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