Red Oleander

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 stems, celebrating.
I am drawn down a quiet lane by the scent of jasmine,
filling my heart, a path toward joy.
The dear Earth wafts up into me
like the warm smell of fresh-baked bread,
filling my womb with Her love.
With my feet in the sand,
I pull Her love further up into me,  to power all my days.
Mother holds me as tenderly as the mourning dove
in her palmetto-basket nest, giving, giving,
we Her babies, Her vast dream,
we Her future and all Her now.
The black fin of a dolphin arises from the sea, ancient as days,
loving Her, riding into the fathomless tomorrow.

Annelinde Metzner
Folly Beach
June 1, 2010

Walk Out

                                                                       
Walk out in the morning in June and sock! You’re pea-deep in fog!    

It’s in your hair, in your nose, misted over eyeglasses and windows.
It’s Yemaya!  She’s in the mountains for a vacation!
She floats herself in on a long vaporous veil,
curls into each holler and gap,
presses her nose to the windows of log cabins
just like a Yankee tourist.
About seven A.M., her sparring partner,  Ol’ Sol,
calls her back up the gap, a diaphanous wave,
spirals and tendons waving bye-bye
to the mules and skunks and buttermilk biscuits.
The sun is better for this exchange.
Through her numinous veil he is pale peach and yellow,
rays burning in counterpoint through her curve and turn.
On her way back up the hollow,
a spotlight, a dappling, a shadow, a blessing,
a touch of her world-gift, Water, with the alchemy of Fire,
moving on up like Dixieland some days, or floating like Giselle.
Bye-bye, Mama Yemaya!
Another tender caress
for us much-loved beings of Earth.

Annelinde Metzner

June 16, 1994

Listen to a reading of "Walk Out" by Annelinde:

New Year's Gathering

       “come, come, whoever you are,
        wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.”   

                      (Jelaluddin Rumi,1207-1273, transl. by Coleman Barks)

We come New Year’s day, to Sandy Mush,
that Shangri-la, quiet always, but quieter still, this January day,
the rapeseed fields lying fallow, waiting for Spring’s yellow,
the old dogs and the old farmers beside their wood stoves.

       “Ours is no caravan of despair.”

And it isn’t!   Many old friends, one behind the other,
to get there for sharing warm food and warm regards,
to share births, deaths, all the new, all the new.
The caravan shifts on the leaf-layered road,
and one tire goes ‘way out over the abyss.
“Stop the car!” and everyone hops out.
What to do?  But a neighbor has a "come-along."
This has gone on before, so many times before,
at the end of a long dirt road, where we are our own future,
it’s only us, and what we can do,
stuck on the road in winter.
Twenty arms and hands, a dozen brains
ponder and work, trying this and that,
pulling here and tugging there,
until, voila!  the van is free with its big load,
a wheelchair and four eager passengers.
We’re free!

          “Come yet again, come!” 

     

Arriving up at the top of the road,
laden with food and one more good story,
we eat, hug, regale and gather around the flames, 

lighting candles for the world,
for our futures and all peoples’,
for making it one more day in this body.
Out to the woods to dance beneath the grey, bare trees,
for Allah, for God, for the Goddess,
and to remember, 

as grey winter clouds lumber gloriously across the sky,
we are all here together in this.
We are all one.

Annelinde Metzner       January 4, 2012

Listen to a reading of "New Year's Gathering" by Annelinde:

Come-along to the rescue!

Another poem read at the gathering:

"As I was thinking of you three squirrels came

by and all rubbed their tails against me,

which reaffirmed my notion of things, being:

that everyone is really on the right track

even if a wheel now and then gets stuck, or even

runs over someone else."

   (from A Year with Hafiz: Daily Contemplations; Daniel Ladinsky, c. 2010, used by permission)

Hawkscry sky, January 1, 2012

You can read more about Hawkscry here.

