Tree Mother of Africa

Wangari Maathai, born April 1, 1940, passed into Spirit September 25, 2011

“I’m a child of the soil,” says Wangari.
“I don’t think you need a diploma to plant a tree.”
The women learn.  They plant trees.
Teaching one another, nurturing the seedlings,
brown arms reached deep into the brown earth,
anchoring the eroding hillsides with tiny saplings.
Thirty million planted!
On the faces of rural women in Kenya, there is hope.
“I have a new dress, and I can eat!”,  says one.                                                                   “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
Each seedling is watered from hand-held tin cans.                                                                     
The new forest grows, the soil stabilizes.
Animals begin to return.
“Deep in the roots,” says Wangari, “we are planting the seeds of peace.”
After thirty years of planting, nurturing and growing,
Wangari gets the Nobel Prize.
“I’m a child of the soil.”
And isn’t that you and me?                                                                                                        Aren’t  our own brown hands there, planting, waiting, mothering,
knowing all our futures are in the thin new stems, their bending and giving?
“You must empower yourself.  You must break the cycle.
You are planting hope in your life, and for your descendants.”
Wangari steps out on the Oslo balcony with her prize.
The streets erupt in ululation!
This is how we heal the Earth.
This is how we heal the Earth.
This is how we heal the Earth.
“Let’s plant trees!”

Annelinde Metzner

April 2008

Listen to Becky Stone reading "Tree Mother of Africa" by Annelinde Metzner, as part of the performance "In the Mother Grove,"  2009. 

Autumn Samba

The bite of fresh compost,
sharp leaf mold in the wind.
Goodbye to the galax,
farewell to the creeper,
“Adios” to the chokecherry vines.
It’s the majestic farewell,
the queen’s farewell.
It’s delicious, it’s numinous, it’s forever!
This is the goodbye of no tears but the rain’s.
Goodbye as relaxed as Guernseys in the alfalfa,
as relaxed as three women in a hot tub.
It’s goodbye, never more be seen,
and it smells like Paris perfume.
It lifts the feet. It’s Fred Astaire.
It’s a lilting “adieux.” It’s bagpipes.
It’s all the cousins waving.
Orange, red, a fandango,
it’s forever, it’s the end,
and if you twirl and spin your way down,
you’ve got the idea.


Annelinde Metzner         September 2001

Listen to Annelinde reading "Autumn Samba:" 

See the poem "Autumn Samba" in the Autumn 2011 issue of Goddess Pages edited by Geraldine Charles. 

Autumn leaves at our feet

Don't Live Here!

Grandmother puppet by Lisa Sturz 

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

Listen to Nels Arnold reading  "Don't Live Here" by Annelinde,  performed at "In the Mother Grove" in 2009, with Grandmother puppet by Lisa Sturz  (photo above, Norma Bradley.)   

Rhododendron thicket

What She Is

We live in small spaces, working, eating, sleeping.

Do we know what She is, really?

How, in Arizona, She explodes up from the ground

into mile-high red rock, the Cathedral, the Hands,

or She implodes far down into Her own belly,

displaying Her inner self without secrets,

silent, awesome, vast, powerful, infinite?

Or how She riles Her cold Pacific, daily washing the Western shore,

turquoise and lapis, boulders thrown like pebbles hither and yon,

sea weed and sea lions rejoicing,

whales diving and blowing air as they pass year by year?

North, how She sets forth giant trees,

so wide and tall that each is a world,

each a life for a thousand species, Her silence immense and eternal?

And how Her blood, Water, crashes over rocks through Colorado,

worshiped by the Hopi, drop by drop,

measured enough to grow corn on the dry mesa

or wild enough to scrub the arroyos clean again?

Do we see how wide She is, how vastly new?

Do we gain that joy She intended for us,

privileged as we are to be Her guests?

Annelinde Metzner

August, 2003

        Listen to "What She Is" read by Nels Arnold (with choreography by Shelli Stanback) in the 2009 performance of my work, "In the Mother Grove."

