Red Oleander

 

 

Red Oleander, watercolor by Deb Pollard

 

A salamander pale green as the new leaves of May
opens its orange lung-sac, brilliant, to the sun.
Three times at every pause!
In the breeze, red Oleander bends on her long stem, celebrating.
I am drawn down a quiet lane by the scent of jasmine
beguiling my heart, a path toward joy.
The dear Earth wafts up into me,
warm as fresh-baked bread,
filling my womb with Her love.
With my feet in the sand,
I pull Her love into me,  to power my days.
Mother holds me tenderly, the mourning dove
in her palmetto-basket nest, giving, giving,
we Her babies, Her vast dream,
we Her future and Her now.
The black fin of a dolphin arises from the sea, ancient as days,
loving Her into the fathomless tomorrow.

Annelinde Metzner, June 1, 2010

Delight abounds in the month of May, moving slowly through the world, admiring each new green being.  And giving thanks for my friend Deb Pollard, whose art above, the pulsating life of May in which the dolphins rejoice, was inspired by my poem.  And many thanks to Feminism and Religion for publishing my poems, including this one today.

Red Oleander

 

Florida Masquerade

 

What a disguise She has!
Cars honk, interstates criss-cross,
golf courses manicure each square inch of land.
Shopping malls and theme parks, parking lots,
What a big charade!
But turn away just once,
just once turn away from the clamor
toward the quiet lanes.
Look up!  A bald eagle settles in
high in the branches of the live oak over your head.
A gopher turtle clambers on its bony legs
right across the road.
The alligator floats, seeming so gentle,
back and forth, back and forth across the lake.
The ineffable scent of orange blossom fills the air,
suspending all one’s notions of what is and what should be.
The ibis, straight as an arrow,
flies to her nest with a fish in her beak.
Good going!  You have seen beneath Her disguise,
Our Florida, our flowered land,
our fountain of ever-renewing youth,
our paradise.

Annelinde Metzner
Gainesville, Florida
March 30, 2014

Ode to Trillium

 

 

 

I wanted to see how often I've honored Trillium in my writings.

Turns out I've written 11 poems to Her.  I've picked out 5 for this ode today.

 

Wake Robin

Blood-red trillium,
      with your sumptuous variegated leaf patterns,
      arising in big colonies early, so early in spring,
      amid dry leaves and old twigs,
Triple Goddess, you sprout from the dry earth
      innocently, as if it were every day
      ancient knowledge comes forth into our sight.
You lie barely visible at our feet,
      one of the old ones, short and well-adapted
      to the forest floor, a gnome
      with a new red cap.
But no pretty pink here, nor lacy white.
      You are of the blood of the Earth Mother herself,
      and even Her rich warm blood has beauty,
      and she will not hide this, our Mother.
      She bleeds, and Her blood is beautiful.
Wake Robin, wake us to know
      where e’er we walk, She feels and knows.
      We kiss the Earth, but She bruises, too,
      in bloodroot, in trillium, in fracking, in clearcut, in war.
Wake, Robin, don’t be a fool!
      Here is Life’s own rich display, ineffable,
      the upward thrust, the very orgasm of Spring.
She is here today, for you, for us,
      crowding upward for us here,
      but once only.

Annelinde Metzner
Flat Creek, North Carolina, March 23, 2012

As Spring unfolds                                      

As Spring unfolds, thousands
     of newest buds light up like flames
     upon each dogwood branch, each twig.
Thousands!  All lit from within,
     chlorophyll newly opened like a babe’s emerging crown,
     lighting up green on the tips of each twig.
In the woods, the newest Solomon’s Seal
     curls open, leaf by leaf,
     near the unfurling spiral of the fiddle-head fern.
As if to say, “I’m flowing once more,”
     the bloodroot, each leaf a different shape,
     sprouts white despite its sanguine roots.
The Trillium is back!  aware, proud of Herself
     and sure in Her threeness.
Birds in pairs sing all the day,
     impressing one another,
     bedding done in their newly assembled nests.
The Mayapple spreads wide its umbrella,
     dozens and dozens on the forest floor,
     waiting for us, waiting
     for our joy to join their ecstasy.

