Poems for the Day of the Dead

Florence on horse, Griffith Park, 1928

 Girl and Horse, 1928

by Margaret Atwood

You are younger than I am,

you are someone I never knew
you stand under a tree
your face half-shadowed,
Holding the horse by its bridle.

Why do you smile? Can’t you
See the apple blossoms falling around
You, snow, sun, snow,
listen, the tree dries
and is being burnt, the wind

Is bending your body,
your face ripples like water
Where did you go?

But no, you stand there
exactly the same,
you can’t hear me,

forty years ago you were caught by light
And fixed in that secret place
where we live, where we believe
nothing can change, grow older.

(On the other side
of the picture, the instant
is over, the shadow
of the tree has moved. )

You wave,
then turn and ride
out of sight through the vanished
orchard, still smiling

(as though you do not notice)

GHOSTS

Where do the dead go?

The dead that are not cosmetically renewed

and boxed, their faces familiar and serene.

Or brought to an essence, pale ashes in elegant canisters.

I ask for the other dead:

those ghosts that wander

unshriven among our sleep,

haunting the borderlands of our lives.

The dead dreams,

The failed loves.

The quests, undertaken with full courage

and paid for in blood

that never found a dragon, a Grail, a noble ordeal

and the Hero's sacred journey home.

Instead, the wrong fork was somehow taken, or the road

wandered aimlessly, finally narrowing

to a tangled gully

and the Hero was lost, in the gray and prosaic rain,

hungry, weary, to finally stop somewhere, anywhere

glad of bread, a fire, a little companionship.

Where is their graveyard?

Were they mourned?

Did we hold a wake,

bear flowers, eulogize their bright efforts

their brave hopes

and commemorate their loss with honor?

A poem?

An imperishable stone to mark their passing?

Did we give them back to the Earth

to nourish saplings yet to flower,

the unborn ones?

Or were they left to wander

in some unseen Bardo, unreleased, ungrieved.

Did we turn our backs on them unknowing,

            their voices calling, whispering impotently

            behind us

            shadowing our steps?

                  Lauren Raine   1997

Sometimes a man stands up during supper

and walks outdoors, 

and keeps on walking

because of a church 

that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him
as if he were dead.

And another man,

 who remains inside his own house,
stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,

so that his children have to go

far out into the world

toward that same church,
which he forgot.

Rainier Maria Rilke (Translated by Robert Bly)

         On Meeting Shari After 22 Years

I see your  father's  gesture
(how is it possible, to remember him, after all these years?)
yet there it is renewed, a play of shadow and light
 flickering across your face.

You were a Milagro
that inhabited me

for a little while 
and then grew on without me.

What shall I call this door,
opening today between our lives?

Multitudes have passed this way. 

For that moment
I see them in your eyes,
then I pay the bill, finish coffee,
and descend into the subway, waving goodbye.

How can I tell you
that I am casting my love
like a daisy with petals partly plucked,
a firefall of dandelion seed
into the wind
into the world

as you must do as well

Lauren Raine (1990)

Flora with Florence (1917)

old photos,

escaping a tin box:

They are stories with wings

 butterflies, or white moths

fluttering at the glass,

ephemeral, half-glimpsed stories

lighter than air, 

these unknown memories

quietly escaping,
through 

an open window

Florence at 92

For the Summer Solstice 2025

 

The Buddha’s Last Instruction

 

“Make of yourself a light,” 

said the Buddha,
before he died.

I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal – a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.

An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.

The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves. 

No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.

And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire –
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something  of inexplicable value.

Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

~ Mary Oliver ~

I woke early, on this longest day:

the light rose among
 the green conversation 
of  trees, a fading star, exultant starlings,
  two grey squirrels 
performing their morning ritual

greeting the only God 
they know,

the Sun

Lauren Raine (2013)

Demeter's Hands

"Demeter's Hands", Ceramic, 2024

A piece I'll be showing at the upcoming Tucson Sculpture Festival, at the end of March.