Shelli Stanback and Nia Dancers perform "What She Is"

Sacred Swim

Here on the banks of our own river,
here in the divine Blue Ridge,  the French Broad,
here where we gathered to worship Her, Oshun,
Mother of the River,
here in our town, and here too
in Nigeria, Osogbo, sacred to Her,
we gathered by the river, to sing, to drum,
to dance our love for Her, for each other,
for the beauty of the day, for the golden honey,
for the rippling waters of our river, and Hers,
we came to be Hers, to live our lives with Her,
at our own river, the French Broad, and for all the rivers,
for the Oshun river, for the Mekong,
for the Mississippi and the Yangtze,
we came to sing, to pray, to call out to Oshun,
and yes!  to swim,  lover of the river,
immersing in Her, feeling Her currents,
as so many of us watched and swam along,
together as one, one with the swimmer,
and Oshun, Her ripples, Her currents,
Her smooth stones, Her coolness and warmth,
one with the birds and the leaves falling,
the offerings we cast upon the water,
one with she who swam all the way,
all the way and back again,
with us, with all of us, loving Her,
loving our Lady, swimming with Her,
swimming for the love of Her.

Annelinde Metzner
Blessings on the River
August 26, 2011

Above is a photo of Lula Moon, who was inspired to swim across our French Broad River, during our celebration of the sacred day of Oshun, Ifa (Nigerian) Goddess of the River.

      Oshun is a Yoruba orisha who reigns over love, intimacy, beauty, wealth and diplomacy.
For the second year, inspired by priestess Yeye Siju Osunyemi, along with the Wild Bodema Drummers and the Mother Grove Temple of the Goddess, my choir, Sahara Peace Choir, has helped celebrate Oshun and all rivers, and supported the Oshun Grove, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Osogbo, Nigeria, where the people celebrate Oshun on the same day.  

Listen to Annelinde Metzner reading her poem, "Sacred Swim." 

For more information on the Ifa religion, follow this link to "Soul Seeds" by Rev. Anthony David, a UU minister in Atlanta, Georgia:  Soul Seeds

Yeye Osunyemi and others in prayer by the river

By the River                       

I returned to the riverside park,
the day quiet,  a few dry leaves blowing,
the river glassy, more like a lake really.
The lovely park which is all river, all Her,
Her power and majesty manifest,
just some grass and a sidewalk
plus Her, the River, magnificent.
There in the quiet by the tree of seven stems,
not a shred remained, but the memory of all this,
Oshun holding us gladly, still gazing and singing on the shore.
The voices chiming forth Her name,
the drummers and the drums,
the priestess bowing right to the ground,
the dancers, the smiling families,
the babies held high,
the worshippers offering their golden honey
for Her, for Her they moved to the river’s shore,
for Her they poured out their golden love,
their needs, their pain.
For Her someone doffed her clothes
and swam to the other side!
We gathered there by the river,
in the name of love and no more war.
We called out loud to Oshun,
for joy, for water, for our lives,
and She sings there still, calling back to us,
remembering our names.


Annelinde Metzner
Blessings on the River, Woodfin Riverside Park
September 15, 2010

 

Dakini

Dawn, absolute quiet,
a time between the worlds,
a blessed time.
Stepping out of the old farmhouse
into the rich multihued muted greens,
the forest and the fields waking slowly,
the Sun yawning in the east,
the wood thrush nudges me, ever near.
Then, I catch my breath.
She is here!
Arms wide, the nimbus clouds
hold Her in Her giant pose,
Her huge joy covering the Catskills,
all that energy charging, charging.
The Dakini dances, arms wide,
smiling, open, brilliant,
giving light.

Annelinde Metzner            October 2011


 A Dakini (Sanskrit) is a Tantric deity described as a female embodiment of enlightened energy.  In the Tibetan language, Dakini is rendered 'Khandroma', which means ‘She who traverses the sky,’ or ‘She who moves in space.’   Sometimes the term is translated poetically as 'sky walker.'      (Wikipedia)

Listen to a reading of "Dakini" by Annelinde Metzner:
 

Morning, right before Dakini appeared