Just the Way Things Are

An early walk by the lake
high in the Blue Ridge, near Grandmother.
The veery, over and over,
spirals her mystical song down over us, a double helix.
The wood thrush, uppity-up, downy-down,
and the way its song breaks up at the end,
a lesson in impermanence.
The whip-poor-will too, as round and beautiful a tone,
a magic flute.
Across the lake in the early morning,
a cormorant flies low and straight
then stops to hang her big wings out to dry.
Slowly, slowly steps the doe,
carelessly chewing on elder flowers,
as though all of this were the everyday gift,
just the way things are.

Annelinde Metzner
Price Lake
June 22, 2012

Elder flower

Japanese Swell Shark

Swell shark embryo in egg sac

What a mother you have!
Fifty yards below the sea,
you grow from a whisper to a fish, in your smooth egg-sac,
anchored by cool chains your mother made you,
and wound around coral, that the sea might not steal you.
Red choral and yellow.
What a luminous home!
What a way to grow!
Lucky fish baby.

Annelinde Metzner

September 1, 1981

Columbia, South Carolina



Learn more about the amazing Japanese Swell Shark here.

Japanese Swell Shark

Embryo

Wood Carving from Bali

The rings of the spalted wood circle each woman’s breasts-
and one ring forms each voluptuous belly.

The artist holds the beginning piece until the mermaids speak,
until they weep and beg for their own dawning,
bellies, breasts and hands reaching to the artist’s,
the two women bending and swaying like the slow waves of the Balinese sea,
hand and arms vining from the curve of the wood,
those gestures the artist knows well.

Somewhere at the end points, a spalted curl,
a treasured fault, no error at all,
but the explicit evidence of concentrated power
turned in on itself, a sunburst within the wood,
the outward blooming of focussed energy giving in to itself, reclaiming,
a seed imploded, a twist of the inner force,
energy curled outward to catch the artist’s eye,
or rather to seize it,
to demand love, and tender loving carver’s hands,
the rough places asking for sanding and polish,
so that light will gleam there and beg for the touch,
so that passers-by will forever reach out to the wood,
to those firm and gentle ringed breasts,
the bellies smooth like pears or tears.

The human hand asks to reach for them, for the swaying sea-women
and the cool ageless hardness of the polished wood,
bursting inward with eyes and hands as we all can,
calling to the carver, the artist’s infinite patience, scale and leaf,
to twine forth from the turning wood into our yearning humanness,
smooth, ringed, spalted icons, the reach of the tree’s hands.

Annelinde Metzner
Woodstock, New York
July 13, 1995

Watch Balinese woodcarvers at work here.

Raddha and Krishna

Ganesh

Carrying us, carrying us still

My son Peter with family at 19

Don’t even have to look over my shoulder
to know the two walnut trees are there
where we hung our hammock one day like this,
Peter and I, long ago.
Don’t even have to creep under the rhododendron
to know that morels are growing there, and Indian pipes,
and if you creep further, the lake,
The lake! that on a starry night shimmers,
stars to the tenth power, moving, glistening,
and maybe even a moon.
Don't even have to lift my head
to know the mountain laurel blooms, millions upon millions,
with all their geometry,
tens time tens, and the pink, the white,
and how they float as they drop to the shimmering lake.
Is that the wee branch that gurgles by,
that gurgled by our tent then, by Peter’s big self and I,
he crashing out solid on the hard earth, snoring,
me, the princess, dragging foam pads and pillows?
In the tent, his pocket, and my pocket,
wrist watches and eyeglasses,
the setup and the takedown as smooth as water.
And out there, above us, Grandmother.
Did She know?  did She know?
Did She watch, Her patient self, or even pick him out for Her own,
one of those long-ago days, him so young, so fine,
an Aztec prince, perfect for the sacrifice?
On the magic path, our parkway, we walked the rails,
he thirteen, me thirty-six and us so new.
The ranger stopping- was that a warning?
Was danger hovering over us like a million laurels-
could everyone see it but us?
Yes, danger, or should we remember energy,
power,  ancient and cool as cats,
that burst forth as joy we had in each other,
so girls would say, “You come alive together,”
strange as that was for mother and son?
Long, old knowing that filled our days,
welcomed the world, overcame pain,
old knowing that never dies, we came with it, we leave with it,
we live this way still, Peter and I, at home everywhere,
(“Uh-oh, Augra, could be anywhere...”)
circling quiet as a nimble bird,
glimmering like stars, the water of the lake,
the rosy energy of Grandmother’s arms,
the powerful wind, all still here,
carrying us, carrying us still.

