Grandmother's Bones

 

 

 

"I am showing you the beauty of Winter,"
called my Grandmother, the stark grey shapes
of Her naked trees, each one a poem.
A whiff of compost, a whiff of new-mown hay.
Why do I sense this richness,
as everywhere She withdraws,
holding energy within Her great womb?
Clean white clouds move ever so slowly
in the ceaseless November wind.
The majestic sculptures of the leafless trees
etched perfectly in the bright sun's shadow.
The ceaseless wind rumbles in my ears,
the cold, quiet beauty of brown and grey
begging me to give in. 

Annelinde Metzner

November 9, 2023

Celebration of Death

 

Autumn in the Blue Ridge.
A golden glow emanates
as the leaves slowly release their chlorophyll,
revealing their true selves,
their true colors.
In the soft breeze,
on this ridge-top ruled by wind,
one leaf drops, then another,
carelessly, an afterthought,
absentminded.
But in the full-force wind, it's a party!
It's a riot of release,
a bright-colored snowfall,
each leaf shouting "Whee,
let's become compost!"
In all this brilliance, lit by sun,
rose-red, pumpkin-orange, sun-yellow,
purple of asters,
brown stiff corn drying on the stalks,
my Mother, my Goddess instructs us-
"Look at Me!  Never forget,
my human sons and daughters,
I am the Queen of Death as much as Life!
Each end of life is mine, and each beginning,
the waxing and the waning,
the building up and then the letting go.
Regeneration is my watchword.
You will return!
I give you the beauty of Autumn,
to hold you,
to thrill you and warm you,
until you too pass like a bright leaf
on to the next thing."

Annelinde Metzner

October 27, 2023

 

 

 

 

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
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Grossmutter Comes Flying

Metzner family, circa 1921: Elsie, Bruno, Alfred, Sophie, Rudolf, Martha (left to right)

A wind that could tear off shingles

whips over the ridge all night,

leaving a sky clean and blue as an Alpine lake.

The last few leaves cling low to the maple trees,

the newly bare tree tops scraping the sky.

The sound of an ax chopping wood comes up the hollow.

My uncle’s spirit is chopping wood, a chore that’s never done.

The ancient and everyday repetitions of labor-

splitting firewood, canning fruit, 

patching clothes, knitting hats-

the ancestors nudge us, saying “listen to the wind!”,

reminding us to keep moving, prepare for winter.

No tender admonitions here!

Grossmutter comes flying over the trees in a vision,

braving vast expanses of the sea,

four children, one just a baby, wrapped in her skirts,

my father pushing out from her embrace

to gaze beyond the ship’s deck to the New World.

“Fly!”, she says to me. “What holds you back?

None of us know what that first step will bring.

It is your Grossmutter in the spirit world and I tell you-

the world changes shape with every step you take.

Just go!”

A russet maple leaf lets go, and spins out of sight.

Nana appears.

She has thrown off her rose-colored apron

and put down her wooden spoon.

She is twenty-five, pin curled and all brand new,

eyes opened wide.

“Granddaughter, yes, go!  With each step,

the world rearranges itself before you,

a Rubik’s Cube, a house of mirrors.

Take that step!  As we live and breathe,

other souls live and breathe too,

and arrange their lives to respond to you.

Step into the dance! The music you call,

and the next, and the next under your gaze will fall.”

At this she spit-polishes her new red shoes,

steps on board the trolley car,

smiles wide at the driver,

and spins off into the skies.

Annelinde Metzner

October 28, 2009

Today I'm once more honoring my Tante Elsie, pictured above with my father Rudolf, uncle Alfred, aunt Martha and my grandparents, Sophie and Bruno, shortly before their arrival in America.  This weekend Elsie is celebrating their arrival date, February 22, 1923, when the family arrived in New York City, reuniting with father Bruno and sister Martha who had come earlier to pave the way. 

My maternal grandmother, Louise Soldano (Nana), who appears in the second half of the poem!