Annelinde Metzner
Black Mountain
April 17, 2014

 

     
 Reclamation                                                      

A pile of rubble, rusty springs, beer cans, car hoods,
strewn in the back of the old country place.
You could relax on an old car seat!
And now, walk amid crystal fountains,
hostas, trillium and Buddhas.
Sunlight dapples a leaf here and there.
The sound is tranquil among the trees,
the waterfall and the neighbor’s chickens.
Reclamation.
And what do you hide?
What is there, thrown to the back yard, out of sight,
that has rusted and accumulated each year?
What have you given up,
where have you lost hope and left,
despair winning out over possibility?
Nature is our teacher, and She is the master,
the source of true resurrection.
How easy, how effortless
to love this Earth,
the woodpecker, the spring peeper,
and give Her a hand to return again.

Annelinde Metzner
Mountain Light Zen Garden
May 31, 2014   

 Pearson Falls                                       

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; Pearson Falls, April 29, 2021

What if you had to leave?                                            

This high bank of trillium, purple, pink,
the three wide leaves
a generous hand beckoning;
the unraveling Solomon's Seal,
suspending its tiny, potent buds;
the still air and
the crow’s loud assessment;
a turn down the trail-
and if this leaving were forever?
What if you had to leave?
Madly do you love Her, your Mother of the mountain woods?
Do you yearn to roll up inside of Her,
a wooly-worm in winter?
You will.
One day you will.

Annelinde Metzner, Ox Creek Road, May 15, 1998

In February

 

 

 

On this February afternoon,
    as the Sun begins Her return,
    brighter and brighter every day,
    Her breezes once more caress my face,
    ice and frost forgotten.
I think of Qi Gong, how the best moves are slow,
    the healing and the balance
    in each moment of movement.
Birds whistle absent-mindedly,
    to themselves and to me.
Last chance to notice and remember
    how the thin branches of the weeping cherry
    droop so gracefully, not yet blooming,
    a duchess with a teacup.
The sky all day is this-and-that,
    a mottled grey, talk of snow,
    and then the full warm blast of sun.
Like a Qi Gong adept, February says,
    "move slow, savor each moment,
    no expectations, just the bone-deep
    joy of the now." 

 

Annelinde Metzner

February 10, 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Most Huge Yes

 

I must have been four years old, out for an armload of wildflowers
-daisies, mallow flowers, phlox.
Elsie and I sat on a rock  to rest in the shade of the gnarled apple tree.
“Oh World, I cannot hold thee close enough!” cried Elsie, my Tante,
and on and on, poems by memory,
astounding my young ears with the bigness, the width of life beyond my ken.
Dickinson, Heine, Goethe, Millay,
-all fair game to Elsie’s keen mind and deep delight.
What is the world? She answered for me,
just a hint of what was to come, what could be, beyond the now.
I gazed at her above me,
and walked home with her, my arms full of flowers,
my little hand in hers.
And now, many years have passed.
My Tante is ninety-seven, but still, poems sprout from her lips,
and she, with her searching mind, evokes them from me as well.
“Prithee, let no bird call!”
We happen into a field, wild with flowers,
daisies, phlox, a wild quilt of color.
Thrice we return, picking armloads of wildflowers,
holding, holding, ever loving this life, unwilling to let go.
This divine charge we accepted so long ago
just to love this, just to live this,
eyes wide as daisy petals, enveloped in earthly scents,
knee-deep in colors,
just this most huge Yes.

Annelinde Metzner

May 2011

Tante Elsie at ninety-seven

 

 

 

Elsie’s garden

Drove up to Elsie’s garden, my head in the radio,
counting measures and checking 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, I belong.

