Day three of conjuring daily poems for November.
Conjuring the Self to Center in an Anxious Time
by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Dance the thousand anxious angels of your thoughts
onto the head of a silver pin.
Unclench, and listen to the pin drop,
and the rush of a thousand thousand wings
rising around you like snow geese
lifting from the surface of the lake.
A single feather floats into your lap.
Let it settle into the open bowl of your fingers.
Watch it rise and fall with your breath.
On this breath, you are the chill winter over snowy fields.
On this breath, you are the orange eye of the ember.
On this breath, you are the wild cry of the wandering goose.
On this breath, you are the scent of cinnamon.
On this breath, you are smoke rising.
On this breath, you are a small bird singing in the dawn.
On this breath, you are an angel dancing on the head of a pin.
On this breath, you are nothing.
And on this breath,
you are the web of everything that ever was,
everything that is, and everything
that ever will be.
Gratitude List:
- Finding center
- So many beloveds looking out for each other
- Squirrels
- Lighting candles to hold the anxiety
- Cleansing the toxic energies.
May we walk in Beauty!
“Awake, my dear. Be kind to your sleeping heart. Take it out into the vast fields of light and let it breathe.” —Hafiz
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“Mercy is the willingness to enter into the chaos of another.” —James Keenan
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“The heavens are sweeping us along in a cyclone of stars.” —Teilhard de Chardin
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“Sometimes I hear it talking. The light of the sunflower was one language, but there are others more audible. Once, in the redwood forest, I heard a beat, something like a drum or heart coming from. the ground and trees and wind. That underground current stirred a kind of knowing inside me, a kinship and longing, a dream barely remembered that disappeared back to the body. Another time, there was the booming voice of an ocean storm thundering from far out at sea, telling about what lived in the distance, about the rough water that would arrive, wave after wave revealing the disturbance at center.
Tonight I walk. I am watching the sky. I think of the people who came before me and how they knew the placement of stars in the sky, watched the moving sun long and hard enough to witness how a certain angle of light touched a stone only once a year. Without written records, they knew the gods of every night, the small, fine details of the world around them and of immensity above them.
Walking, I can almost hear the redwoods beating. And the oceans are above me here, rolling clouds, heavy and dark, considering snow. On the dry, red road, I pass the place of the sunflower, that dark and secret location where creation took place. I wonder if it will return this summer, if it will multiply and move up to the other stand of flowers in a territorial struggle.
It’s winter and there is smoke from the fires. The square, lighted windows of houses are fogging over. It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another. Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.” —Linda Hogan
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Expose yourself to your deepest fear. After that, you are free.” —Jim Morrison
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Joseph Campbell: “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek.”
Mockingbird Chronicles 