Most people I've shown it to say nothing,  which I assume is because it makes no sense to them, but then, most people aren't all that interested in mythology. 

Demeter was the ancient Earth Mother, the Goddess of agriculture, by whose grace the seeds put down roots, the new life of spring emerged, and the harvest was harvested.  And one of Her stories concerns the abduction of her daughter, Kore, by Hades, the God of the Underworld, of death.  She was so angry and grieved so deeply at the loss of her daughter, that the world began to die, and people starved.  So at last the Gods had to come to an agreement with Demeter, who had been vastly under appreciated.  Kore could return to her mother for half of the year, and half of the year she dwelt in Hades, wife of the King of Death.  Thus Kore, the maiden of Spring, became the mature Persephone, the liminal Goddess of both death, and rebirth.  

I've always loved the image below,   Greek bas relief that shows Demeter, Her snakes writhing around her, the holy snakes representing the serpentine, moving and endlessly renewing energies of the Earth.  She is bearing the wheat, her gift to humanity, the "staff of life".   Bread. How we take Bread for granted, Bread that was sustainer of our ancestors, at least, those that came from Europe and the Middle East.  

Years ago I stood in a wheat field in Wiltshire, in the UK.  I was there to visit a Crop Circle, being fascinated with that phenomenon, and I did stand  in the middle of this huge field, impressed with the crushed pattern I stood in.  But what I remember more strongly was standing in what seemed like a vast field of golden wheat, bending with the wind, moving like Demeter's serpents through the rustling,  golden blonde wheat fields. That experience filled me with awe, with a sense of something primordial and sacred.  

Grace.  The Grace of Demeter.  

Here is a poem I found while surfing around the internet.  It was on a poetry site called allpoetry.com.  I  was struck by "You mistook my grace for leniency"......  indeed, that is the hard lesson we are learning now. To recognize that we are part of the Earth, and to live accordingly.  We are rooted and sustained by the Grace of Demeter.  

I am sorry to say that I  couldn't find the name of the poet who wrote this poem to Demeter,  except that she called herself "Unemployed Diva" on the site, which featured a number of her poems.  I am grateful for her work, and will keep looking for her name to give her the credit she deserves.  

Demeter

I unfurl blazing fields of golden corn,

my bare feet cross the toiled earth.

My belly is round, awaiting the harvest.

I whisper, I chant, urging the planted seeds

to grow strong, to be bold in this endless summer.

I am a cornucopia of gifts, waiting to be given.

I was an oak that could not be shaken by the wind.

You saw a peach about to be bruised.

I can bring light and life, I can stretch spring and summer.

I am willing to lighten the load of the tired farmer,

to bless his harvest and spread grace through his house.  

Yet, you chose darkness, you chose apathy, you chose condemnation.

I am lost amongst the the trees, drowning in the sea, my

naked feet are torn from the rough earth. The sun hides

from me, tears fall from my eyes staining the blank snow.

Return my harvest to me.

You mistook my grace for leniency, 

My daughter’s stained lips crack

as she smiles up at me, her

skin marble, her eyes tired and bitter.

          I will allow you light, I will allow you life.

But you must also suffer darkness

as you so carelessly cursed me. 

I will dance upon the ice as you shiver

and pray for the sun to appear.  

Pray for my forgiveness.

Pray, and pray again.

There is a Goddess within me.

 

The Barbarians Are Coming...................

Laurie Anderson

"In every creative life, in every life of passion and purpose, there comes a time when the animating spark grows dim and the muscle of motivation slackens, when you come to feel benumbed to beauty and abandoned by your numen, suffocating in the exhaust fume of your own exertion, ossified with the tedium of being yourself."

Ah, yes.  Here I am in my personal  horse latitudes.  4 am (the so-called witching hour, although I sense not one molecule of magic at the moment).  The above currently perfect quote by Maria Popova, from her marvelous Blog The Marginalian, is, currently, perfect.  I feel "ossified with the tedium of being myself".  It seems rather hard to move when in that Nigredo, ossification mode. 

