November dusk

Dusk in early November,
the woods already dark,
the branches black against glow of sky,
stillness all around.
The forsythia holds forth its brilliant leaves,
bright yellow as its blossoms in Spring.
My pumpkin is half-eaten,
a squirrel’s banquet in the garden.
A few plants hold out: the nasturtium, the beet.
All is suspended.
The world holds Her breath, pensive, unmoving,
graceful in Her holding-on,
a leaf here, a vine there.
I breathe deeply, relishing the new cold,
the waking-up of my skin.
The dove titters as she flies,
oblivious of the cold,
like the mallard pairs on the lake.
My ancestors all around me
hold forth their warm spirit hands,
reminding me to love, to live this life each day,
this ever-changing gift, our life on Earth.






Annelinde Metzner
November 4, 2012

Rules for Sacred Space

                          

1.     It can be anywhere.

2.     It might have a road through it.

3.     You must find it for yourself.

4.     You must spend time there.

5.     The more time you spend, the more you will:

                 see,  hear,  feel,  smell,  taste.

6.     You must be still!

7.     You must be quiet.

8.     Do not have ego.

9.     It is good to be:  old, female, plain-faced, unfashionable. These help to make you invisible.

10.  Stay until you see, hear, feel, smell, taste something new

                 and amazing.

11.  Stay longer than you planned.

12.  This sacred space is now yours.

13.  Give great thanks.

Annelinde Metzner

Biltmore Estate

April 14, 2000

Alone on the Earth at Hawkscry

Hawkscry sky

Alone on the Earth at Hawkscry, all quiet,

     a fullness of beauty, of light.

In sun and shadow on the mountain peaks,

     a circle of love.

Lying here long upon our Mother’s warm skin,

     one feels a sound, deeper than any sound,

     energy reverberating from within Her Heart.

It is late summer,

     when the Earth speaks through singing.

Do you hear Her song?

A soft warm cradle of Her singing,

     this hum of the Great Mother

     we can only feel.

In Her soft warm cradle, in the circle of Her arms,

     She sings for all of us,

     the finned, the furry, the feathered.

She sings, too, for the Stone People, Her most ancient ones,

     the peaks and valleys and rivers where Her waters run,

     Her oceans and Her air.

Can you hear Her song, so huge, so wild,

     so deep within, yet immanent in all things?

That song is for us, for you and me,

     here where we lay close to Her on the Earth,

     and where e’er we walk,

     each step springing from Her deepest heart.

Annelinde Metzner

Hawkscry, August 25, 2012

Here is William Stanhope's blog about Hawkscry.

Hawkscry door

Hawkscry shrine

Black Dome, This Slowness

Black Mountain range with 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

America is a Moon Child

America is a Moon Child.
Born on the fourth of July,
She is a Motherer, did you know that?
Her true nature.
America prepares a home for us,
     rich and sweet with ferns,
     honeysuckle and spice,
     a soft green moss for us to sleep upon.
America is our Mother, born at the sign of the Moon,
     happiest when She holds us tenderly in Her arms,
     happiest when our sleep is deep,
     grounded in relationship.
America is our Mother, responsive to the Moon,
     tidal in Her pulling, water-bound,
     merciful and tender with all Her beings,
     Her infinitely varied brood.
America is Our mother, and we Her children,
     beloved every one, in Her beautiful web
     interwoven and connected beyond our knowing,
     Her family.

On the fourth of July, the full moon
     shines in my window to bathe me as I sleep,
     curled up and at peace in Her arms.

Annelinde Metzner

Black Mountain, North Carolina

July 4, 2012

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

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."

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

The Mulberry Tree

Mulberry tree

A walking meditation, I step downward
to the edge of the sea wall.
Silent as the marsh grass and the pluff mud,
all sound is absorbed but the “tweee” and “caw”
of the waterbirds.

Here is how I step:
        Give thanks for the egret.   Give thanks for me.
        Give thanks for the pelican.  Give thanks for me.
        Give thanks for the crow.    Give thanks for me.

Gazing out to the Beaufort River,
not really a river but a ceaseless pulsation of water,
forward and back, ebb and flow,
I sink my roots deep as the oaks by the shore.
Homeward I turn, and almost in the door,
above me, mulberries!
Ripe and black as the night,
they offer themselves to my fingers and mouth,
turning them purple with delight.
Goddess, how you surprise me!
How I kiss you with each step,
‘til you tap me on my shoulder,
opening me, purple, indigo, black as night
with my burst-open welcoming of You.

Annelinde Metzner
Beaufort, South Carolina
March 30, 2012

Beaufort River

Sea wall

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