mother

How to Talk With a Mountain

Gill Washington Elaine Maria Upton, I Am, Poems, Spirituality , , , , , , , 0 Comment

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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Silence ll

Gill Washington Elaine Maria Upton, God, I Am, Poems , , , , , , 0 Comment

By Elaine Maria Upton

Silence is not a lack of words.
Silence is not a lack of music.
Silence is not a lack of curses.
Silence is not a lack of screams.
Silence is not a lack of colors
or voices or bodies or whistling wind.
Silence is not a lack of anything.

Silence is resting, nestling
in every leaf of every tree,
in every root and branch.
Silence is the flower sprouting
upon the branch.

Silence is the mother singing
to her newborn babe.
Silence is the mother crying
for her stillborn babe.
Silence is the life of all
these babes, whose breath
is a breath of God.

Silence is seeing and singing praises.
Silence is the roar of ocean waves.
Silence is the sandpiper dancing
on the shore.
Silence is the vastness of a whale.
Silence is a blade of grass.

Silence is sound
And silence is silence.
Silence is love, even
the love that hides in hate.

Silence is the pompous queen
and the harlot and the pimp
hugging his purse on a crowded street.

Silence is the healer dreaming
the plant, the drummer drumming
the dream. It is the lover’s
exhausted fall into sleep.
It is the call of morning birds.

Silence is God’s beat tapping all hearts.

Silence is the star kissing a flower.

Silence is a word, a hope, a candle
lighting the window of home.

Silence is everything –the renewing sleep
of Earth, the purifying dream of Water,
the purifying rage of Fire, the soaring
and spiraling flight of Air. It is all
things dissolved into no-thing–Silence
is with you always…..the Presence
of I AM

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Nature

Gill Washington Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poems, Spirituality , , 0 Comment

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

AS a fond mother, when the day is o’er,
Leads by the hand her little child to bed,
Half willing, half reluctant to be led,
And leave his broken playthings on the floor,
Still gazing at them through the open door,
Nor wholly reassured and comforted
By promises of others in their stead,
Which, though more splendid, may not please him more;
So Nature deals with us, and takes away
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,
Being too full of sleep to understand
How far the unknown transcends the what we know.

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The First Stigmata

Gill Washington Poems, Susan Dane , , , , 0 Comment

 

Susan Dane

“Lean on me,” she said,
He frail and struggling
from days on end with no sleep,
now thirsty, bleeding.
She, a robust woman,
strong footed and determined.
They pushed her back.
She fought them off.
“Lean on me, ” she said.

Then the hardest part.
They laid him flat,
and nailed him through,
bone chipped on wood,
the splinter of porcelain.
This man whom she had held
on many nights,
rocked to sleep
in his silent separateness,
now crunching.
Still not a sound from his lips,
so intent on something else.

The crowd had thinned by now,
bored with the routine.
And it was dinnertime.
A strange chill stirred the air.
And then they swung it up–
the cross–
in one fell swoop,
with pulleys and a rope.
Him hanging hard forward
as if his hands
would rip through
from his own weight.
Then finally straight.
His mother screaming “No.”
And the other Mary doubled silently.

Then she felt it,
as any woman would  feel it.
Flowing down between her legs,
unexpected, early,
bursting inside her,
Another season unfulfilled.
Then behind her ears,
warm and moist,
she touched it with her hand,
then pulled away.
Blood.  Blood everywhere,
from vein and pore.
Hands trembling,
frantically, she wiped them on her robes,
until she heard his voice.
“Take this my cup and drink.”

And desperate to taste his last drop,
she stretched up on tip-toe
to caress his blue-black feet,
and kiss his blood.
Entwined in death and life
as man and wife,
In life and blood.

 

 

Wild Peace

Gill Washington Poems, Ross L. Andrews , , 0 Comment

(For my mother)

I am grateful,
so grateful,
for my life,
I am a raw human who knows how to be whole,

I am a curly-haired child walking over piedmont hills,
brushing against rounded white oak lobes,
by myself, but not alone.

Captivated by buttressed trunks and carpeted ravines,
traversing the slippery bark balance of fallen logs,
imagining the living space among rooted brown earth
and light floating leaves falling at my feet

I will always be there,
exploring creek edges and following fence-lines,
crunching and climbing to find the sheltered natural
rooms
framed by branches and
stone where I could
b e h o l d
the dancing beings of cedar,
the towering reach of oak and beech
cycles of green to copper leaves
that shape the vessel of my soul-

I finally know how I am to live-
to fill my soul with awe,
to live in wild peace.

In memory of Marjorie Hare Andrews 1945-2006.

 

ROSS L. ANDREWS

Crucifix

Gill Washington Anna Akhmatova, Poems , , 0 Comment

Do not cry for me, Mother, seeing me in the grave.

I

This greatest hour was hallowed and thandered
By angel’s choirs; fire melted sky.
He asked his Father:”Why am I abandoned…?”
And told his Mother: “Mother, do not cry…”

II

Magdalena struggled, cried and moaned.
Peter sank into the stone trance…
Only there, where Mother stood alone,
None has dared cast a single glance.

~Anna Akhmatova
Translated by Tanya Karshtedt