Annelinde Metzner

June 25, 2007

My post today is devoted to my son Peter Scott Rudolf Metzner, who passed away June 25, 2004 at the age of 29.    She carries us still!

Price Lake with Grandmother Mountain

Spirit painting of Peter by Arline Boyce

Sacred mound

Peter and myself, 1972

Peter plays the flute, 2003

Bridgid keens

Sara la Kali

Sara in her chapel

Sara la Kali                                                     

On May twenty-fourth, your feast day,
Romani people in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer
pilgrimage to be with You, dark Daughter,
Sara la Kali.
Immersed in the mystery of the candle-lit chapel,
the people come and come and come,
men in black leather, long-haired women,
ordinary people moved by Your being.
Mournful, passionate with Your love,
a woman’s voice, low, sings with longing for You.
Sara la Kali, You arose here from the sea,
fresh from the womb of the Goddess and God,
carrier of the sang real, holy blood and grail.
They arrive in a hush to kiss Your cheek.
Layer upon layer they dress You in finery,
promises of blessings to all of us in need.
And then on this day, You come out into the world!
Men in black on fine white horses,
colorful flags held high in Your honor,
wade far out into the raging waters,
awaiting Your passage back to the sea.
Sara!   If we had known of You,
Sara, passion of the two great beings,
Sara, love child, Magdala and Yeshua,
where would we be today, our Kali,
our Kali of Europa, born to us all,
and in the white and rushing waters,
swept away.

Annelinde Metzner

June 14, 2012

Experience the Feast day of Saint Sara, May of 2008, here.

Worshipping Sara by the sea

Transit of Venus

Venus and sun with solar flares (NASA)

Isn’t She slow, slow and steady,
      cool, round, perfect, whole,
      oblivious of heat in Her cool wholeness,
      moving, but on Her own time, inexorable,
      the Goddess of Love, Her divine Self,
      moving queenly across the face of the Sun?
Our Mother, the Queen,
      who hears no ridicule, no envious snicker,
      who gives no heed to patriarchy
      as She processes, stately, in Her time.
She moves, She moves, but in Her own time,
      our Goddess of Beauty, born from the Sea,
      Aphrodite, the One Who Knows,
      La Que Sabe, who knows the truth:
      that all of Life goes in search of Beauty.
      This is Her truth, dead serious.
With Beauty held in Her cool hand
      all will thrive, all will live,
      and live well, live full and long,
      naked, free and full of Love.
Our Mother, Venus, transiting the Sun,
      displaying Her perfect, naked Self,
      a queen to the core, our Mother,
      She moves, slowly, She moves.

Annelinde Metzner
Craggy Mountain NC
June 5, 2012

Venus transit with bird (Reuters)

