"Sojourns in the Parallel World": Poems for the Solstice

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 (2014)

SOJOURNS IN THE PARALLEL WORLD

We live our lives of human passions,

cruelties, dreams, concepts,

crimes and the exercise of virtue

in, and beside, a world 

devoid of our preoccupations, free

from apprehension—though affected,

certainly, by our actions.

 A world parallel to our own though overlapping.

We call it “Nature”; only reluctantly

admitting ourselves to be “Nature” too.

Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,

our self-concerns, when we drift for a minute,

an hour even, of pure (almost pure)

response to that insouciant life:

cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing

pilgrimage of water, vast stillness

of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,

animal voices, mineral hum, wind

conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering

of fire to coal—then something tethered

in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch

of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.

No one discovers

just where we’ve been, when we’re caught up again

into our own sphere (where we must

return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)

—but we have changed, a little.

by Denise Levertov

2014:  A HYMN

 Our prophets lead our people on

    fast to the promised land,

and where we pass, the green of grass

    turns to bare brown sand.

So high our cities' towers soar

    above the deep-set fault,

immense they rise into the skies,

    pillars of cloud and salt.

Impatient with the patient day,

    we rush to gain tomorrow,

Our ships that plough the seas with nets

    leave a long and empty furrow.

Our quick inventions spend our time

    faster and ever faster, 

while kind and unforgiving Earth

    endures our brief disaster.

For all we do is nothing to

    Her bright eons of days.

So let my dark tune turn and end

    as all song should, in praise.

And in the hope of wisdom yet,

    I'll sing the hymn that praises

Earth's greater life that gives us life,

    the grace that still amazes.

Ursula K. Leguin 

(from Late in the Day: Poems 2010 -2014)

 

PRAISE THE DAY

 

The colors and taste of it!

Praise the light, dappled among amber leaves,

the light framed by an open window.

And all things blue!

Praise, praise summer skies,

their endless exaltation,

and all waters reflecting blue,

and a blue-eyed cat, sleeping on the windowsill.

Oh, praise the light, and all windows!

 

Praise the sand between my feet:

Praise the Song the ocean sings

today and forever, with or without me to listen.

Praise these ears, praise all eyes,

 

praise to the pearl of sweat

on your brown arm,

Praise, praise to you!

And praise to the woman

who regards me from mirrors.

Praise to the dark eyed waitress,

the bus driver, the cashier,

a child in a yellow sweater

running among the trees.

 

Praise them all!

All those I've loved,

the ones gone, the ones that remain -

the multitudes I've walked among

the company that's shaped me:

Praise, Praise the Day!

 

Lauren Raine (1998)

Found Poetry

 

The Barbed Heart

Takes Refuge

In a hidden Grove

of Palos Verdes

Trees

(2009)

Mary Oliver & My Laptop Remind Me

 

I know, you never intended to be in this world.

But you're in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately. 

I mean, belonging to it.

There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

Bless the feet that take you to and fro.

Bless the eyes and the listening ears.

Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.

Bless touching.

You could live a hundred years, it's happened.

Or not. 

 

I am speaking from the fortunate platform of many years,

none of which, I think, I ever wasted.

Do you need a prod?

Do you need a little darkness to get you going?

Let me be as urgent as a knife, then, and remind you of Keats,

so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,

he had a lifetime.

~Mary Oliver, from Blue Horses 

 

 

 

David Whyte, and Storms...........

All this petty worry

while the great cloak

of the sky grows dark

and intense

round every living thing.

What is precious

inside us does not

care to be known

by the mind

in ways that diminish

its presence.

David Whyte 

Already too many years ago I went to visit a friend who was living in Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, in that humid climate I developed  asthma, probably from mold,  and couldn't stay in her home, but had to stay in a hotel in order to visit her.  There, in a mostly deserted resort hotel by the ocean I encountered a Tropical Storm.   Today, for some reason, I'm again remembering that friend, Felicia, and that day of the Storm I met in Puerto Rico.  

My life in Tucson is mostly placid, that is, except for Monsoon Season, when the great (and beloved)  Monsoon clouds come rolling in, announcing themselves with thunder, lightning, and a downpour that swiftly comes and goes, leaving a refreshed and cooled desert. 

