I save the world by loving Her

 

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.

Sandy Mush farm in April

Dogwoods at Hawkscry

Eclipse Moon

Solar Eclipse 2024

 

Moon, my moon,
my mysterious moon,
who waxes and wanes,
who taught women to mark time, your time,
a mutable, non-linear time,
increasing, decreasing,
flowering and dying,
regenerating again and again,
like our blood, like our breathing.
Oh Moon!
Do come with your great mystery.
You, who in this dark moon phase
does not appear at all in the sky,
yet you will cover up the Sun!
Oh my moon, do,
come quickly, come today,
moon of women, of the sacred womb,
the sacred body of women inviolate,
sovereign being, true teacher of resurrection.
Cover up the sun, yes!
Cover up that Aries sun,
shouting "me, me, me!," oblivious,
that sun obsessed with dominance.
Cover up the sun, if only for a minute.
Show what your soft feminine power can do.
Give us a new story that all will know and understand,
a bright shining metaphor.

Annelinde Metzner

Sharon Spring, April 8, 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Returning

 

Azalea in my front yard

Each year more precious,
the rebirth of Spring!
As if now, at my age, I have my doubts,
mired down in tasks and obligations,
living just day-to-day, sunrise to sunset.
But this! The joy of brand-new life,
a quickening in the brown Earth,
and in my soul.
The lilac is back,
each bud bursting into four-petalled sweetness.
Deep in the dry leaf mold,
bloodroot arises from the forest floor,
its sap vermillion, exploding with life energy
into unique white variegated wonder.
Dandelions resume their relentless growth
with a yowl!
Trillium emerges, complete,
ready to live a miracle of grace.
And I too burst forth.
Spring flowers gorgeously in my chest,
silencing my fears,
pulling me back, whee!
into my place in the wonder of living.


Annelinde Metzner
April 8, 2016

Trillium

Bloodroot

Chickweed

Baby jewelweed

Metaphor

 

 

 

It's a March day, not warm yet-
The chill breeze has me in sweaters still.
But in my little flower bed, life stirs!
Everywhere, daffodils burst forth,
nodding their heads in orange, yellow and white.
Among last year's dry leaves,
green pushes out, bold and confident.
Lenten roses, tulip buds,
peony stalks like voluptuous red asparagus.
Here and there, a primrose,
lemon balm, anise and mint.
The perfect shapes of bleeding hearts,
my Grandmother's favorite.
Delightful after winter's long inward turning,
each green being comes forth waving,
like a long-lost friend.
Is there a metaphor here?
Everything we've planted can be reborn. 

Annelinde Metzner

March 20,2024

 

 

Lenten rose

Bleeding Heart

Peony

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.

Run toward your creative life

 

Cabin window at Hawkscry

Run toward your creative life with all your might
even when, and even because, tears stain the very surface,
the fiber of your creative being.

Isn’t this your truest self?
Isn’t this a pristine beach,
more wild than winter, more vast?

Doesn’t the joy breath of your inner life
smell fresher than new-washed cottons hung in the air?

When the long day finally ends,
and I come close to the inner self,
I pull back the veil.

Annelinde Metzner      
June 2006

Lagoon at the Baba Center

Pine cones

Piano at Wildacres

Sand dune at Ocracoke

Elsie's Garden

 

Tante Elsie in her gardening hat

Drove up to Elsie’s garden, my head in the radio,
counting measures and checking musical forms.
I raise my eyes just to park and...
Jolted into Eden, an ecstasy of brilliant color, 
like a cold slap. I’m awakened.
These Irises (the eyes?) are a queen’s purple, 
a ransom of gold,
fringed, bearded, double ruffled about their delicate mouths,
waiting lush as Sheba.
Lemon yellow bearded coral, glacier white fringed,
with a calligraphy of magenta.
Rust-red and egg-yolk yellow.
I gain my breath, and big tears, here at Elsie’s garden.
Tante, at ninety-two, fosters this ecstasy of color,
and scent of peony, double, triple, magenta, snow!
Knowing I must go knock and enter at the door,
I breathe deep, remembering, 
remembering the grace of my DNA,
the colors, the purple, saying “This is me,”
coming off the highway.  
“This is also me”, my old Tante in her garden,
pulling a true miracle of flowers from the unsuspecting soil,
back in the dirt where we belong.
This is me. I weep, I love, I remember.

Annelinde Metzner
April 2006

Feeling gratitude for my Tante Elsie, who nurtured so much life in me by living to the fullest herself.