Annelinde Metzner
April 2006

 

 

Tell a Woman

 

Sahara Peace Choir singing for Women's March,Asheville NC 2018

Tell a woman that, deep inside,
deep in her heart, where no one can see,
she holds the flame that lights the world.
Tell a woman that no one can ever extinguish that flame.
Not anyone,  be he bigger than her, stronger than her, 
faster than her,
angrier than her, drunker than her, 
more convinced he is right.
This flame is our secret, all women’s.  We are born with it.
With this flame, within our hearts, 
we work two jobs while raising three kids.
And we give them piano lessons.
With this flame, we cross oceans
so our children can grow up strong without stigma.
With this flame, we nurse our elders, 
and our young ones too,
often at the same time, keeping an eye on bill payments,
scrounging for food and rent.
Tell a woman she has a huge bright flame 
ready to flare up in her heart,
and she’s not alone.   We all have one,
we who walk tall, and we who are under the thumb,
we who speak here now, and we who have been silenced,
we all share this flame, it’s an eternal flame,
it’s hot, and it’s brilliant, and it never goes away.
Tell a woman, this is our birthright, this is who we are,
we, the women, the people of the womb,
who carry the world, who yearn for love and honor,
who, somewhere deep inside, will never be denied, 
will never give in.
Tell a woman, this is who we are, 
all of us aflame, all of us women,
all of us carrying that precious fire
that guides our days, 
that reminds us of what this life really means,
that shows us its light and tells us how to move,
how to be, how to turn, how to love each day.
Tell a woman, she has a pure flame deep in her heart
that can never be extinguished, that cannot be pushed under,
that can never be broken, that does not bleed away,
that cannot be raped or beaten down,
that can only rise higher, that flares up within us,
and with each step brightens, and lights our way,
brighter and brighter, as we see our flames
more clearly, more loudly, more assuredly, more proudly,
all of us gazing at that brand new day,
not much longer now, just on the horizon,
when we look at a woman and know,
with her light, she leads the way.

Annelinde Metzner
January 23, 2013

Audience at "Rise Up Asheville," January 2013

 Girl Scouts at Black Mountain march

Young high school women who organized the Asheville march!

Winter Moon

 

Trees bare at the edge of the ridge,
scraggly, December, full of secrets.
Cold Moon rises, barely there among branches.
She shocks me!
“Come out of your house!,” She challenges me.
“Breathe my bare cold.
Clean and direct I’ll fill your lungs.
Come out of your comfortable house.
I want you now!”
With that slap from the big Cold Moon
I’m made to remember.
The white pull of Her glow tugs hard
at some treasure I’ve been hiding.
Gazing into the white-glazed night forest
I pause for the Moon to paint me, too,
with cool Winter’s light.
For Her, I am what I am, nothing more.
The days go and go and go,
bright and noisy as ever,
but within me, as in dreams,
She demands my attention,
tripping me up,
no matter how well I hide.

Annelinde Metzner
December 21, 1995

My home in Phoenix Cove where this poem was written

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

Coming Back Christmas

 

my family at the Catskill farm, 1957

One must leave one’s mountains
one must descend early in the day
through ice and snow, fog banks,
ripped up trees and branches helter-skelter,
one must leave one’s silent warm cabin on Christmas
and descend through the trees
down the long grade in fog, way down.
One must leave one’s silent cabin 
full of fire, full of sadness,
silent, remembering,
on Christmas one must come to family,
come down through the trees 
while smoke curls up through the woods,
come down to help old Tante by her stove,
down to a place with children, with messes,
with pots and pans helter-skelter in Tante’s kitchen,
where there will be singing and jigs playing,
“Ihr Kinderlein kommet” and the Crist-kindl,
chocolates in tree branches and sooty fingers,
the old stove that pops and moans,
family groaning around the table,
with resentments, accomplishments, aches and pains,
medicines and red wine and forgotten addresses,
all of us elbow-to-elbow, 
hunters and hairdressers,
poets and plumbers,
day-to-day survivors making do.
One must come in a hurry on Christmas,
come gladly to the loud rooms of one’s family,
full of judgments and kind advice,
full of wariness and unspoken joys.
One must remember to leave one’s quiet warm cabin 
full of sadness
and come down each Christmas, be pulled magnetic
to let one’s heart warm again unbidden,
with no plan, just you, and nothing else.

