Posts Tagged ‘Poems from the Lodge’

In Awe

Dear Two Armed Form
What do we do with all this?

We bear it with tears and laughter,
With wonder.
We fly in it,
Dive deep,
Come up gasping for more.

We burst open,
And all the fragments of who we were
Fly away and might even
Come together again
In a new way.
And we dance
Or we fall about
With pain and laughter.

We stand mystified.
Perhaps we fall on our knees
In awe.

All at once,
Separately,
Together,
Holding hands,
Lost and found.

If you live in America then it expresses your feelings and experiences of the culture and politics you are immersed in. What is America for you, a land of opportunity and freedom, or a land of subjugation? It will help to define what it is by using Talking As.

If the dreamer does not live in America and is not American: Could associate with opportunity; material wealth; dreams to do with success, whether in love or business; recognition; extremes. See: abroad.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What do you associate with America?

What is my view or experience of it?

What are the events and setting of the dream saying about my relationship with America?

If I take out the word America from the dream and write down what my feelings are, what would I say?

It might help if you use Processing Dreams.

The Word

I was there when he
Spoke his first words.
He slept in the room
Across the landing,
With his parents.
So the door to my bedroom
Was opposite.
And he liked to
Come in each morning
To see what I was doing —
Maybe to sit with me
And look at the photos
Flitting on my computer screen.

But on this morning
He was being led past my door
By his mum, holding his hand.
And as he was reluctantly passing
He called my name,
For the first time.
I can’t remember ever hearing
My name sounds like that.
It was thrilling to hear
His child voice.

It wasn’t just a sound,
Nor just my name,
But a call from his
Whole being to reach me.
It came out of his
Unbroken body.
No, more than that —
I experienced
The soul of his intent
Touching me.

Your Face

One day you told me —
I think these are the words —
That if you find a doorway
Out of life,
You’ll take it
And with a smile be gone.
Yet in the night
When lost in love together,
I looked upon your face
Shining and radiant,
And saw no hope to die,
You were exuberant with life.
Enveloping me in your joy,
The world-weary face was gone.
The load you carried
Of others lives
Had dropped away.
The conflict of will removed.
In those moments
What I saw gladdened me
With your delight in life.
For you, unhindered
By the shoulds
That must be done,
Were shining through.
Then came the vision
Of one love, one light.

Woman

Woman,
I opened a door in you;
And looking through
I saw the mothers
Images etched upon
The corridors of your body.
I witnessed the seeds
Of all they lived
Planted in you
As your own seeds,
And as the seeds of
All you can be.
Strangely you have not
Known that door –
Except in sleep.
And when I peered
Beyond it I found boxes there,
Full of history and treasures;
Boxes you might never
Break open except
In the extremes of need,
Or the excitation of
Greatness or wonder.
And you are so full
Of these things,
Lying quiescent beneath
The familiar lines
Of your face,
And the wonderful
Deception of who you are.
And who you
Know yourself to be.

Wind to My Wings

I want you to know how wonderful it is to fly.
Did you know that I have only just learned?
My wings grew some years ago,
And the great feathers have hardened
As I have lifted into the air,
Soared and climbed on winds of wonder,
And airy rivers of expanding mind.
But only now have I opened my wings wide
And swept with laughter and tears
Over the edge of my world and across the ocean.
There, far below and receding,
I see the security of my home,
Of work, and loved people I am kin with.
And here, in the wind and sky,
Above the Ocean of the Unknown,
Across the sea of Possibilities,
My wings carry me.
Your words are with me as the wind lifting me.
Your love is the current of air carrying me beyond myself.

Wild Thing

Wild bird on the wing,
Where does your spirit fly?
Lift on your great wings
No longer bound by the weight
Of your body and its duties.
Be mine wild bird.
Let my love
Set you free.
So soar,
For they are calling you,
As you are calling them.
The beauty in you,
The voice of your wonder,
The drum of your heart
Is their music.
And their song is the wind
Flowing over feathers,
Lifting and carrying.
They sing to you as you sing to them.
Hear it and respond.
Stand on the hill and let your being
Flow to them.
Open your wings and fly.

Why Do I Love You?

Because there were days before I even met you when I missed you.

Have you ever felt like that? Gripped by a longing you cannot place anywhere? Looking for a face you cannot find; and a hand that fits yours, and someone who wants you as much as you want them?

And I know we wanted each other.

Because when we first met we danced. That was such joy, to move together like that; to tell our story to each other through movement, through eyes meeting, and through open mouthed pleasure. So much clearer than words. So much in a glance, or in a quick touch and tumbled bodies, and the silent standing and knowing.

Because wonders happened. We have a real Christmas time of wonders. And I hear people say, “Things like that have never happened to me.” Then I feel the blessings run through us, as expanses of wonders open to my gaze, and I want to drop some of them into peoples lives who they have, “never happened to.”

