Thin Fire
Thin fire, cracking like ice
I go down, down deep
Wondering how it would be to die
Sometimes I feel ready for such peace as
The world will never give
The peace must, of necessity,
Come from within
From the Fire
From the Moon
From the purr of my cat
From the snore of my dog
Posted in Poetry, Winter Solstice | Leave a Comment »
Watering the lawn, I had an experience with a beautiful hummingbird. It was all about power and grace.
Droplets reflected still bright and whitish light, not quite late afternoon. Hydrangea, white phlox, lantana, chamomile, delphinium, monarda…..all thirsty and soaking up sacred water. Suddenly there came a buzzing around me, like a giant dragonfly. I heard her first, before I saw her. There she was, green iridescence with a bit of dark surrounding, humming and levitating near my head, investigating perhaps…? She was drawn to the water. In and out of the spray she danced, intermittently tasting nectar from the plants I was watering…white phlox she loved, testing each tiny blossom…so I kept the water spray hovering just below her. She danced in the water, then tasted nectar, danced in the water…a miraculous dance of sweetness, play and love. She was teaching me, and the tears welled up in the corners of my eyes. Hydrangea, phlox, cardinal flower….she tested each, then came back to the water, over and over again. Enough water had pooled on the large leaf of a volunteer rudbeckia in full bloom, all golden and brown….she lay in it, so light, with the leaf holding her, and took her bath. I could feel her delight, with the water spray, and many nectars surrounding her.
In a magical moment, she came to see who I was, who was there holding the hose…she came so close to me, and stayed, longer than her instinct could tell her was safe, so divinely close to my face…I thought she would perch on my shoulder, like the hummingbird who did perch on me in my parent’s backyard when I was 13 years old. I learned how to freeze into total stillness when approached, to erase fear in a small bird.
But she chose to zip and dive again into the mist of water and light, and I couldn’t blame her…it was a perfect moment of suspended experience….stillness and grace. After several minutes…yes, minutes…not seconds…she buzzed suddenly straight up against the sky and across the yard to one of the overhanging lilac trees, and I saw then, she met up with her mate! The two of them flew in tandem spirals and circles all around the yard, then she zipped back over to me, to the water…as if to say “catch ya later!”…up to my face, hovering for an infinite moment….and then flew once more, lightning speed, to her mate who waited in the lilac tree. I felt overwhelmed and blessed by sacred life, by this tiny teacher in her iridescent light.
Posted in Hummingbirds, Musings | Leave a Comment »
Fireflies
Sitting outside in the sun,
I see the inside…
The place of warmth, I am thinking….
Not on the edge of the woods
But moving…dancing… in the firefly.
It is not structured movement at all
but angular and dissonant like shooting stars,
like the Perseid meteor shower that lasts all night
with disappearing sharp edges of light, those tiny streaks…
They are such sudden little accidents.
When we find a mate
Is it an accident?
Like the firefly, do we turn on and off in our dance of
heady love, too blind and
too greedy for recognition?
We like to think in absolutes.
So, this warmth at the edge of the woods,
becomes self-contained…
a dim, tiny lantern in our memory
As small as that momentary star streak, so quick and so
Powerful…
We then believe we remember
A moment of lasting love.
Posted in Herbal Wisdom, Poetry, Stars | Leave a Comment »
Te Kohanga, Birthplace of the Gods…a Winter Solstice natural dolmen circle. Back home in Wisconsin was a sweltering drought. New Zealand in winter….time to delve deep, reflect, measure the stars, do some writing, some re-thinking, some heart connecting.
It was winter, right? Time to run through the rain, write in the journal for hours, obsess on keeping the wood stove going, look up at the Milky Way. Here at Te Kohanga, you can feel the birth of the South Island…the guardianship of the ancient ones. This is one of the Waitaha sacred places.
Went ‘Down Under’ with Nate, my friend and travel companion. Nate’s a pretty mean cook. And great fun to travel around with. We thought about co-creating a tea house business on the South Island, but something shifted over the solstice….no worries.
