Stay

 

Don’t run
Don’t do this and that
Don’t get your camera
Turn off the phone.
Stay.
Feel a little uncomfortable, antsy, but stay.
It’s quiet now, but soon
the world begins to reveal itself to you.
The oriole is leaping, up and down, up and down,
over dried seed pods.
The hummingbird finds each and every flower
of the brilliant jewelweed.
The warning call of the raptor,
and the pale-winged osprey
flies clear across the open field, north to south.
Stay.  Grow as slowly as a hawthorne.
Ripen one thing a day.
Be Still.  
Stay.

Annelinde Metzner
Catskill Farm
August 3, 2011

St. John's Wort

Goldenrod

Holy City

 

Grandmother Mountain, my Holy City

                                                           

“This is the Holy City,” said Jouad, "Horse," our guide,

in Moulay Idriss, sparkling ancient citadel

climbing the Atlas Mountains of Morocco.

“The Holy City,” 
and She is, my Grandmother of North Carolina,

vast, ancient, singing.

Oldest mountain,

what populations whir in your ethers,

unseen to ordinary eyes?

‘’All here is holy,” said Jouad.

All here is holy!

All is of Her, each rhododendron bloom,

each fire pink,

Holy! the lichen and the moss in the rock.

Holy! the cohosh with its spiked bloom.

Holy! the whippoorwill, the thrush,

the no-see-ums buzzing up my nose.

All who live here are of Her holy being.

All are one with Her.

No need for lies or self-deceit,

no need for bargains or slight-of-hand tricks.

You, fortunate one, have stumbled into

the Holy City.

You don’t need to wear a hat,

sew cushions, or even kneel.

Here with the worms, the creaking old oaks,

the star magnolias and the blueberries

being themselves,

you are Holy too, like it or not.

Whatever time it may be on your I Pod,

you’re in Her time now, as old as it gets.

Welcome to the Holy City.

In Her powerful winds, everything changes,

limbs fall from trees, inessentials vanish,

you may lose a limb too,

or parts of your ego you don’t need.

This is the Holy City.

This is your birthplace, you and the bending oak,

you and the ladybug and the black snake.

Around Her jagged outcroppings,  
a thousand births wail through time.

Some ascend, some descend 
the winding paths of the Holy City.

She breathes on, undaunted,

gathering infrasound from all the directions.

This is the Holy City, and we Her inhabitants,

why yes, the Holy Planet it is,

all of us holy, the clear of vision,

the jaded, the obsessed,

the wounded and the whole.

All of us live in the Holy City.

Rest your bare soles on her rich Earth,

wind your toes into her sweet-smelling grass.

Prostrate your bare Soul on Her holy ground,

many times, inchworm.

She is the Mother of us all.

Annelinde Metzner

Grandmother Mountain, North Carolina
June 20, 2011

Moulay Idriss, holy city of the Atlas Mountains of Morocco

Rhododendron budding

Grandmother in Autumn

Everywhere

 

 

The Devil's Courthouse, Blue Ridge Parkway

I come up the Blue Ridge Parkway
   on the day my brother is dying.
The Devil's Courthouse, that stunning rock face,
   is where I stop,
   the dark clouds rumbling,
   bright sunlit cloud rims
   making silhouettes of the evergreens.
I listen to the tourists from here and there,
   Boston and Tampa,
   and wait for the quiet to entrance me.
I pass Graveyard Fields while my brother is dying,
   a squall of rain washing me clean.
A bouquet of wildflowers waves at each turn.
Did you love this too, my brother?
Now you are everywhere. 

Annelinde Metzner

August 11, 2021

 

Edwin holding me when he was 12

 

My brothers Dick and Edwin, about 1946

Wildflowers blooming in August

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunrise

 

 

From out of the dark, dark night,
the people come with reverence to the sea.
Gazing to the horizon,
all wait in awe,
the sea roaring, the wind in our ears.
Slowly, slowly, the misty, golden rays
shine forth from that certain spot
where She will rise, where each day
life rebegins.
Seagulls line up, quiet,
faces to the sea, waiting.
Slowly, slowly, She appears again,
the merest sliver, and then Her shining self,
painting the cloudline coral-pink,
happy to be here, adored.
The seagulls slowly rise and begin to swirl,
dive, call out, rejoice.
Every day!  Every day!
We adore Her every day, we wait breathlessly for Her.
As She rises, we rise, we spiral,
we whirl into Her day, yes,
another day arises on this Earth.

Annelinde Metzner

November 25, 2010 

Magdala, Tower

 

Mary Magdalene by Brother Robert Lentz

Magdala, Tower, Queen of my days,

You are not Spirit, not Ether, not Will ‘o the Wisp.

but flesh and blood, a woman like me,

and my teacher.

I see You in burgundy-red, the Blood-Root flower,

the Wake Robin, deep red trillium of the mountains,

the royally curled and woody flower of the Spicebush.

You are so real.

And when You walked on Earth,

the steps of Your beautiful feet were firm.

Priestess, daughter of Isis,

Well-trained in lore and wise,

how I crave the touch of Your oil upon my face.

MM is here!  Mary Magdalene,

here for Her own millennium,

and the voice You bring has no shame in who You are,

who we all are, Woman, strong, deep,

burgundy-red and sexual.

You walk in the power of the Sacred Night,

here to walk wherever You must,

through Love, through Transformation,

unto Union with the Divine.

With Your powerful arms

and Your dark-red hair glinting like amber,

You guide us all through these darkest of days.

Mary Magdalene, You stand grounded

even as we hang in torment,

with Your strong and womanly Priestess arms

ready to carry us through.

Annelinde Metzner

April 17, 2012 

I'm reposting this poem in honor of Mary Magdalene on Her feast day, July 22, 2021.

