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