The Fourth of July in New Zealand….we walked the Cape Foulwind track and hung out on the West Coast for a few days. Have you ever seen a real astrolabe? I had not, until walking along an unpopulated remote track on the West Coast, and found an astrolabe in a box in the middle of nowhere. \
Actually, this is where it was…
Astrolabe…..
astrolabe ( s tr -l b )
An ancient instrument used widely in medieval times by navigators and astronomers to determine latitude, longitude, and time of day. The device employed a disk with 360 degrees marked on its circumference. Users took readings from an indicator that pivoted around the center of the suspended device like the hand of a clock. The astrolabe was replaced by the sextant in the 18th century.
|
And here it is:
Posted in Art, Flower of Life, Metatron's Cube, New Zealand, Stars, Vegan, Waitaha, Winter Solstice | 1 Comment »
Bloodroot : Sanguinaria Candensis
King Root
Red Root
Tetterwort
Indian Paint
Red Puccoon
Paucon
Coon Root
Snakebite
Sweet Slumber
A masculine plant, ruled by the planet Mars, a plant of Fire…
From “Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs” ~ Bloodroot is carried or worn to draw love. It is also carried to avert evil spells and negativity. Place near doorways and windowsills so the home will be protected. The darkest red roots are considered to be the best, and are known as “king roots” or “he roots.”
I like that!
Now, from M. Grieve ~
“The rootstock is thick, round and fleshy, slightly curved at ends, and contains an orange-red juice, and is about 1 to 4 inches long, with orange-red rootlets. When dried it breaks with a short sharp fracture, little smell, taste bitter acrid and persistent, powdered root causes sneezing and irritation of the nose. The root is collected in the Autumn, after leaves die down; it must be stored in a dry place or it quickly deteriorates.
The root has long been used by the American Indians as a dye for their bodies and clothes and has been used successfully by American and French dyers.”
Bloodroot is listed as a poison. It contains the opium alkaloid protopine. The rhizome contains red resin and an abundance of starch.
Don’t try eating it!
But in knowledgeable hands, it is an emetic, cathartic expectorant and emmenagogue. Used for dyspepsia, asthma, bronchitis and croup. And many other things.
Maybe best just plant it by your door!m
Posted in Herbal Wisdom | Leave a Comment »
Yahoo! Spring Sheets on the Line!
Clothesline Song
Don’t feel bad
if you got nothing
done today….
No, don’t feel bad
You breathed,
You walked,
You slept and you dreamed.
You contemplated
your existence
in Not-doing
yes, Not-doing.
You are alive!
You touched the Sun,
You touched the Moon
You touched the Sky
and the Stars above!
You are Exalted!
You are Alive!
You are One….
So don’t feel bad
No, don’t feel bad
You are Sacred
You are Loved.
Posted in Musings, Poetry | 1 Comment »
I am a poem
The poem is life, like
the pink and black marsh waters,
the Munch-like black silhouettes of trees,
the father and son covered in black balaclava,
the thin, sleek black feather I found against the moss.
The coronal hole
is the space we entered through
when we came to the earth
to seed.
These black waters, and
this dandelion head
its blowing, how it blouses out into freefall
to that thick green moss runner housing black feathers, bird droppings in groups of threes and sevens.
Those stars we look up and catch a glimpse of, when we are
too lazy to sleep out under them—-
Oh, we like our beds now,
our earth-like houses
with four walls and a ceiling
a bare bulb on a wire, and then we
read until we can’t keep our eyes open.
We fall asleep.
The next day is a poem.
You are the poem.
We are the poetry.
We are woven in amongst the shiny new stars,
the blessed stars we’ve only just noticed
while walking at night
at New Moon.
The rest of the time we are sleeping.
We walk in poetry, steep in poetry,
and sleep through poetry.
When we record our dreams
in a small red leather book,
it’s a little keyhole experience…
an “aha” moment, if we are lucky.
But you know how quickly it goes?
How quickly it goes away!
It disappears before we go to the bathroom
And fix our coffee.
Posted in Poetry, Stars | Leave a Comment »
astrolabe [ˈæstrəˌleɪb]