I may not be alone in this.

                             "so what's the point?  The Barbarians are coming". 

When I was a child of about 11 my family lived for a while in Italy.  My mother was fascinated with ancient Rome, and we went to many ruins and museums of that great Empire that featured what seemed to me as endless statues of Generals, Gods, and Orators.  Each and every one of them had no nose.  I used to wonder about that, until I thought about the Barbarians, riding into Rome as it fell to loot, rape the Vestal Virgins,  destroy the culture created by Patricians, artists, orators and philosophers,  set fire to the Senate.......... and knock the noses off of every statue they encountered.  I used to imagine that, horse riding  men with bronze swords, joyfully banging off marble noses in an orgy of desecration as Rome fell at last.  And, following in the footsteps of Ceasar years before,  the Barbarians also finally crossed the Rubicon. 

                                                 "The Barbarians are coming."

Very soon, the Whitehouse will belong, again, to Trump and his wife (who still hasn't learned much English). They are crossing the Rubicon.  Is it, like Ceasar's march, a point of no return?  

And our centers of government are in soon to be in the hands of, well,  Elon Musk, seen dancing around in glee as they make a whole new Department, just for him.  He might as well have a tee shirt that says "We own you".  Meaning the Oligarchy.  And, presumably at the helm, Trump, ever ready to turn the U.S.A. into his own private reality TV show.  Soon to be our President, the very same guy who tried to start an insurrection 4 years ago, one in which several people died, our elected officials had their lives threatened, and violent, gun toting "Trumpsters" stormed the capital, screaming "hang the Vice President" when they weren't waving Trump flags.  And here we are again:  Almost Inauguration Day.  Trump and Company utterly triumphant, and proving once and forever that now days you can get away with anything.  Because he has. Now what? 

                                                   "The Barbarians are coming".  

I think this brilliant performance by the amazing Laurie Anderson is going to resonate in my mind for quite a while.  It seems so very true to the moment.  And I am very pleased, thanks to UTube, to share it here.  

 https://youtu.be/rI15W-BBhrw?si=lrYA3E7L3LN3gQV8

New Year 2025: Poems and Remembering Source

 

This is an image I have made over and over and over since, I guess, 2007.  The "rooted hand", woven into a great Fabric of nature, reaching up to flower and leaf and create.  This "rooted hand" is my personal Icon to remind me of belonging, and to invite the spirit of nature to express through me, my art, through what I create and imagine.  

It's almost New Year 2025.  And I've been struggling with grief about the prospects for this year.  No, it's not the future we imagined, my friends and I as young idealists at Berkeley in say, 1975.  We grew out of the idealism and optimism of the Kennedy years, and for all our activism, that was the Matrix we believed we could continually change, make better.  Most of those friends are gone now, and here I am, still here, and it is 2025. 

It's not the America we imagined, this cynical and corrupt Oligarchy that cares nothing for democracy, or for that matter the future of life on this planet.   All they care about is an unquenchable lust for power. 

Even so, this is the image that is arising in my mind, and I want to post it here again, as an Affirmation, indeed, as an Invocation of Gaia, of Nature, of the Soul of the Earth.  The profound Ecosystem we are a part of, indivisibly, interdependent, woven.  That we are all, past, present, future, human, animal, fungi, tree-root, sky, sun, snow and leaf....... that we are each a part of it all.  That's what I want to hold to as this New Year begins.

I guess I'll begin with a poem I wrote in October, 2001, shortly after the fall of the twin towers in New York, while I was on the beach in Mendocino.  I made an affirmation then, as my own girlhood memories flowed past me on that long ago beach, an affirmation that still rings true for me now.  Oh.......... and I want to share some of the beautiful poetry of Nancy Wood too.  That's my Affirmation for the New Year 2025.  What I don't want to forget, what I want to hold to.  