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 2011

Listen to Annelinde reading "Stay":

Sullivan's Island

Stella Maris Catholic Church, Sullivan's Island SC

We fuss over lovers like plums at the market- not this one, not that.
But, working their hidden pathways, souls provide what we need.
“This is your home,” smiled my lover, arms wide, and all the island was.
Stella Maris, the Star of the Sea, encircled us all,
her blue church dome upon the blue sky,
clanging her six notes in divine chaos, owning us, loving us.
The shores curved around my feet as I walked,
where pelicans would lift and drop into the sea’s strong arms.
At the edge of the sea, oleander, pink, yellow, burnt orange,
spiral shells the shape of nipples, blue-orange claw of crab,
sandpipers scuttling in the tide pools,
and Osceola’s grave, where European men
first killed him and then praised him, as they do.
Regina Coeli, Queen of the Sky, owned us all,
and at night I’d return to my lover’s arms, dessert first and supper last,
into the wide welcome of those arms and the sea,
and I, a happy wanderer, slept deep in the curves of her shore,
Regina’s bells chiming
in the winds of my dreams.

Annelinde Metzner
Sullivan's Island, South Carolina

October 5, 1996

Listen to a reading of "Sullivan's Island" by Annelinde Metzner from her CD, "The Abundance of Mary" (with Sue Ford, metallophone):

What Elsie Gave Me

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.
Dickenson, 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
Wildacres, North Carolina May 2011

Three Girls

In the back field above the apple orchard,
fern-scented, the pasture low-cut,
ancient boulders humming distantly at the edges,
we three girls, sixteen, giggled on our backs,
under the cloud-strewn summer sky.
They left us alone. Who cared?
That blessed juncture when children are free,
past the need for guardians, but still not grown,
they could care less where we were, what we thought,
high on this mountaintop in early June.
We were carving ourselves a place, three girls.
The world held no leads,
“woman” meant not too much,
not a wide space, anyway,
and choices seemed so solid, irrevocable,
not too far into our future.
But they left us alone, blessedly,
with the bulbous clouds changing shape each minute,
never remaining long with, say, an apron and a skillet,
but becoming, say, a witches broom, a magic mirror,
a scarlet dragon, or nets of silver and gold...
On a blanket in the high field,
we formulated no words,
but hourly worshipped the Queen of Change,
our future, and hers, and maybe all women’s:
metamorphosing, shape-shifting, adjusting, changing,
altering ever so slightly and poof! a new vision,
carrying this blessing like a textbook in the sky,
the soft fern-scented lessons of nature’s giving.

Annelinde Metzner

Sunrise

From out of the dark, dark night,
the people come with reverence to the sea.
Gazing to the horizon,
we 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.
Dozens of 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, starting a new day.
The seagulls slowly rise and begin to swirl,
dive, call out, rejoice,
recognizing Her glory.
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.

Isle of Palms, South Carolina
November 25, 2010

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
Woodfin Riverside Park
September 15, 2010

Morning at the Sanctuary

The first morning light seeps in the diamond windows at the Bali House.
All night, accompanying my dreams, the river roars,
punctuated with her bass tones, under the boulders,
guiding me in a language I don’t speak.
“Weee-hooo,” says the first morning bird,
and “Thump!”, a half-eaten apple falls on the deck.
All around, the exuberant vines intertwine
with the butternut and the rhododendron of the woods.
“Safe here!”, they all seem to say,
even the three butterflies who fasten themselves to my shoe.
At three AM the stars blanket the night sky,
reaching their fiery fingers into our dreams.
This morning I gaze into the misted woods,
letting the visions speak to my shadows,
letting go, letting it be exactly what it is.
Barefoot, I feel the cool stones and the dewy grass.
A day on Earth.
The sun streaking through the walls by my bed,
a whisper of thanks unbidden.

Annelinde Metzner
July 20, 2010

Water Garden

Water Garden

Approaching by a narrow path, steep drops,
the women arrive, astonished, at the little grove.
A water garden in the woods!
Tumbling, tumbling over neat steps,
the sparkling water of early spring
delights our ears with its singing.
Nearby, a Trillium, a Mayapple spring forth.
We close our eyes and breathe deeply,
giving thanks.

Annelinde Metzner
May 25, 2010

(Photo by Patty Levesque)

Timeless

Moving over the mountains,
there are powers bright as dragons,
traveling, traveling, up and over.

The air is never still.
The power flows.
We can only sense it.

Only a knowing, a sensing,
a shining at the summit,
arching over us, unceasing.

The mountains are never still.
Over her skin, the power is moving,
the dragon traveling, timeless, shining.

