The Falling Away

December, the biting cold creeps under our shirts and stays.
All of us have given away whatever we could spare.
Brown and crackling leaves, sheets of bark,
molted feathers, old skins,
To the Earth they go!  and we
pull the thick covers around us, and wait.
It’s decaying time, the winter of the year,
the dry and the old falling away to our beloved Earth.
Time to wait, time to gaze,
fix the eyes in the far distance,
fall inward, and dream.
The cypress, old and long dead,
resonates hollow to my knuckles.
She gives away, layer upon layer,
falling down and reaching up with pointed fingers of  bark,
falling more beautifully with each wind, each snow and rain.
And what am I left with when the rain and snow
tear away at me, leaving only what She will?
What fingers do I use to point with grace 
to the blue cold of the sky,
as to each thing I bid farewell?
When the Earth herself is pure, deep, black ice 
down to the roots,
have I what it takes to hold, to wait,
to dream of the deep, and to dream of the turning,
to know what comes next, to hold back, 
to inhale, watch and wait,
let the falling away and the icy stillness
make me more simple, more pure, more austere,  
more beautiful every day?
In the long stillness, seemingly endless,
is there a cell in me somewhere reveling 
in the new spring rain,
the moisture of someday,
the lush rich humus waiting to open beneath our feet?

Annelinde Metzner
December 2008
Meher Baba Center, SC

Here is Annelinde reading "The Falling Away."

Just Friday

Just Friday                                                                  

(a spontaneous poem from the beach)

It’s forty-five degrees, and the water feels even colder,
But I splash in the foam like Aphrodite, 
even though I’m almost sixty.
And I’m NOT SHOPPING.
A kite is suspended in the sky,
so much wind that no one at all is holding the string,
and it stays suspended for hours,
and the kite is NOT SHOPPING.
A child builds palmetto fronds into an altar in the sand,
a child NOT SHOPPING.
A boy out in the ocean paddles by on some board,
standing straight up in the ocean, 
looking for all the world like Jesus,
and certainly Jesus would not be shopping.
Two dogs whirl around each other,
joy sparking off of them like the flash of Venus in the night,
like the Pleiades in the dark moon night,
and today is just Friday, and no one is shopping.

Annelinde Metzner
Isles of Palms, South Carolina November 25, 2011

Being With What Is

Sun rays through the mists

I worried for months.
I couldn’t sleep.
I trusted no one.
I lived in fear.
And here today, this green,
the last green of September against the deep blue,
I am here, just here,
being with all that is.
Looking up, I love the leaves of the hazel,
the sourwood already going bare.
In all my loving,
I often forget
how much they are loving me!
My bare feet crunch in the new-fallen crackle
of brownness,
the ash leaves dropping like happy kids,
crying “Watch me!  Watch me!”
The tree frogs clickety-clack,
the chickadees hanging upside down
on the sourwood branches.
And here today, the breeze on my neck,
the green breathtaking as ever,
I am just here,
my feet on the Earth,
just me,
being with what is.

Annelinde Metzner
September 6, 2010
Light Center Labyrinth

Listen to Annelinde reading "Being With What Is:"

Black-eyes Susans

Slightest turning

Transit of Venus

Venus and sun with solar flares (NASA)

Isn’t She slow, slow and steady,
      cool, round, perfect, whole,
      oblivious of heat in Her cool wholeness,
      moving, but on Her own time, inexorable,
      the Goddess of Love, Her divine Self,
      moving queenly across the face of the Sun?
Our Mother, the Queen,
      who hears no ridicule, no envious snicker,
      who gives no heed to patriarchy
      as She processes, stately, in Her time.
She moves, She moves, but in Her own time,
      our Goddess of Beauty, born from the Sea,
      Aphrodite, the One Who Knows,
      La Que Sabe, who knows the truth:
      that all of Life goes in search of Beauty.
      This is Her truth, dead serious.
With Beauty held in Her cool hand
      all will thrive, all will live,
      and live well, live full and long,
      naked, free and full of Love.
Our Mother, Venus, transiting the Sun,
      displaying Her perfect, naked Self,
      a queen to the core, our Mother,
      She moves, slowly, She moves.

Annelinde Metzner
Craggy Mountain NC
June 5, 2012

Venus transit with bird (Reuters)

Venus by Botticelli

Black Dome, This Slowness

Black Dome or "Mount Mitchell"

Join the natural world with your quietness and your slowness!
At this blessed pace, the wild raspberry
     can see you sitting nearby,
     slow as apples ripening.
At this blessed tempo,
     birds drift to the tops of trees,
     to gaze off miles and miles through the clouds.
In this sacred slowness,
    the bees take their time to choose
    this blossom, then that,
    then that one, and maybe the next.
This is how slowly the clouds creep,
     white and bulbous,
     all of us present here
     in the same breath,
     slow, inaudible, eternal.
I breathe, I fill my lungs with air.
This is all we have, all of us,
     from now until the end of the world.