Annelinde Metzner
December 25, 2005

My son Peter around 1995

My aunt Elsie at age 100

Just Friday

 

Just Friday                                                                  

(a spontaneous poem from the beach)

It’s forty-five degrees, and the water feels even colder,
But I splash in the foam like Aphrodite, 
even though I’m almost sixty.
And I’m NOT SHOPPING.
A kite is suspended in the sky,
so much wind that no one at all is holding the string,
and it stays suspended for hours,
and the kite is NOT SHOPPING.
A child builds palmetto fronds into an altar in the sand,
a  child NOT SHOPPING.
A boy out in the ocean paddles by on some board,
standing straight up in the ocean, 
looking for all the world like Jesus,
and certainly Jesus would not be shopping.
Two dogs whirl around each other,
joy sparking off of them like the flash of Venus in the night,
like the Pleiades in the dark moon night,
and today is just Friday, and no one is shopping.


Annelinde Metzner
Isles of Palms, South Carolina
November 25, 2011

The Appalachian Cailleach Speaks

 

Grandmother puppet by Lisa Sturz from "The Abundance of Mary" 2006 

Tourists buying postcards on Craggy Mountain never suspect me.

It’s always, “Time to get back in the car!”

just before my long, wild winds come up the hollow.

My winds always precede me.

Folks who have lived here long look for haints and boogers

when they feel me coming near.

But few have seen me. Maybe it’s my hair!

The chokecherry vines that form sort of a bouffant...

I love it when the berries ripen in autumn!

But few have seen me when I creep through rhododendron,

chokecherry and laurel for ornament.

I breathe the dark bass tones of the rhododendron thicket,

my skin like her bark, ancient, enduring.

My breath is in sync with her, unfathomable, unconquerable.

When you step into the dark places of the thicket,

your breath stops.

You’re whirled back to your own birthplace, before time began.

All over my hands are tiny red mushrooms,

rising from moss like a Mardi Gras village!

When you see my hands, you feel as though

you have swum up the bank of a rushing creek,

holding your breath until you emerge.

When you gaze into my eyes, my pupils fade into trillium,

blood-red blooms dangling at the rims, speaking in tongues.

My eyebrows are slow-creeping woolly worms, orange and black.

I float over the hills in a cape of Appalachian flowers:

Jack-in-the-pulpit, butterfly weed, flame azalea, bloodroot,

Indian pipe, chicory, pokeberry, cohosh.

My scent is of millennia of these green beings,

composting, seeding, bursting forth, decaying once more.

When you inhale my scent, you will remember your family.

Generations will array before you

in the distinct garb of your ancestors.

When you breathe my essence, you will fall and weep

at the millennia of lives willing to help you,

sponsor you, give you life.

I carry a staff of mountain ash. Don’t be afraid!

I won’t harm you! though my laughter alone

could squash you into the earth, mere compost,

cousin to the road kills, just another woolly worm.

My staff speaks of power, and that is what you fear,

citizens, tourists, quick-leavers, loud-builders, e-mail talkers.

In the landfills where I wander are your rusted bodies:

freezers, microwaves, last year’s computer.

Decades they require to rust or fade,

the plastic, the alloys, the silicon chips.

And I float to your door. I beckon you and your children’s children

when they wander too far from the flickering screen.

I speak of spice bush, yarrow, ginseng, jewelweed,

sassafras, Solomon’s Seal.

I pull you to the dark where you speak with your soul,

where life takes your breath away.
I make you pine for Life, scream for it.

I hold a mirror to this desire until all else is forgotten,

until you reach for life, until you’ll never give up,

until there on the forest floor we cry, together,

tears of joy.

Annelinde Metzner

September 1995

The Cailleach is a Celtic Ancestor-Goddess, a Divine Hag, a Crone who controls the winter winds in the far reaches of remote places. Living in the still-wild mountains of Western North Carolina, I’ve found it is easy to conjure up the Cailleach rising up through a rhododendron “hell.” She certainly took my breath away, and captured my consciousness, when I wrote this poem in 1995. Some years later, Lisa Sturz of the Red Herring Puppets created for me the eight-foot tall, wearable Grandmother puppet you see here. She has appeared in a number of my theater productions to the Goddess, while the poem was being dramatically read, with improvised music on the psaltery. Grandmother is happy to be coming out of my basement once more, for the Samhain service at our Unitarian church here in Black Mountain.

Grandmother out and about for our October 30th service at the UUCSV.

Rhododendron thicket