Annelinde Metzner April 12, 2010

I cannot grasp Her power

Beneath us, this support,
quiet as it is, this power
linking directly to my heart, fresh, cool,
down in the layers, the emerald, the sapphire,
holding us all tenderly, warm and strong, our lover,
the power of the mountains is with us, everywhere.
Today, as if posing for a portrait,
she is holding still, so still,
holding each branch forth with her immense grace,
available to us, almost shy.
The mountain, enshrouded today, is retreating in the heavy fog,
head in the clouds, really.
She is seen, and she fades. She is seen, and she fades.
As for me, I’m but a puppet, magnetized,
a whirling skater upon a mirror,
a slave to her power.
Autumn and winter, spring and summer,
pulling the Moon, and being pulled,
she turns so slowly, so beyond our ken,
each minute shift is an avalanche on Denali,
a hurricane in Cuba, a rock slide in Tennessee.
I cannot grasp her power.
Now and then, a turn in the path, a change in the weather,
and I glimpse the mountain’s power, the ageless magnetism,
I feel her pulling my eyelids down at night,
pinching me to leap for joy in the day...
but she is so far beyond me to know,
I am only here to witness, to glimpse and guess,
to be propelled through my life, a leaf on the wind,
at the mercy of Her grace.

Annelinde Metzner October 29, 2009

Looking Glass

The earth’s egg,

she nestles here in her corpus luteum.

Bold and firm, how deep, how deep?

Huge egg, birth place, bursting place,

eminently fertile stone ground of all beginnings.

The earth’s egg,

smooth as silk at the long fall,

an Easter egg frosted with green.

In peace a buzzard glides by on the thermals,

loving Her, all bliss.

copyright Annelinde Metzner July 25, 2009

(Photo by Susan Burkot)

The Forest Rejoices

Did you know that

the forest is rejoicing in you?

On the forest floor, this June,

Galax is blooming,

tall white candles lining the path

where you walk.

The rain, the plentiful blessed rain

has filled each lake and stream

and draped each stone and hard place

with brilliant green mosses,

each stone a small village of miniature trees,

small hopes.

For you, the air is cold and sweet,

redolent of the ferment of humus,

the lush bed of new life laid before you.

For you, the soft breeze on your tired skin

cleanses you of all your worries,

and overhead, fit for any blushing bride,

mountain laurel in impossible numbers

bloom in your lover’s bower.

Loving you! Loving you!

Loving your being, breathing with you,

exhaling with each of your inhalations.

She welcomes and embraces each cell you offer here.

In the cold recesses of the wild deep cataracts

that pour out your welcome, layer upon layer,

the sun breaks through in rays, brilliant yellow-green.

She pours out her joy, yes,

she crashes into the black pools,

just for the joy of being here,

just for the joy of you.

Annelinde Metzner copyright June 14, 2009

Holle

Holle

The hard wind tearing through the Nantahala Forest

is the big swift hand of Grandmother,

getting crumbs off the table, thoughtlessly,

readying for the next thing, washing clothes or serving soup.

In the hollow, under the cold wind, you are the crumb!

You may like it here, but you’re gone!

Loud and long the fierce winds howl through the deep forest.

She brushes Her hand, and ancient oaks crash, obedient to Her will.

The Rhododendron stands patient through eons and eons,

accustomed to the Grandmother’s whims.

Her brown and mossy stems meet and turn exquisitely,

solid, rooted, yet reaching for air,

a ballet on the brown forest floor.

Her leathery broad leaves are good for all winter,

each whorl of leaves a brilliant, fleeting thought.

They call this Rhododendron Hell:

Hell, Holle, the Holy, the One Who Lives Death.

Plants and animals die here, ecstatic

to feed Her, to become the next thing.

I, too, would die for Her, here at Her feet in the Nantahala Forest.

“Guten abend, guten Nacht,” sings Grandmother, 

tucking me in as I dissolve into nutriment.

Here at Holle’s side, Her perfect whorls elegant,

I’d wash into dirt at the first icy rain, rejoin the family of all being,

sing the green songs of the ages.

Fierce winds tear through here, uprooting oaks.

I sleep at Her feet until whenever She needs me.

Annelinde Metzner  copyright 1998

Let It

Let It

Not just once but many times She surrenders,

the Wisteria, lusciously sweet,

royally purple, palest lavender,

clusters like Concord grapes

drooping, sprouting wild everywhere.