Annelinde Metzner
August 6, 2010




"Black Dome" is the Cherokee name of Mount Mitchell, highest point in the East in the Black Mountain Range of the Blue Ridge Mountains where I live.

Naiads

Price Lake

    To slip into the lake in the evening
as Grandmother lays back once more to rest
and the last of the evening birds fly
and the wood thrush reminds us,
    “beauty here, everywhere,”
    the water cool and soft,
    clean, pure as a new day,
wanting to float us, wanting to play,
to cool and clear our day-worn skin,
dunking the whole head until all of us is new,
all of us begins again.
    This is one of the gifts of evening,
the cool hour of Shiva’s dancing,
our minds carried on a wave of peace,
our laughter light as dandelion seed,
floating high on the skin of the water,
the gentle, joyful giveaway of the day.

Annelinde Metzner     
June 23, 2009

Grandmother rests

Toe River Naiads

This Newness

How soft are the new green leaves of spring?
I gently pull my palm along the tenderest
pale bright new sprouts, new as a baby.
I brush the stamens of the azalea, and my thumb
feels nothing, they are too tender for me to sense.
“Whenever you see the birds, 
you have not actually seen them.”
Can I really absorb this newness, 
my Mother’s own birth?
Can I know this now, in this body,
with these five senses, so crude and dull?
What is it that knows?
Like an astronomer gazing at the sky,
I try, I sense as best I can,
reaching, imagining, breathing with Her.


Annelinde Metzner
Meher Baba Center, South Carolina
April 13, 2011

Wake Robin

Red Trillium

Blood-red trillium,
      with your sumptuous variegated leaf patterns,
      arising in big colonies early, so early in spring
      amid dry leaves and old twigs,
Triple Goddess, you sprout from the dry earth
      innocently, as if it were every day
      ancient knowledge comes forth into our sight.
You lie barely visible at our feet,
      one of the old ones, short and well-adapted
      to the forest floor, a gnome
      with a new red cap.
But no pretty pink here, nor lacy white.
      You are of the blood of the Earth Mother herself,
      and even Her rich warm blood has beauty,
      and she will not hide this, our Mother.
      She bleeds, and Her blood is beautiful.
Wake Robin, wake us to know
      where e’er we walk, She feels and knows.
      We kiss the Earth, but She bruises, too,
      in bloodroot, in trillium, in fracking, in clearcut, in war.
Wake, Robin, don’t be a fool!
      Here is Life’s own rich display, ineffable,
      the upward thrust, the very orgasm of Spring.
She is here today, for you, for us,
      crowding upward for us here,
      but once only.

Annelinde Metzner
Flat Creek North Carolina
March 23, 2012





 

Yellow trillium

  

Botanical Gardens in Asheville, NC

  

Among the Galax

Galax in bloom

I’m entranced by the smell of boiled cabbage!
     or a mean old skunk, maybe,
     or some moldy old boots.
I’m standing thick in the Galax,
     blooming now in June,
     rain so plentiful the white noise of the branch
     fills my ears and carries me away.
I’m entranced among the Galax,
     enchanted really, as this thick abundance
     of shiny round greenness sings to me,
     standing here, wet, wet.
Yes!   It’s a rainforest, wet and cool,
     lichen and moss growing up the tree trunks,
     ferns growing from stones,
     magic, magic everywhere.
Who lives in that twig house atop the standing stone?
Who giggles at me from over my shoulder, entranced like me?
It’s June!  and the Galax is flowering,
     proud white candlesticks among the rounds of green,
     here in Gaia’s garden, so perfect, so huge,
     the rhododendron buds sticky and bright pink,
     opening to white,
     the leaves so pale green and new.
I’m entranced among the Galax, and it’s June,
     a wet one, a rightful rainy one,
     and the moss is green upon the stone.
White Indian Pipes, ancient as time,
     arise like magic among the Galax, hidden and shy.
Be still!  Receive what She has for you,
     all this, the wetness, the ancient ones,
     the skunky smells, the whispers.
You are in Sacred Time now.  Don’t go too fast.
She is here for you, in the Galax.
She is more than you or I will ever know.

Annelinde Metzner
Greybeard Mountain, NC
June 16, 2012

Twig house

Rhododendron bloom

Gnome tree

Indian Pipes

There is a great story about Indian Pipes told by Mary Chiltosky in the book, Cherokee Plants...
"Before selfishness came into the world-that was a long time ago- the Cherokee people were happy sharing the hunting and fishing places with their neighbors. All this changed when Selfishness came into the world and man began to quarrel. The Cherokee quarreled with tribes on the east. Finally the chiefs of several tribes met in council to try to settle the dispute. They smoked the pipe and continued to quarrel for seven days and seven nights. This displeased the Great Spirit because people are not supposed to smoke the pipe until they make peace. As he looked upon the old men with heads bowed, he decided to do something to remind people to smoke the pipe only at the time they make peace."
"The Great Spirit turned the old men into greyish flowers we now call "Indian Pipes" and he made them grow where friends and relatives have quarreled. He made the smoke hang over these mountains until all the people all over the world learn to live together in peace."