Venus by Botticelli

Florida Vacation

Florida panther

Flamingoes

I happen upon a horned owl,        
three feet from me, in a tree branch.
The sense of recognition comes, an unexpected thud in my heart.
“Hi,  brother!,” but more:
that only a hundred years past, maybe less,
this animal presence was familiar as my breath, my blood, my sight.
Florida in the cypress.
Mallards float by, an alligator, a kite, and you should know!
You have been immersed in this.
You’ve been overwhelmed.
A thousand pink flamingos on a grassy plain, running, rippling roses,  
feathers with the inner seashell’s luminous glow.
We have been healed by this!
You roamed the land.
Fifty pheasants rose from the brush in a heartbeat.
You surprised a huge buck deer
and he stared you down before turning tail.
An easy bargain, all this gone, all this family gone.
The bargains are everywhere around us.
One chain saw to split the air with its shattering hum,
fifty Florida panthers gone.
Step in your car.  Put your foot on the gas.
Another black bear rolls over, ready to compost.  No heirs.
Send another fax and soon...
With every step, the human heart strangles in silence,
in emptiness, in lifelong loneliness.
No contract was written or signed.       
We’ve only just agreed to this spurious bargain:
one buzzing box for you to plug into,
a thousand of the animal kin, gone, gone, gone.

Annelinde Metzner

Tallahassee, Florida

March 20, 1996

Great Horned Owl

Florida beach

Florida jungle

Lifting the Veil

This Sunday, this Mother’s Day,
at my dear Grandmother Mountain’s side,
She is enshrouded in fog and rain.
She shows me her veiled Self.
How grateful am I, how sure of Her being.
Her vastness there
is complete in my knowing,
an unseen force of pure energy,
strong and palpable.
Over the Sacred Mound, a white veil.
I stare, aware of Her power,
and She appears!  just briefly, just half,
by my precious son’s bones,
by the tree made of me.
Pan, dark and strong,
nods playfully among the rhododendrons.
At the lake, the white veil,
the delicate, steady patter of raindrops
on the lake’s surface and on my roof.
So this is how one lifts the veil!
This knowing, this many years of deeply relating,
these many stories:
the star magnolia magnificently drooping,
the hammock strung, the midnight swim,
the beaver dam,
the wild strawberries.
I know, I’m sure, I feel
I can lift the veil.

Annelinde Metzner
Grandmother Mountain
May 13, 2012

Flying is just learning by doing

Flying is just learning by doing.
Three ospreys (then more, then more!)
announce themselves with a raucous caw,
spread their wings wide,
and fly out over the mile-high expanse,
Thunder Hill.
Right over my head they come,
so I face into the sun,
and then the moon, a tiny crescent.
Raaaack!  they cry
to get my attention,
and I see, with the high mountain wind,
the slight shifts of tail feathers,
rudders in the wind,
the bend and curve as they rise higher and higher.
I remember, in those dreams,
you can fly higher and higher,
just go!  You have your wings,
the wind will take you, you can bend-
Flying is just learning by doing,
after the first great thrust into the air.

Annelinde Metzner

May 20, 2009

Flame Azalea

Flame Azalea

At the top of the long grade,
through the rhododendrons and flame azalea abloom in a bower,
I arrive at Grandmother’s side, yet once more.
“Depend on me,” She has been calling, from many miles away.
I step nearer. Tears fall.
Not another soul appears, here where crowds have been.
I circumambulate Her, dragons in the air,
Star magnolias blooming. I am here, I am here with Her.

At my little campsite, not a soul.
I fill my bottles with icy water and eat my lunch.
Not a soul but a big brown beetle in the bath.

I travel on to the church of the Lady,
Our Lady of the Hills, and am blessed with the talk of the gardener,
the magenta blooms of rhododendron so high,
encircling the bell tower, chiming on “One.”
Inside, quiet, lights and candles, and it’s Spring!
On the kneeling pads, at the pulpit,
lily-of-the-valley, iris, rhododendron, phlox.
Our Lady’s church blooming inside and out.
She gives me Her shy glance, holding the Child,
and She is saying, “from pain blooms love.”

And finally here, by my son’s bones
mockingbirds raucous with things to say twitter all around.
I leave Bridgid’s cross, an offering to the trees.
My toes revel in the sweetness of wild strawberries.
The cattle are out on the sacred mound, under the apple tree,
new calves scampering to be with their moms.
Sweet the sun burns the scent into my being.
The flame azalea, bent by winter’s fierce storms,
reaches out to me in all shades of opening.
“Keep growing, Annelinde!”, they call. “There is still more.”