         ON THE BEACH 

One month after the world ended

The little island world we,

the privileged few, could pretend

was safe, forever, and righteous -

The fallen towers, fiery messengers

of unfathomable destruction yet to come.

Tourists walk barefoot on the familiar beach.

They came here, I imagine,

as I have, not to forget, but to remember.

To remember driftwood and high tide 

a red dog and a yellow-haired child

as they enter the water -

their cries of goodly shock and honest forever's

always new, always cold, always blue.

A white heron,

balanced in perfect equanimity on one leg.

Wave forms overlay my feet......

transparent hieroglyphs of infinity.

Her way of speaking.

Gaia.  Her manifest, unspoken words.

A brown man lies beside the mossy cliff,

spread-eagled between sky and sea and land.

Sand sunk, leaf-molten,

blackberry thorn,

into the green:  

toes, fingers, flesh

reaching into the green

redeeming Earth.

He is rooting himself.

He is taking himself back.

I lie down in grateful imitation,

a stranger in companionable human proximity

sharing this rite of remembering.

I  see her now,  I see a girl

walking on this very beach.

Yesterday, and 40 years ago.

Sourcing, she is 

sourcing the one who lives here

a river Goddess with no name.

She has made a mermaid offering

of sticks and sand and seaweed.

Companions arrive, offer shells,

and return to Berkeley.

To Vietnam, the Cold War, the Berlin Wall,

the war, the wall,

the war, the walls.

The war,

and the summer of love.

("the revolution will not be televised")

A generation to end war, raise hell,

raise consciousness,

raise Atlantis,

and raise the new and Golden Age

("the revolution will not be televised")

How did we get here from there?

I call you back, girl,

I call you back.

I am at the other end of this life now

yet your footprints 

touch mine beneath the sand,

I follow them.

On the beach

your sand prayers

ring here still,

The Earth

is my witness.

Lauren Raine, Oct. 11, 2001 

Nancy Wood, who passed away in 2013,  found a deep sense of spiritual  belonging in nature among the natives peoples of New Mexico, and much of her poetry was a celebration of that belonging.  Her poetry is about listening, listening to the voices that become One voice of the Earth.   I've always found renewed Balance when I return to her poems. 

Hold on to what is good

even if it is 
a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe
even if it is
a tree which stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do
even if it is
a long way from here.
Hold on to life even when
it is easier letting go.
Hold on to my hand even when
I have gone away from you.

From Hollering Sun (1972)

Blue lake of life from which flows everything good

We rejoice with the spirits beneath your waters.
The lake and the earth and the sky
Are all around us.
The voices of many gods
Are all within us.
We are now as one with rock and tree
As one with eagle and crow
As one with deer and coyote
As one with all things
That have been placed here by the Great Spirit.
The sun that shines upon us
The wind that wipes our faces clean of fear
The stars that guide us on this journey
To our blue lake of life
We rejoice with you.

In beauty it is begun.
In beauty it is begun.
In peace it is finished.
In peace it shall never end.

My help is in the mountain

Where I take myself to heal
The earthly wounds
That people give to me.
I find a rock with sun on it
And a stream where the water runs gentle
And the trees which one by one
give me company.
So must I stay for a long time
Until I have grown from the rock
And the stream is running through me
And I cannot tell myself from one tall tree.
Then I know that nothing touches me
Nor makes me run away.
My help is in the mountain
That I take away with me.

From War Cry on a Prayer Feather, 1979

Earth teach me stillness

As the grasses are stilled with light.
Earth teach me suffering
As old stones suffer with memory.
Earth teach me humility
As blossoms are humble with beginning.
Earth teach me caring
As the mother who secures her young.
Earth teach me courage
As the tree which stands all alone.
Earth teach me limitation
As the ant who crawls on the ground.
Earth teach me freedom
As the eagle who soars in the sky.
Earth teach me resignation
As the leaves which die in the fall.
Earth teach me regeneration
As the seed which rises in spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself
As melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness
As dry fields weep with rain.

from Hollering Sun, 1972