Mary Magdalene by El Greco

Mary Magdalene by Carlo Dolci

  

Medieval Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene by Carravaggio

Mary and Jesus stained glass in Scotland

Black Dome, This Slowness

 

Black Dome or "Mount Mitchell"

Join the natural world with your quietness and your slowness!
At this blessed pace, the wild raspberry
     can see you sitting nearby,
     slow as apples ripening.
At this blessed tempo,
     birds drift to the tops of trees,
     to gaze off miles and miles through the clouds.
In this sacred slowness,
    the bees take their time to choose
    this blossom, then that,
    then that one, and maybe the next.
This is how slowly the clouds creep,
     white and bulbous,
     all of us present here
     in the same breath,
     slow, inaudible, eternal.
I breathe, I fill my lungs with air.
This is all we have, all of us,
     from now until the end of the world.


Annelinde Metzner
August 6, 2010




"Black Dome" is the Cherokee name of Mount Mitchell, highest point in the East in the Black Mountain Range of the Blue Ridge Mountains where I live.

Grandmother Makes the World

 

 

Magnolia

 

This is how my Grandmother makes the World-
    clouds in a sky so clean
    each seems to sing against the blue.
In the new-mown grass, you can smell the new Spring herbs,
    a richness of greenness and healing.
Lift your gaze, and you can see forever,
    jagged shapes and rounded ones.
This is how my Grandmother makes the World!
A veery releases Her spiraling song.
Brand-new the star magnolias,
    their vanilla color rich enough to eat,
    drooping beguilingly from the branches.
This is how my Grandmother makes the World-
    pristine, clean, bountiful,
    energy unending. 

Annelinde Metzner

Grandmother Mountain

May 28,2021

Song of the Humpback Whale

 

What is in your long song, your ancient song?

In the cold bays, North and South,

your pure tune revives in cavernous water-spaces.

Up here, walking, I hear your song always,

like a neighbor calling, or like children singing.

Your song says, "God is here!

The ocean is filled with light.

Man, the ocean home is well.

Sing for us in the air, Man,

as we do for you below."

Far below the crowd's buzz

is the infrasound, your song.

I need you there below, singing!

Your ancient tune courses with my heart's blood,

and makes more plain

my own dim voice, from an unfathomed ocean.

And I sing with you.

It is what I wanted to hear.

 

Annelinde Metzner 1983

 

In 1983, I wrote this poem and set it to music as part of my song cycle, "Legacy."  My intuition tells me that the whales are the history keepers of the world, and they are aware of all we're doing.  This event happened recently in Victoria, Canada, which reinforces that intuition. 

 

 

This is that quiet place

 

 

The woods call to me with Her silence.
That one stillest spot,
   all life waiting expectantly,
   brilliant April sunshine,
   wind holding Her breath.
I am drawn to that spot,
   stand rooted to the ground,
   head tilted to the sun.
This is that quiet place
   where sacredness opens up.
I breathe deeply, pulling energy up from the Earth,
   as, "eeh-oh-lay!," the first Wood Thrush
   welcomes me back with Her song. 

 

Annelinde Metzner

April 16, 2021

 

 

 

Wood Thrush

 

 

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

Today is the feast day of Saint Sara, beloved by all Gypsies, especially in this place where Mary Magdalene was said to have come ashore after escaping from the Holy Land across the Mediterranean.  Feel how every year, the waters roil up when Sara la Kali is brought to the sea.  I view Sara as the daughter of Jesus and Mary.  Some say there is a long lineage there, the "Sang Real," the Sangraal, or to paraphrase, the Holy Grail.

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

Worshipping Sara by the sea

Pearson's Falls

 

 

Pearson's Falls, Saluda, NC

How did it feel, the discovery,
   before the stone steps carefully laid,
   before the thoughtfully placed and sturdy railings?
How was it that first day, the first human here,
   inching slowly through the thick undergrowth,
   following the sound (everywhere!) of falling waters,
   at long last to arrive and gaze upward,
   one's breath taken away by the height
   of the sheer rock face laced over with
   a wondrous curtain of water?
Time enough to ponder,
   to absorb, to just be,
   like the moth perched here on my writing-page,
   like the toad among the ephemeral woodland plants.
"Let it go!" She teaches me,
   as I sit and gaze.
"You will never know the whole story,
   what brought us to wherever we are now.
Let the relentless power,
   more precise, more intelligent, more patient than you,
   bring justice wherever it's needed."
I put my hands together, giving thanks,
   and sit with the trillium, the bloodroot,
   the wood thrush close by,
   breathing the water's unceasing wisdom.

Annelinde Metzner

Saluda, North Carolina

April 29,2021

 

Colt Creek

Forest ephemerals

 

Cascade on the way

Seeping stone

Mister Toad

The Nest

 

On her artfully woven nest, the size of a teacup,
     hidden in the labyrinthine branches of an azalea,
     the redbird mama broods her Spring clutch of eggs.
All day she sits so still,
     it took me a week to find
     her red beak among the flowers.
She sits on the nest, unmoving.
What is she seeing, her warm body so focused,
     so perfectly present, a servant of her own DNA?
All around, above and below,
     luminous coral-colored blossoms form her bower.
Blood-orange to almost-white petals,
     the new-green leaves bright with photosynthesis,
     the little redbird nests in a sea of swaying petals,
     her dwelling-space more glowing than the sun.
The bumblebees probe and float blossom to blossom around her,
     sonic guides to other realms,
     transporting us with their deep and all-embracing buzz.
New life will arrive soon beneath her downy belly,
     pecking its way through the shells.
 We all know, here and now,
     this is all that matters. 

Annelinde Metzner

April 28, 2021