Elsie today in her winter hat, at one hundred years old.

Please leave a comment here below!

 

Gratitude for Water

Water will flow to you, lucky blessed Human
      straight down the mountain, clear, crisp,
      almost white with coldness on a July day.
      You can drink this!
Water will flow for you, fortunate one,
      over rocks worn beautiful with the
      eternal wearing-away,
      the rush and gurgle, the pounding of water
      unending, abundant, all-powerful.
      You can bathe in this!
Water will run through your arteries and veins,
      dear blessed one,
      making all your body sacred, connected,
      healed in itself, and in each other.
      You live because of this!
Here we are, Human, on our blue-green Water Planet,
      spinning through the galaxy, evolving over eons,
      because of Water, Water!
Touch Her to your forehead, your most sacred places,
      blessed one.
Greed must not come near Her!
Never attempt to control Her!
In every blade, in every vein,
 in every rock and stone, we share Her.
Do homage to our most beautiful, singing Mother,
Water!


Annelinde Metzner

Catskill Farm 

August 2011

Looking Glass

 

Looking Glass Mountain

The earth’s egg,
she nestles here in her corpus luteum.
Bold and firm, how deep, how deep?
Huge egg, birth place, bursting place,
eminently fertile stone ground of all beginnings.
The earth’s egg,
smooth as silk at the long fall,
an Easter egg frosted with green.
In peace a buzzard glides by on the thermals,
loving Her, all bliss.

Annelinde Metzner    
July 25, 2009

Grandmother looking at the sky

Looking Glass in 2023

Spicebush Swallowtail

 

So this is what it’s like to metamorphose:
your heavy self creeping, creeping,
slow and deliberate, day after day,
and then, (why?)
one day, just this day,
you spin a fine web to bind you, to hold you,
to surround you, to darken the sky,
to keep you within, 

silent, unmoving, unknowing.
How you love your chrysalis!
You're snug, suspended, 

not breathing, not quite being.
And then, (why?) one day, just this day,
you desire above all else 

to tear this cocoon asunder,
to rip it to shreds, to see the light,
to breathe, to open one tiny space
until you, Slug, heavy and slow,
have wings now, you are naught but wings!
Wings thinner than air itself, 

and with the slightest stir,
You fly.  You fly.  You fly.

Annelinde Metzner
Mountain Light Sanctuary
July 14, 2012

Farm Kitchen

 

The farm kitchen in 1992

Cups and cups hang from hooks,
plates of every color and design in the cupboard,
enough for a field full of neighbors some hungry noon.
Rafters and ceiling a greasy black
even now that the big wood stove is gone,
flavored of pancakes and kuchen,
Sunday chickens and potato soup.
A ladle and a dishpan over the sink
where the cold, clear water gleams to the taste.
On the table, flour, salt and sugar flow,
foods that keep and stretch
and fill the belly to last all day.
Mice scurry across the floor
and hop up on the big table
to gawk at the evening game-players,
forgetting themselves momentarily
and then startling to the squeals.
Foot baths on the step, warm and sensual,
makes you feel clean all over!
In the morning, the aroma of coffee,
and a child’s dreamy inheritance
of the never-empty pot,
abundant evermore.

Annelinde Metzner
Catskill Farm
July 13, 1992

  The old farmhouse, circa 1860, in the Catskills is just about gone now due to age and recent vandalism.  But the memories and mysteries I learned there from the deeply shared culture of our immigrant family will remain with me forever.  I give thanks for all I carry with me from this place. As with immigrants in all times and places, we knew that we must love and take care of each other in order to survive.

Farm upstairs bedroom with Mom's old vanity

Detail of barn construction

Farm house wave

Brother and sister, Martha and my dad Rudolph

Enjoying a beer on the front lawn

Two Poems from Hawkscry

 

 

 Marveling

In the afternoon, a breeze rises,
setting the tops of trees to swaying.
What a joy to spend the whole day marveling!
Slowly, slowly, the summer sun moves across the sky.
Two wood thrushes, two! call to each other through the woods.
I am as slow as the inchworm moving up my arm.
Now the sun slants in from the west,
lighting up the woods in a whole new way.
I absorb the silence like Mother's milk,
marveling and giving thanks all day.