Leaves so new and tender-green,

I can’t even feel them to the touch.

Huge, heavy scent,

like a sultry liaison on a hot afternoon,

or like three Grandmas in church,

or like a little girl’s Christmas perfume.

Surrender!  says She,

and again She gives forth so big,

trees and roofs are dwarfed by Her energy.

Let it just fall, fall down,

give up, She shows us!

And why do you hold on so tight?

Fall, let fall!  and as you do,

your beauty, your perfect wholeness

falls open for all to see.

 

copyright Annelinde Metzner    April 2009

The sheer lace curtain

Icy white curves of pure sunshine

come through the white lace curtain

surprised, as if the Sun

had tumbled into a clothes dryer

full of lace undies.

I can’t fully see the day,

She is so veiled, so disguised

in honeycombs of lace,

lace petals of flowers,

filigrees and tendrils,

flirtatious as flickering flame

even though the glass is frozen.

It’s twenty degrees today, even at the beach,

January. A world white as lace,

and hiding something too, maybe hiding a year,

a whole new year, a brand new number,

the world not quite discernible

beyond the sheer lace curtain,

January delicate and lovely, thin as lace.

The Sun, as bright as He can be,

happily cascading into white roses of lace,

caught in time, in January’s sheer wonderment,

the unknowing, the promise of the future,

beyond somewhere, waiting.

copyright Annelinde Metzner      January 2009

(photo by Anne Laudati)

The hidden lake

There are lakes that go down a thousand feet,

and here, leaf mold and mud how deep?

But only the soul knows.

We look across the shiny surface, 

the ripples this way and that,

and the soul measures, dives down,

finds its depths.

I must be a snapping turtle, burrowing deep.

My soul snaps onto my fingertip,

when it hungers, when meaning has gone dry.

My soul rests in the fathomless deep,

hungry, pulling my life this way and that,

seldom satisfied.

I must be a catfish, with my long whiskers

stirring my own ancient soup over and over,

pulling together each scrap of events,

wanting that placidity, that mirror calmness.

Gazing across the reflective surface, I see swimmers!

Dark beings unseen until now.

Happy and dark as ducks, they paddle 

across the surface of my soul.

How have I created these?

What ancient magic of my days came forth

to paddle across my dark waters?

Annelinde Metzner    copyright 2009

Rebirth

Rebirth

Midsummer sun on raspberry,

the spicy scent of fern, the color of red clover.

There is no better place, no holier ground than this.

And what is near you? What grows by your door?

How you longed to be here, those nine months in the quiet room,

all suspense and expectancy, a few noises and bumps.

Your first aroma, new to breathe air, was luscious as this:

Raspberry, fern, Mother's blood, her milk, her musky skin.

The vision came and went as you gazed.

Here today, it's new green berries tight as Chinese soldiers,

apple leaves against July's blue,

and darker in the shade, the mysterious abyss.

That first day, Mother's soft face came and went,

and each gaze another joy,

a bit of the immense puzzle you came just to experience.

With hunger and thirst, with tongue and lips,

our loudest "yes!" we sing.

Draw to your heart the new life, the new places of each day!

Draw into your soul the warm flesh of being,

her musky skin, her colors.

She is not going to disappoint you.

Annelinde Metzner   copyright 2006 

In the Fern Woods

In the Fern Woods

I scattered my son's ashes in the fern woods

as raindrops tapped like centipede's feet

on the balcony leaves of maple and oak.

I scattered his ashes near the ancestor oak,

old, gnarled, twisted, huge,

because above all he is a Druid, and there is no name to this place.

You must take the twists and turns,

the new, She will always be new.

This turn of ferny woods will be gone again,

fallen trunks and scattered stones,

anew with plants and creatures,

yesterday's underlayer giving birth to tomorrow.

My son lives here, with Arthur and Morgaine,

listening for Gandalf and the Lady of the Woods, 

and Hecate forever at the crossroads.

One would risk one's mind to have it all,

to have this eternity, this newness, this death,

and he got that from me, as I hoped he would.

Step into the new world with great trust and great love!

Ancestors will guide you, all life will support you,

and the spicy sweet bed of ferns will cradle you on your way.

Annelinde Metzner     copyright August 2004