Suddenly in two worlds

 with apologies to Wallace Stevens

A woman is always suddenly in two worlds,
over the morning's breakfast plates
jammed up knives, amid soccer behind the hedge,
screaming, thuds, kicked leather.
The wind calls her to write: birds at the feeder
startle when the big black dog runs out
and her poems are suddenly startled, fleeing
before she can grab paper and pen.
The kids come in: one tries her flute, he opens
the side gate to greet the barking lab.

We are many worlds wrapped up in
this green space, the (good) Mom she tries to be
while the Poet skulks back into the slow cooker
left on simmer all day, closes the notepad
and pads in socking feet back
to the kitchen. 

Eve reimagines her beginning

“I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over man: she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived, and became a transgressor.”  (I Tim 2:11-14) 

Naming Adam

“She desires herself alone, fulfills her desire

becomes pregnant from that desire.”

               Reinventing Eve, Kim Chernin

Some say she was pulled from his rib

golden in the leaves of paradise

or rose from the spermy sea on a shell

foam on the salt waves.

But the first woman entered like lightning

from the wet red cave

a sea of milk in her breasts

rich menstrual blood in her womb.

She took of her blood

mixed it with clay, then swallowed it,

dancing, churned the moonblood

in her belly to a child.

From the cleft of light, the sacred

opening, the first man was born.

She licked her blood from the clay-wet form

breathed life into his mouth.

He called her Eve, because she was the mother

of all living beings.

She named him Adam, for the red earth

from which he was made.

(published, Poetry Canada, 1990)

Poem for the soul

Bone, from Why I Wake Early (2004)

by Mary Oliver

1.

 Understand, I am always trying to figure out

what the soul is,

and where hidden,

and what shape

and so, last week,

when I found on the beach

the ear bone

of a pilot whale that may have died

hundreds of years ago, I thought

maybe I was close

to discovering something

for the ear bone

2.

is the portion that lasts longest

in any of us, man or whale; shaped

like a squat spoon

with a pink scoop where

once, in the lively swimmer's head,

it joined its two sisters

in the house of hearing,

it was only

two inches long

and  I thought: the soul

might be like this

so hard, so necessary

3.

yet almost nothing.

Beside me

the gray sea

was opening and shutting its wave-doors,

unfolding over and over

its time-ridiculing roar;

I looked but I couldn't see anything

through its dark-knit glare;

yet don't we all know, the golden sand

is there at the bottom,

though our eyes have never seen it,

nor can our hands ever catch it

4.

lest we would sift it down

into fractions, and facts

certainties

and what the soul is, also

I believe I will never quite know.

Though I play at the edges of knowing,

truly I know

our part is not knowing,

but looking, and touching, and loving,

which is the way I walked on,

softly,

through the pale-pink morning light.

Give me Birdsong

In the dark times will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing. About the dark times.
Bertolt Brecht

Give me bird song
to lighten the sadness,
the coming dark.

Give me rainfall
to sweeten November grass.

Give me long summer nights
and Danish choirs singing
into the light that lasts
until September.

Give me a woman in black
playing piano in the shadows
where we cannot see her.
Let the melody and music
float down to us below,
beside the crooked house
with tilting stairs,
white linens.

Give me what is broken, but true.
For I have grown to hate
 a song that hits all the right noes
but has no blackedged heart.

Let my brokenness
be bird song.

Jennifer Boire

Be Where You Are

Tami Kent

Whether sunlight streams through the window
or the rain drops down,
be where you are.

At times you will be weary
confounded by mixed signals or crossed signs.
Reaching and striving
will produce only dead ends.

So be where you are
back in your center
where there is always
air and light
time and peace
and possibility.

Leave the phone calls
and the work load
worries, conflicts, and expectations
lying where they may
and be where you are.

There with the crying child
or the laundry pile
and the nascent hopes and dreams.
Whether lonely and afraid
or simply noticing the spaces
in between thoughts and words and actions.

Just be where you are
with your breath in and out
and the beauty in front of eyes that see.
With potential in your hands reaching out
and your heart open again to this mystery.

“The Muse Mother” (1982)

by Eavan Boland

My window pearls wet.
The bare rowan tree
berries rain.
I can see
from where I stand
a woman hunkering –
her busy hand
worrying a child’s face,
working a nappy liner
over his sticky, loud
round of a mouth.
Her hand’s a cloud
across his face,
making light and rain,
smiles and a frown,
a smile again.
She jockeys him to her hip,
pockets the nappy liner,
collars rain on her nape
and moves away,
but my mind stays fixed:
If I could only decline her –
Lost noun
Out of context,
Stray figure of speech –
From this rainy street
Again to her roots,
She might teach me
A new language:
To be a sibyl
Able to sing the past
In pure syllables,
Limning hymns sung
To belly wheat or a woman,
Able to speak at last
My mother’s tongue.

I had no idea there was another use for Muse Mother out there, let alone a poem!
My other blog, Musemother is here: www.questinggirl.blogspot.com
/jenn

Love has to be felt

Love has to be felt; it cannot be 

a definition in words. Drink 

until your thirst is quenched. 

Eat until your hunger is satisfied. 

Sleep until you are rested. 

Search until you have found peace 

and then, understand.

There is incense already burning 

in the house of your body — smell it. 

It is the perfume of God.

Smell it. And be satisfied, 

be content.

Excerpts from address by Prem Rawat 
wwww.wopg.org