But the Tropics.  The tropics, it seems to me, are where life  is at its most vibrant, virulent, creative, predatory, colorful, and destructive. Life in the tropics teems.   It's impossible to be in the midst of that potency of life and not become intoxicated with it. Intoxicated or terrified, take your choice. In retrospect, experiences can be viewed as  kind of like meals. How did they TASTE? Did they fill, is the fragrance still with you?  Were they spicy, sweet,  or bitter, making one slow, dull, digestive?  The fragrance of Puerto Rico, like the taste of Bali, will always still be with me. 

                                    "The world is not with us enough - oh taste and see" 

The poet Denise Levertov wrote, and it's too often true.  How often do we stop, in the midst of this Feast of life, to really "taste and see"? 

On the Day of the Storm, I remember I had a room with a balcony at the top of a hotel  in Rincon. I arrived  off season, and it was already largely deserted, and especially with the prospect of a tropical storm advancing.  I  felt like a character from Stephen King’s “The Shining”, with a whole hotel to myself at night, empty bars filled with the ghosts of bands and booze and laughter and sex.  An empty blue pool with palm frond chairs upturned.  And wind, wind, wind moving leaves of palm trees,  the wet, heavy tropical air, wind blowing over wicker tables. 

As the sun went down, the storm advanced across the dark ocean, and the lights went out.  There were no candles, or even an attendant to ask about candles.  Just me on the second floor, looking out at the vastness of an endarkened ocean. 

So, there I sat in the state of Storm, with nothing to do but witness.

I do not think I shall ever forget that intense heavy silence, or the sounds of the koki frogs.  A woman called for her dog in Spanish,  “Limon, Limon!” as I watched the sudden illumination of lightning as it revealed an advancing mass of  clouds, rolling in from the distant ocean.  I was awed by the truth of that moment, our lives, our plans, our hopes and imaginations of "what is" - existing in the brief moments between  storms.

 

 

I know that sometimes

your body is hard like a stone

on a path that storms break over,

embedded deeply

into that something that you think is you,

and you will not move

while the voice all around

tears the air

and fills the sky with jagged light.

But sometimes unawares

those sounds seem to descend

as if kneeling down into you

and you listen strangely caught

as the terrible voice

moving closer

halts,

and in the silence

now arriving

whispers

Get up, I depend on you utterly.

Everything you need

you had 

the moment before

you were born.

~ David Whyte ~

(Where Many Rivers Meet)

~ David Whyte ~

(Where Many Rivers Meet)

'The End of the Known World "

 

In 2014 I made a  blog for my friend Nigelle, also known as Zoe, who walked the Camino de Santiago at the age of 68. I greatly admire her journey, and so often wish I had also walked the Camino, taken that Pilgrimage myself.  

The scallop shell is the symbol of the Camino, pointing the way all along the long pilgrimage route.   After achieving the great Cathedral at  Compostella, many pilgrims then continue on to Finisterre, which in English means  "Lands End", where they finish their pilgrimage before the vastness of the Atlantic ocean.   For some reason this beloved poem by David Whyte has haunted me today.  I think, sometimes, the ancient Sanskrit philosophers were right when they wrote that at old age, one should leave behind the old life and pursuits, and enter into Pilgrimage, physically or spiritually (however one wishes to look at it).  Toward the Compostella of your dreams that calls to you.  

Or, perhaps, to go just a bit farther at last, to Finisterre..........."Because now, you would find a different way to tread, and because, through it all, part of you could still walk on,  no matter how........."

FINISTERRE

The road in the end taking the path the sun had taken,
into the western sea, and the moon rising behind you
as you stood where ground turned to ocean: no way
to your future now

but the way your shadow could take,
walking before you across water,

going where shadows go,

no way to make sense of a world that wouldn't let you pass
except to call an end to the way you had come,
to take out each frayed letter you brought
and light their illumined corners, and to read
them as they drifted through the western light;
to empty your bags;
to sort this and to leave that;

to promise what you needed to promise all along
and to abandon the shoes that had brought you here
right at the water's edge,

not because you had given up
but because now, you would find a different way to tread,
and because, through it all,
part of you could still walk on,
no matter how, over the waves.”

― David Whyte

 

**Photos by Zoe D'Ay