Annelinde Metzner
Hawkscry
June 28, 2023

 

 

End of June

End of June, a day of quiet,
hardly a breeze, stillness in the air.
I am still, too, and nothing stirs,
just a silent opening-out of green,
opening all our arms to the Sun.
The dahlias, a riotous multi-petaled lotus of color,
the milkweed waiting patiently for monarchs,
and far in the woods, at the edge of it all,
the wood thrush.
High, high overhead, an eagle drifts on the thermals.
I, too, am deeply resting,
incubating,
opening my leaves in green joy
for whatever is coming next.

Annelinde Metzner
Hawkscry
June 28, 2023

 

 

 

 

Slow Walking

 

 

 

 

When the tall tree fell right across my car's path,
not five minutes from home,
the winds gusting at forty miles an hour,
the firemen directing me to turn around,
I cancelled my trip.
Trees swayed, the wind blew,
and there it was, freedom!
A day unaccounted for. I'm supposed to be away,
they're keeping the mail, and I'm gone.
A chance to follow where I'm led.
Finding a path in the woods that needed my feet,
I begin, s-l-o-w-l-y, having to be nowhere,
poking along with my walking sticks,
just here, just now.
But I needed to see this! Three lady-slippers,
then four, luxuriously pink,

like a French madam, about to expire.
I had to see this!
Going slowly, I pause for each smooth, green leaf,
little sapplings, oak, maple, poplar,
newly-unfurled Solomon's Seal,
slow enough to caress, and kiss, and welcome,
these soft green beings back from Winter's slumber.
I stop, because I am going slow.
In the distance, in that precious pause,
the first singing wood thrush of the year.

Annelinde Metzner
Ox Creek
May 3, 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red Oleander

 

 

Red Oleander, watercolor by Deb Pollard

 

A salamander pale green as the new leaves of May
opens its orange lung-sac, brilliant, to the sun.
Three times at every pause!
In the breeze, red Oleander bends on her long stem, celebrating.
I am drawn down a quiet lane by the scent of jasmine
beguiling my heart, a path toward joy.
The dear Earth wafts up into me,
warm as fresh-baked bread,
filling my womb with Her love.
With my feet in the sand,
I pull Her love into me,  to power my days.
Mother holds me tenderly, the mourning dove
in her palmetto-basket nest, giving, giving,
we Her babies, Her vast dream,
we Her future and Her now.
The black fin of a dolphin arises from the sea, ancient as days,
loving Her into the fathomless tomorrow.

Annelinde Metzner, June 1, 2010

Delight abounds in the month of May, moving slowly through the world, admiring each new green being.  And giving thanks for my friend Deb Pollard, whose art above, the pulsating life of May in which the dolphins rejoice, was inspired by my poem.  And many thanks to Feminism and Religion for publishing my poems, including this one today.

Red Oleander

 

Florida Masquerade

 

What a disguise She has!
Cars honk, interstates criss-cross,
golf courses manicure each square inch of land.
Shopping malls and theme parks, parking lots,
What a big charade!
But turn away just once,
just once turn away from the clamor
toward the quiet lanes.
Look up!  A bald eagle settles in
high in the branches of the live oak over your head.
A gopher turtle clambers on its bony legs
right across the road.
The alligator floats, seeming so gentle,
back and forth, back and forth across the lake.
The ineffable scent of orange blossom fills the air,
suspending all one’s notions of what is and what should be.
The ibis, straight as an arrow,
flies to her nest with a fish in her beak.
Good going!  You have seen beneath Her disguise,
Our Florida, our flowered land,
our fountain of ever-renewing youth,
our paradise.

Annelinde Metzner
Gainesville, Florida
March 30, 2014