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Category: Elaine Maria Upton

  • How to Talk With a Mountain

    By Elaine Maria Upton

    Anthropomorphism has its place. It’s
    a starting point, at least. So, I’ll say
    if i have eyes, then a mountain has eyes,
    and whatever happens after that
    is poetry, where i become lost,
    and there are no conditions, no
    consequences. There’s only the mountain,

    Mother, inside, around, leaping, plunging down.
    The hips of the mountain where wombs
    curl inside wombs, generations of granite, coal,
    and sequoyah, woodpeckers and eagles
    and sparrows. Cedar and pine plunge
    their roots into the Mountain Mother.
    They cannot escape her. They are her,
    and in their knotted wrestling in the ground,
    through ages, they return, return, return……

    She rains from inside, and curls to clouds.
    The clouds embrace her. She is clouds.
    She is the light of birch bark, carved to sail
    on her soothing rivers. The nimble, nibbling deer.

    She is King, Queen, priest, choirs and silence.
    Always she reigns, with absolute rule,
    and her rule is bounty and blessing.
    She is the daughter of Sun, the son
    of Moon, and waxes, heaves, cries, folds,
    sings. She sings and there is silence. I AM

    the Mountain. I go into these hills
    as into mySelf. Ground hogs, moles,
    mushroom, moss, hawk, and helix-
    spiral of flower and cone, cicadas
    are my messengers. Leaves fallen
    from trees are my skin. Gray wolves
    are my solitude. Brown bears, my wisdom,
    Buffalo rising from my bowls, rushing

    through Air of plains, urging the sleeping
    Earth, are my Fire. Unearthed, Everest,
    Blanc, Kilimanjaro, Shasta, Shambala,
    I climb to clouds, copulate in crystal bed
    of snow, promiscuous with all the stars,
    am the clouds, the Star, am what is beyond,
    unseen, unseen, Un/Seen, un/Born
    before the blossom and chatter of Spring.

    Watery springs gossip sweet news, gurgling
    falling from my throat, calling,
    calling, calling: come, always, I Am
    here; I Am/Mountain all around, above,
    below, within. Come, there is nowhere to go….
    I AM/singing , the Sound that is always here…

    2 March 1999
    Hyde Park, everywhere

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  • How God Looks Here

    By Elaine Maria Upton

    In this place, where ever it is,
    God looks different.
    I need new glasses or new ears.
    God sounds different.
    God says “New Yawh-k” here
    and God likes Deli’s on every corner
    and God does business with Pizzeria’s
    on every other corner, and with names
    like Caprianni and Giovannni
    or Bagels and Loxs.
    God does all this amid the winding roads
    along the Hudson River, amid the trees
    that reveal white tailed deer behind the houses.
    God is multiplying in white-tailed deer
    behind the houses and crossing the roads.

    Here God married her cousin–Rose-velt
    married Roose-e-velt, and all those folk
    with money and means, like Vanderbilt
    and Jones and Astor, have their names
    on lavish stone gates, where God enters.
    Here, God loves those gray gates.
    Here God loves the curves of things, and
    no road is straight.–The slaves
    on the underground railroad
    took to these curves in the road.
    The Dutch rode up the winding river,
    and spun their tales of the life
    they created here in these dark hills.

    Here God sees me waking at night
    asking, ‘where am i?’ and God
    answers in a language i cannot yet
    speak, but I listen to God’s accent here,
    and ask, which syllable is my name.

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  • Penelope

    By Elaine Maria Upton

    I am Penelope and I sat here weaving
    all these years, weaving and waiting.
    My story may seem very dull,
    the story of weaving and waiting,
    unless, of course, you want to add
    some Hollywood or Cannes/Riveriera intrigue
    and write of all my suitors, and my temptations
    to an adulterous life, and unless you want
    to write that I worried about Telemachus,
    my son, and his ability to endure the slander
    of his father’s name. But even that
    seems dull beside tales of one-eyed monsters,
    Scylla and Charibidis, and all that drove
    my husband round the world. No, waiting
    is not particularly an exciting tale to tell.

    You’d have to be here, to live
    where narrative is swallowed up
    in the turns of a spinning wheel,
    and a particular herb tossed
    in the noon meal soup. The herb
    would make you drunk with sleep
    and you’d dream of spinning and
    of looms where names and forms
    are woven while the sun falls slowly
    in the long Mediterranean afternoon.