I like to think such stardust is infectious. So I sprinkle it around me. I drop some into everything I do, smiling as I wonder if the person who eats the bread or reads the story will know where the bubbling, smiling stream in them came from.

I especially love to trickle it through my eyes to the children I pass. They are so quick to catch it.

Because we played, we flew, we exulted in each other. What I remember is being then in the first day of things, in the garden of innocence, where guilt, or sorrow, time or distance hadn’t ever invaded. I never saw them with us in that place, and we never invited them in. People don’t live in that new day of things — not many– so you can’t tell them. Well, you can try, but something tells me they will think you are lying or covering up what they call “the truth”.

Because of the splendour of loving like that. Because of the totality of it. I was made whole. It was shocking, wonderful, even painful at times to be so everything, so all at once. That was how we came to be married, because one and one don’t make two in that condition — they make one.

And there was the ending of things, and the beginning of things, all at the same time. Life is like that at the peak — Alpha and Omega together. Kaligrowlf. And the ripples of that are still moving across the waters of our lives. Endings and beginnings.

Because yesterday was a lifetime away. There was a cusp, maybe like you see on the moon, where there is a distinct line, one side of which is light and the other night.

So it was with me. Before that cusp you were only in my life as intuitions, as disembodied voices. I knew I was waiting, but I didn’t know how long, or even if you would come. Then suddenly I crossed the line of the cusp and you were with me, as you were with me today. Warm, real, laughing, troubled, everything.

So yesterday is a lifetime away, and it is recognised how difficult it is to remember past lives.

Because you and I dream dreams, and people them with our creations. We build and form things in that place people call imagination. But the way they use the word they make it sound like an unreal pastime. But our dreams bring things to life, make dwellings and doorways, possibilities and futures. Haven’t we had a child and built a dwelling?

Because we love each other. Yes that is a strange word — love. What does it mean? Does it mean we feel emotions for each other? Well, yes! But it’s not just that. Does it mean we want to share with each other, to talk, to make love, tell secrets and share confidences, give meaningful things, share a bath, call, give time to? Yes, yes, but there’s more.

There are strange things like the fact that however far away you are, I feel as if you are near. Like the completely irrational sense I have that we are sharing life, though thousands of miles separate us. That love which in me lives like a beacon of your existence, a positioning star guiding us both to some harbour I now trust we shall reach yet have never seen.

My darling – I will meet you there – as I promised I would meet you here.

That is love.

Walk Gently With My Heart

I hold in my hands and heart
Something so precious
Yet in some ways so common
One might take no more
Notice of it
Than a sparrow flying by.
And here it is again,
Another morning
When I wake from sleep
Feeling myself
In a great forest,
Walking amongst
The ancient trees,
Hearing no sound
And sensing the movement
Of no living thing
Except myself
And the trees.
So I stand
In that quiet,
Tendering the precious thing,
Anxious that some
Clumsy move
Arising from my
Ineptness,
Might spill
From out my heart and hand
What is most dear.
So I walk gently
Among the silent trees.

The Wonderful Game

Well, sweet heart, here we are again, today.
How many times have we arrived here?
How many different ways have we lived today?
Twenty six thousand times for me.
How many for you?
And what grand drama
Are we part of in our todays?
How many more to live through?
I wonder sometimes about a key.
I’m sure I have it somewhere,
As I have often opened a door
To the beginning of things,
When it was the first day – every day,
The day of Creation,
When I and all the creatures
Are known to each other
In that glorious dance.

And the song,
So much to sing
And I, starting so frail.
But that is part of my song,
The pain and strength in frailty.
The struggle, like any runt,
To get enough,
To stand amongst those
Heavier and stronger.
Or even to grow with less leaves
Held to the sun.

Runts have big eyes though,
And look in the shadows
Where events have pushed them,
Seeing, if they dare, strange dreams,
Grand visions of forces moving human life.
Like the invisible wind,
Powers push and guide us,
While many, hands full of grasping,
Rush to the next hill to stand upon,
Or beat their drum to draw attention,
And fail to look up, or down, or in.

Therefore I sing of grand vistas,
Of unacknowledged shadows
Haunting people and damaging children.
I sing the song of ancestors,
Of the hidden treasures
Deep in the ocean of sleep,
Or even there in the shallows
Of daily experience,
If only we would reach for them.

But the grand chorus is of Life.
Not the life of work or human love.
I sing the formless mystery behind,
Above, within, outside;
Forever not the same;
Always laughingly moving
Even as it touches us
It hides and bids us chase.
And I, loving it,
Am ever finding and failing
In that wonderful game.

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Tony Crisp

Posts Tagged ‘Poems from the Lodge’