Annelinde Metzner

Grandmother Mountain, May 2011

St. Mary's

Star Magnolia

Grandmother in the distance

Yemaya Knocks Me Down

She will bowl you over!
Leave too many salt tears,
and the Voodoo women say
She will pull you in
to join your salt with Hers forever.
But you can cry to Yemaya!
Whate’er your sadness, large or small,
She pounds the shores ever again
in rhythms as old as Earth,
waxing, waning, high tide, low tide,
Sister of the moons, pulling us in as She pulls on our blood,
the other salt sea we carry within.
Whate’er your sadness, She pounds our shores
as though our misery were just another tortilla.
She is huge, and warm, and She smiles very big,
and without knowing, we reach for Her.
The salt sea rises and falls with Her,
She rocks us in Her huge arms, wherever we are,
around the world She rocks us to sleep,
high tide, low tide, dreaming of the moon,
minnows in Her pockets.

Annelinde Metzner

June 24, 1995

Yemaya altar in Cuba

Offerings to Yemaya

When the Azaleas Bloom

When the Azaleas bloom,
don’t they grab you, reach deep into you,
say, “Slow down, stop here,
stay with me, look at me,
I’m the pinkest creature you’ve ever seen!
I am a flamboyant Madam in Paris perfume.
I am every little girl’s Easter dress.
I am big and fat as five frangipani leis around your neck.
I bedeck the temple altar of Aphrodite.
I am the petaled carpet strewn before Our Lady.
My pink stamens reach for you, trumpets of your awakening.
Each of my green leaves shouts ‘New!  Begin anew!’
In my deepest recesses are gorgeous patterns
of darker pink against light.
Fat bees are engorged on me.
My blossoms crowd onto my stems
like a thousand virgins of Artemis
laying holy wreaths in our paths.”
The pink azalea says, “Here we are, perfect and whole,
powerful, adaptive, ready for change,
offering beauty, open as a thousand yonis.
Stop right here, and love me!”


Annelinde Metzner

April 14, 2011
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

Annelinde and pink azalea at home

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.

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

Sandy Mush farm in April

Dogwoods at Hawkscry

Let It

Not just once but many times She surrenders,
the Wisteria, lusciously sweet,
royally purple, palest lavender,
clusters like Concord grapes
drooping, sprouting wild everywhere.
Leaves so new and tender-green,
I can’t even feel them to the touch.
Huge, heavy scent,
like a sultry liaison on a hot afternoon,
or like three Grandmas in church,
or like a little girl’s Christmas perfume.
Surrender!  says She,
and again She gives forth so big,
trees and roofs are dwarfed by Her energy.
Let it just fall, fall down,
give up, She shows us!
And why do you hold on so tight?
Fall, let fall!  and as you do,
your beauty, your perfect wholeness
falls open for all to see.


Annelinde Metzner   

Meher Baba Center

April 2009

A Madonna for Martin Luther

Early, early, on a Charleston Thursday, springtime on Anson Street,
full of surprises as only old Charleston can be,
I come upon the farthest corner of St. Johannes Lutheran Church.
I blink my eyes.  She is here!
Lovingly set against the whitewashed wall,
blue-robed Mary with her tender heart
glows among the roses.
Lutheran Church, church of my family,
church of no feminine image of God,
where our forebear Luther expunged
even patient, loving Mary
from our spirits, from our liturgy, from our prayers,
where in my girlhood, though at Easter we all carried flowers,
no women were imaged divine in the Protestant Church.
And here She is!
In the church’s far corner,
She smiles radiant against the whitewashed wall.
Someone has set two bluebirds,
blue birds of happiness at Her divine feet,
and a broad bubbling fountain nearby
reminds us of Her joyous abundance,
spilling over through all our days.
Here She is!   Martin Luther, do you rejoice,
do tears of redemption spill from your eyes,
our Divine One in Her place again?
She is here!  She is here!

Annelinde Metzner
Charleston, South Carolina

Guadalupe at Phoebe Pember House