Inner Voice

"At the still point of the turning world.
Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point,

there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement.

And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered.

Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline.

Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance."

TS Eliot, 'Burnt Norton'

I love the 'Inner Voice" prompt from OSI this week. One way I pay attention to my own 'inner voice' is by noticing what catches my attention in a certain way -- a scene that causes me to draw in my breath, a poem that lifts off the page. Experiences that catch the soul's attention, and stimulates an inner response, like a wind chime to a breeze....

My offering this week is not my own writing, but a favorite poem excerpt by TS Eliot, paired with a photo ('haiga') I titled, "Still Point'. This image is of one of my 'singing trees', -- a birch that treated me to seasons of birds, light, and leaf shadows that danced on my kitchen table. One foggy, wintry day, as the sun began to break through, illuminating the ice on the branches & leftover leaves (that 'forgot' to fall), I recorded this scene.

Saving Luna

This film by the husband - wife film makers Mike Parfit and Suzanne Chisholm is currently at the Cannes Film Festival.  This is an extraordinary story of a killer whale unmistakably reaching out to humans for companionship and...?, as well as the passionate responses it provoked from the people it encountered.  The film has received an impressive number of awards already, is now poised for its next breakthrough.  

You can view a clip here:  http://www.savingluna.com/

You are also encouraged to look at the Cannes Film Festival site, and leave any comments about the film, or your interest in seeing it: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Dispatch-From-Cannes.html

OSI - Prompt #59: Live Water

spilling down the canyon

through beavers' dam, tumbling down

over rocks and stones

into quiet pools

where trout linger, huddled 'neath

birch roots, pouring out

in this gentle creek

where I sit, cooling my feet

listening to its song

OSI - Prompt #58: Listening

Listen

Clouds float by below

behind me, baby's giggles,

like water out of

a spring, carry me forward,

my son and wife expecting 

OSI Prompt #55: Farewell

This week, my daughter and I have been working to clean out the beloved house we called home for 31 years.  We made the difficult decision to prepare it for sale.   So this week's prompt is timely. 

Scrubbing windows in

this empty winter house,

memories echo here,

music, laughter, tears -

let the blessed light in!

Bare old plum tree

through the bedroom window,

split so deep now -- 

will you bloom again?

Closing my eyes, I see

your spring blossoms, white petals

pirouetting down,

chickadees nesting in the hole

under your precarious branch --

the one my grandfather trimmed

and patched so many years ago 

Late summer, mouth and

baskets full of yellow plums,

then copper and gold leaves

litter the ground, stars appear

like Christmas lights in your branches

One moonlit snowy 

night, two fawns, two does appear; 

ears upright, eyes bright, 

standing beneath your branches -

I held my breath!

OSI - Prompt #54: Fork in the Road

The good road, and the

road of difficulties cross;

that place is holy

Holy is the place

we begin again in the

broken heart of now

Now stepping on an

unknown path, seeking only

to be whole again

Do you sometimes encounter ideas that hit you with such force that they immediately penetrate your psyche and become part of the fabric of how you see the world? Perhaps even become a kind of spiritual talisman that you return to again and again? This week's prompt brought to mind two such ideas for me. The first was revealed to me in a prayer spoken by the Ogala Sioux medicine man, Black Elk, in Black Elk Speaks, by John Neihardt (paraphrased in the first stanza.) The idea that when we come to a place in our lives where we are faced with this kind of soul-compelling choice -- that it is a holy place --has stayed with me all my life. The second talismanic idea attached itself to this one, and came when I learned that the words 'whole', 'healing', and 'holy' all share a common Sanscrit root.

OSI Prompt 53: Circles

Happy 1st Anniversary OSI! Here is an older piece, written nearly 14 years ago, the night before the birth of my first grandchild. My daughter had already named her, Sequoia. I presented this poem to her on her 13th birthday last summer, as part of a 'coming of age' collection of writings that my daughter put together for her.

To Sequoia, under the Full Moon

Standing now

as I did then, window-framed,

body carved in moonlight,

soul lit with wonder --

Then, at the edge of my girlhood,

unspoken, unseen, unimagined possibility

beginning to dawn within.

Full moon floods the sky tonight,

blanketing now

child of my womb --

womb-full,

ripe now, ready to begin

a new circle.

Now, on the eve

of my grand-mothering -- this too

unknown, unimagined possibility,

this grandmother body

still encircling (not enclosing) my own babe,

her womb full of potentiality,

reality, already named (before the dawn)

Sequoia ('close to God')...

I am woman,

now under the full moon

womb full of wonder,

grandmother to be.