Coming Out from Under

Barack Obama at 2012 Democratic National Convention

for Barack and Michelle Obama


The people are coming out from under the pall of abuse.
Bad leaders, the worst, have us dizzy, tired,
unused to independent thought.
When our leaders are bad, we say “Is it me?
Am I dull and stupid, intolerant and unaware?”
The people have watched their tender firstborns
sent to war,  year after year,
to satisfy the unquenchable thirst for blood
of one bent solely on blind revenge.
We were not permitted to watch our sons and daughters
return home dead.
Maimed or incoherent, we housed them as best we could,
in the face of pure denial all around,
as their memories of senseless cruelty abroad
invaded their dreams.
The people, American people,
had to watch as their country
engaged in torture behind closed doors,
in a rule of no-law, where, like beaten children,
we all viscerally feared for ourselves.
The people have watched as loopholes emerged
in affairs of money,
banks developed the “liars’ loan”,
where you and I will lose our houses,
our jobs and all we have
just to let the government-sanctioned fat cats
keep their wealth and all their entitlements.
Like children who have seen all this,
like beaten women with nowhere to go,
we stumble now, still, unaware of the light,
as if light itself were too harsh to bear,
while deep, deep within, our souls know it’s time to sing.

Annelinde Metzner     
April 14, 2009

Michelle Obama at the DNC 2012

The First Family

Thank You's at the 2012 DNC

Mass Hypnosis

Hurricane Isaac storm surge 2012

“They had dead bodies in the water, and dogs swimming by. 

 The water was up to my chin”.    New Orleans, August 2005

And here we are, American people,

dreaming ourselves along in a media-induced haze

where all of us are wealthy, dress snappily, style our hair.

Doesn’t all America speak like a Valley girl, like, like, like?

“They was women and children, little bitty babies on that bridge.  

 I went for water and it took me seven hours.   

When I got back my wife and five kids was gone.”

Do you know people so poor they never look you in the eye,

as if you were some apparition, too wealthy, to glib to be seen?

Does it take a giant storm, a spinning whirlwind of natural fury

to tear off the facades, to leave exposed our men and women,

our everyday people in their great numbers

who would have gone on voiceless, waiting, waiting,

until you and I could, at last, see ourselves there?

Annelinde Metzner

Hurricane Katrina

September 12, 2005

Hurricane Isaac flood 2012

Little girl at Red Cross shelter, 2012

Man overwhelmed, Hurrican Isaac, 2012

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

Listen to Annelinde reading "Gratitude for Water" at our live concert, "Lady of Ten Thousand Names," on August 18, 2012.  (CDs and DVDs are available- click on the BUY tab. )

Homage to Ereshkigal

Dark sister, my blood, my DNA, my other half,
Remind me of all that I am!
Messenger from the other worlds that I so crave,
calling to me, calling to me...
Ground me!   Pull me downward,  inward,
Let me never scorn you,
you dear sister Goddess who represent
all that is hard, all that is besmeared, difficult, ugly,
unplanned, unforeseen, all that, deep down, is life itself.
Remind me of all that I am.
Hold me close within the dark Earth,  Ereshkigal,
close to you.

Annelinde Metzner

December 2009

Ereshkigal (pronounced ay-RESH-kee-gal) is the Sumerian Goddess of death and Queen of the Underworld. She is the daughter of Nammu, Goddess of the primordial sea, and Anu, God of the sky, and twin sister of Enki, God of the waters. Shortly after her birth, she was carried off by the dragon Kur to the Underworld, where she became its ruler. She is also said to be the older sister of Inanna, Goddess of love, war, and fertility, and she is mostly known from the myth of Inanna’s descent to the Underworld. Ereshkigal’s husband Gugalanna, the Bull of Heaven, had been killed after Inanna sent him to punish Gilgamesh, and Inanna went to the Underworld to pay her respects to her sister. Ereshkigal feared that Inanna was actually coming to take over the Underworld, and had her servant remove an article of Inanna’s clothing at each of the seven gates that she had to pass through. When she finally arrives naked at the foot of Ereshkigal’s throne, Ereshkigal strikes her sister dead and hangs her body from a hook behind her throne.

Medicine Wheel

Medicine Wheel at Mountain Light Sanctuary, photo by Susa Silvermarie

Stepping slowly around the Medicine Wheel, I gaze across,
breathing with each Sister there, my other Selves.

In the East, all wet and newly sprung,
just cracked from the shell in dewy wonder,
I gaze across the wheel: myself in the West.
How can it be? She knows so much,
too much, maybe, of self hurt and other’s hurt,
unexpected turns, no hope, no help, the darkness.

In the South, from my place of staunch will and fiery passion,
I gaze across the wheel: myself in the North.
Can this be me? I am cool, analytical,
I’ve learned something, I see two sides,
I weigh, I discern, I know.
My wisdom cools my ardor and gives me choice.

In the West, place of Death, place of the deep sea of fears,
the lurking shadows, weariness, pain and loss,
I gaze across the wheel:  myself in the East.
Baby girl child, wide-eyed with wonder, fresh.
How I love this girl, as I stand in my pain,
reliving Her, being Her, child Self!

In the North, cool abode of wisdom, hard-earned knowledge, awareness,
I gaze across the wheel: myself in the South.
How I love that dynamo, the me that demands, the fiery one, the sure one,
stirring up the world, her cauldron, sure of right from wrong.
How I love that woman of passion.

Stepping slowly around the Wheel,
how I love each Self there, my other Me,
each Sister on the other side, played out each day in my one soul.
We reach for each other, Sisters all,
me and me, and me and me,
and make one whole.




Annelinde Metzner
Mountain Light Sanctuary

July 14, 2012

One of those days

On one of those dappled August days
     back-lit by winter,
     blended of cool light and warm air,
my brother picks his way slowly
     along the river bank,
     unhurried,
     comparing the level to last year,
     the placement of stones,
     the blend of colors on this bank of flowers,
     the number and size of fish.
I doze while I wait for his return.

Next morning, strewn over the wooden table,
     six or seven sketches:
     the wood stove, the bricks, the gas lamp,
     the worn places in the ceiling paint.
My heart leaps.
I weep.
My brother, my blood,
walker, painter,
kin.

Annelinde Metzner
Catskill Farm
August 24, 1997

My brother Dick Metzner

Green

Green shoots through branches, baking in sun.
I grasp green with my lips, my heart.
There’s a vine in here, wanting sun!
Green, tight with veins and stems,
fiery, fluid, reaching.
From my lips, a vine, and with it words.
I remember our kinship. We are one!
My mouth holds vines, brilliant tendrils.
If I’m still long enough, they will shoot out from me!
From my toes, roots, cool earth pulling them along.
From my fingers, tendrils
straining for sun. More brilliance!
A long July day of brilliance, heat,
a green burning, making nutriment,
chlorophyll, melanin, colors reaching,
reaching to paint life in air,
and then singing!
The green and red blood become singing,
the sun’s song, the cool brown earth’s song,
the burning red-green light of creation,
the healing song, green, burning.

Annelinde Metzner
Catskill Farm
July 13, 1995

 

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 a warm space, silent, unmoving, unknowing.
How you love your chrysalis!
It holds you 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

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