April in Sandy Mush

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.

Listen to Annelinde reading "I save the world by loving Her":

Sandy Mush farm in April

Dogwoods at Hawkscry

At Nels' House

All clayworks by Nels Arnold

I visit Nels' house, more than a year
     since we said goodbye and let her go.
It's early Spring, the not-yet-green mountaintops
     peeking through the almost-bare trees,
     fiddle-head ferns just uncurling in their astonishing way,
     maple leaves so new and soft, 
     I can barely feel them to the touch.
I knew you would never be gone.
Around the house I go,
     through your beloved gardens,
     in every surprising nook and cranny
     some clay work you brought to life with love.
How you envisioned your infinity garden, a figure eight,
     made of moss, still thriving!
A mysterious woodland staircase, and a beckoning path
     up through the woods to your daughter's home.
Ages and times blend together as I climb the trail.
You are there in the old house, raising your children,
     "Look, look there!"
     finding some new art in each day.
I knew you would never be gone.
I turn a corner of your house,
     past your clay studio glowing with your energy,
     and take a deep breath.
Here is a circle of humankind,
     all of us seated, contemplating seashells,
     a circle, yes.
A circle where each is equal, everyone's thoughts matter,
     children and elders gathered 'round,
     a small circle, a magic vision of our future
     you left for us.
Each of your works so human, bending, curving,
     voluptuous, scarred, aged, brand new,
     "I want movement!," you would say.
And here you are everywhere, because someone so alive
     has an energy that lives on, that never dies.
In all the beauty of this Appalachian Spring,
     here you are, Nels, saying "Look!  Look here!'
     offering this world cupped in your potter's hands,
     as you have ever done.

Annelinde Metzner
Bishop Cove
April 17, 2020

Fiddlehead ferns

Stairs to the woods

infinity garden

Maple leaves

Nels Arnold

Johanna's Labyrinth

Johanna's Labyrinth

Big winds the other night!
     forty miles per hour,
     and today the labyrinth's sand paths
     are gilded with branches and twigs,
     offerings of our Mother.
I begin my walk through the winding paths,
     gathering the brittle birch twigs as I find them,
     stopping every few feet to add to my armload.
Sunshine glistens on the offering-stones.
A mild Spring breeze, a zephyr,
     stirs and twists the prayer flags in the trees.

("I like yer towels," said my neighbor Flonnie,
     at my nearby home in Reems Creek,
     as she settled on my porch beneath Tibetan flags.)

I step around the labyrinth, picking up twigs,
     depositing another armload on the pile.
This is familiar, this service, this quietude.
I am an old monk in a Spanish cloister,
     sweeping leaves on a day just like today.
I am a young novice, breathless with anticipation,
     planting lavender in Sappho's garden.
I am a nurse's aid in a New York hospital,
     washing out my mask for the hundredth time.
My footsteps ground me, slow me, connect me.
Dakinis appear in the clear, clean, almost cloudless sky.
My footsteps kiss the earth.
Oh, to be alive this day!
     each footstep giving thanks.

Annelinde Metzner
April 11, 2020
Weaverville

Twig pile

  

Prayer flags

  

Labyrinth and house

The Egg

Pysanky eggs

The egg, elliptical, luminous, whole,
separate, indivisible, complete,
nexus of life, invisible, unspoken,
unnamable ancestral pearl of power,
chosen one: you are my pride, my treasure.
I nurture and guard you with all my life,
a green dragon whose jewel lies hidden
in the humming recesses of her dark-red cave.
I share you with the mammals, and the fish too,
the birds, amphibians, insects, snakes:
our common inheritance, our common being.
All of us, whether we fly or swim,
trot, slither or leap beyond our height,
we all love you the same, and commend you
with lifetimes of attention and lavished care.
There are others, too, ferns and firs,
and maybe fruits, too, our cousins
guarded within the muscled trunks
of our rooted green sisters who grow in the Earth.
There they pull from the black nutrition
the crystals of power, the amino molecules,
fuel from which you radiate light
in fruit, in flower, in ovule, in shell.
I feel you well, with every moon,
through thirteen moons in every year.
You arise and make yourself plain,
crown jewel in the parade of our homeland,
flowering, intoxicating, odoriferous, fecund,
temple priestess of life everlasting
in burgundy velvet, concealing and beckoning.
It is easy, and not easy, to court you, egg,
and find you whole, enthroned in all life,
at once at the center and imminent in all things.
It is easy, and yet to properly seek you,
one must have peace, and presence, and life,
abundant life, and love without question
that leaps into the future, many times ones own height.
I bought a dozen of you today,
to boil you and color you, an essence, a symbol,
a ritual item more real than words
and you’re everywhere, among baskets and bunnies,
colored and white, foam and fluff,
and children’s hands under the bushes.
It is Eostar, your long-ago day
when Russian mothers baked you into bread,
and Czech mothers painted you for hours,
and my own ancestors walked for miles
to gather you one by one from afar,
all of us looking to the reborn world,
the flyers, the creepers, the unfathomable sea-swimmers.
These eggs are ours, our hours, our years,
the perfect pearls of our lives.

Annelinde Metzner
March 19. 1989

       My German family had many deep memories of gathering and dying eggs at Easter.  In the Slavic countries there is an ancient tradition of Pysanka, engraving eggs with wax as protective charms for the house.  Read some fascinating history of pysanka here.