Namah Shivayah..."
The simple joy of being together
to eat and to make music unto the Gods.
Near me, singing and praying,
two of my healers, my caregivers,
my priestesses who, a year ago,
came to me, fresh out of surgery,
and spent the night.
     "Om Namah Shivayah....."
Seven women came, healers all,
spending the night or the day,
changing my bandages, bringing me food,
going for me wherever I could not go.
So huge their kindness, so heart-felt,
unquestioning of my needs, my vulnerability.
My protectors, my priestesses!
     "Om Namah Shivayah...."
Feeling held and grateful,
I rested, at peace, much loved,
at one with my time on this Earth.

Annelinde Metzner
March 5, 2019

Recently I was blessed to attend kirtan (Hindu chanting) with two women who generously assisted me after my surgery in June of 2018.  I felt so loved, even a year later!
     Thanks to Tamara Adams for the beautiful art above.
     Below is an image of Shiva, the God/Goddess honored by a special day called Shiva Ratri. This aspect of the god is called Shiva Nataraj, the Lord of the Dance, who sets the world into motion each day with the rhythm of his rattle.