    And you’d wake to a tapestry
    that your fingers followed into being,
    a tapestry of names, colors, shapes
    to hang on a wall, or to drape
    the backs of children, old women,
    and returning kings. This woven
    thing–this tapestry–would remind us
    that history and time, like distant horizons
    elude us forever, and this body,
    this adventure, these wars, these seas,
    are but the densest measure of a dream.

    Wait, then, upon the fuller dream, the one
    woven in the loom, lent us by the weaving stars.

    23 February 1999

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  • The Willow in the Bend

    By Elaine Maria Upton

    The willows’ golden budded branches brim in the winter air.
    There is fire –even in winter, even when my heart here
    cannot remember the way of Love.–The road curves round
    taking me to where I have been, and in the bend,
    the willows’ golden budded branches brim.

    19 February 1999

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  • Dream Poem

    By Elaine Maria Upton

    Everytime you see a tree
    or dream a cloud,
    there is that in you of the tree
    there is that in you of the cloud.

    The saguaro dreams in drought
    and endures. The cloud dreams
    our woe –sneezes, cries.
    The rain falls

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  • Giving

    (a song that comes …)

    By Elaine Maria Upton

    The fruit when ripe/falls from the tree–
    The fruit when ripe/falls from the tree.–
    Blessings on all/ who eat of the tree.
    Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!

    And this is the only /giving I know–
    And this is the only/ loving I know.
    Blessings on all /who eat of the tree–
    Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!

    The seed when ripe/spirals down in the ground–
    The seed when ripe/spirals down in the ground.
    Blessings on all/who eat of the tree.
    Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!

    The ground in rain/covers the seed–
    The ground in sun/opens up the seed.
    Blessings on all/who eat of the tree–
    Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!

    And this is the only/giving I know–
    And this is the only/loving I know.
    Blessings on all/who eat of the tree.
    Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!

    The gardener breathes/on the shoots and the leaves–
    The gardener waters/the roots and the leaves.
    Blessings on all/who eat from the tree–
    Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!

    The ants weave air/through the roots in the ground–
    The birds weave song/The butterflies dance round.
    Blessings on all/who eat from the tree.
    Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!

    The giraffe and the deer/they eat from the tree.
    The rivers and the wind/they eat from the tree.
    Blessings on all/ who eat from the tree–
    Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!

    The gnomes and the moon/they eat from the tree–
    The Planets and the People/they eat from the tree.
    Blessings on all/who eat from the tree.
    Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!

    The (*apple,peach, almond, leaf…) when ripe/falls
    from the tree–
    The (…) when ripe/falls from the tree.
    And this is the only/giving I know.
    And this is the only/loving I know.
    Blessings on all/who eat from the tree.
    Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!

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  • This is the Time of Fire

    By Elaine Maria Upton

    There is a time of Water and a time of Wind.
    This is the time of Fire, and Fire eats time.
    The sands of the desert are uncountable!
    Let go of the reckoning! Let go of time!
    Let go of rain! Let go of forgiving!

    Fire eats rain and Fire eats trees. Fire eats
    The leaves of corn. Fire is the grain and the husk
    Of corn. Fire is the raging of Water. Fire is the roar,
    the hum, the sting of Wind. Fire is the pepper pulsing
    from the flower. Fire is the frenzied volcano dancing.
    It is the lightning’s blitz, the drumming, the singing,
    The beat of tribes, telling their story all night,
    Piercing the bottom of dark, birthing the light.

    Fire is the Earth exhausted, folding, sleeping
    from days and nights of love, til there is no counting.
    When flowers bleed, when lions sleep, when angels sigh, oh bleed, oh
    sleep, oh sigh then! Oh, burn with mountains!
    When leaves flame and fall to the ground,
    When grass grows brown then gray, grieve not.
    Grieve not, but follow the eagle and follow the grass.

    Weep not for the Earth. Weep not for the corn.
    The Earth is the lover who gives all to love.
    The Earth makes a bed of Love and the Sun knows.
    The Earth makes a table of Love and the Fire knows.
    The Earth feeds Fire. The Earth gives all to Love.
    Follow the Earth. Look beyond your eyes as you go!
    Follow the Earth to the beat of the Fire!
    Open your thighs. Give all to Love!

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