Posts Tagged ‘Poems from the Lodge’

Moon Woman

Moon that you are to me,
You call the tides
Of my heart and mind,
Racing the stream
Of my emotions
Over the river bed
Of my longing
Into the falling rain
Of my tears.

You are the light
In the darkness
Of my aloneness,
Moon woman –
The lantern
For the night
Of my dreams
Shines on me.

Walking in your light
I travel old paths
Hearing the owls calling
And the trees speaking to me.
The ancient ones
Are shades around me,
And you and I
Are together.

Moments

There are some moments we never forget however long we live. And that time with you is one of them.

We walked out of the hotel as dusk was gently shrouding the trees and the bay road, and we walked onto the pier stretching from Berekeley into San Francisco Bay. You were carrying an Indian blanket you treasured, and I couldn’t think why we would need it on the pier, except perhaps against the wind. You led me to the furthest point and we watched the deep water move under the pilings, and you bubbled with memories of childhood times spent out here in the bay.

Slowly we walked back, stopping to look at the lights across the water, and to ask some youths with their rods hung over the Pier, if they had caught anything for their supper.

Then, further on as I was leaning on the rails watching the night, you threw the blanket around me, with you under it, clinging to me from behind. And I can still feel it — the holy feeling in my chest and throat — the sudden wetness in my eyes with the salty water burning. Your breasts and body were warm against me. But stronger even than that was the sensation, the awareness, of your delight. You were a child, brimming with pleasure at how you had wrapped us together in this exquisite intimacy; shut away from the world in our own private place. You were a woman with glad sparkling eyes holding me so tenderly, telling me how precious I am to you.

And so I love you very much my tender Californian woman, my wonderful bright eyed child. I love you for giving me such treasures that I carry with me always, and only unwrap to look upon in special moments when I can bear your absence.

Loving You

These are the long hours of your night,
When I, alone in daylight,
Walk paths unaccompanied, and miss you.
No hand to hold, no face to kiss,
No warm presence near me.
Somewhere ahead of you in time I live my life;
A capsule travelling without you through space,
Waiting for you to catch up
Or perhaps for me to fly high enough
So the world turns under me
And when I land we are together.

Loving Touch

I was touched on that day,
By the love that
Is at the heart of things,
And yet we only glimpse it
Occasionally at great moments.
And being touched
I wanted it to flow
From my fingers to others.
I felt that presence,
The love that spans all life;
And feeling it
Knew it as something
Sacred and beautiful.
I wanted, so much
To share it with the others.
And I asked it,
As one might a loving friend,
How that could be.
And gently the presence
Told me the secret.
I must learn, it said,
To wash a person’s feet.
And as it said this
Understanding filled me.
For that loving presence
Didnt simply mean
To take a flannel,
And a piece of soap,
To wash the dirt from
Someones feet.
No — it meant to be a servant.
To be a simple servant of life.

Time Space and Love

Longings reach across the spaces of lives.
Living deep within the unseen places of us,
Calling through time,
Pacing through the avenue of human faces,
Looking, searching for a response.

Longing is older than you or I.
And yet it needs us to know itself.
The restless passing of years,
The insistence we try to understand.
Is that you? Is that me?

I hear it calling from before time –
I need you!
Where are you?
And then it conjures us
Out of itself
So we can meet.

Isnt that a strange magic?
A magic that spreads signs and wonders
As it moves toward its longings.
Did you do that?
Did I?

No – it is enchantment
Sprinkling stardust at its passing.
Did you see that falling star?
Can you hear that voice singing?
Do you feel what I feel?
Have you dreamt that too?

The sweet mystery is love.
Calling from before time,
Falling upon us poor mortals
And enchanting us
With it wonders.

Be gentle with us
Fragile creatures.

Tides

Love is never far away.
Sometimes it just seems to be
Like one of those beautiful creatures
That blends into the background.
Have you ever seen that?
Looking at trees and grass
And there is nothing there.
Then an ear flicks and
Suddenly there is a whole animal,
Sleek with the lines of its natural life,
Three dimensional.

Where did it come from?
Where was it hiding?

Love is just such a lovely animal,
Only apparent when it is moved,
And you move it against
The background of my life.
As still as it might have been
Now you can see it.

Be quiet and
Let it come to you slowly
As you hold out your hand.

For it is shy.
Like all wild things
It is urged by the tides of its nature.
Let your tide flow to it.
Speak softly to it,
For the sound of your voice,
The webs your words form
Call to that nature in it,
And it loves you.

This Infant Grave

Loving you,
My woman,
Is my birth.
And at that beginning
I was torn from love.
The umbilical of life
Was cut –
Leaving me abandoned
And dying.

So here and now,
With you and I,
I try to mend that breach
And meet the threat of death.
The cut cord
You joined once more
Through unfailing love.
And I feel life once more
Pour into what was dying.

And there’s the pain.
For as life enters,
The babe once left to perish
Now feels its terror
As it comes alive.
And dearest woman,
Understand that this
Is not an injury
But a blessing.

Know too, my love,
That this man,
Who loves you
As a newborn child might,
Has never bared
This buried horror
To another.
The trust you felt I lacked
Is there
In that exposure.

No other woman
Have I dared this with.
None have I bonded with
So deep that it laid bare
This infant grave
With all its grief.
No one offered me the balm
To heal the wound
That I might
Learn to love
Completely.

The Selkie – (Mermaid)

My love has been calling out
To you, across the miles and
Ages, like the mournful
Siren’s Song…

Secretly disturbing you
Through all these years.
I know you felt me
Trying to find you
To make you return to me.

But you were unsure of
The insistent echo that lingered
Beneath the shadows of your
Deepest dreams, just beyond your reach…

Now, as I stand here
Alone and naked, before you
Finally it makes sense.

I shed my selkie’s coat for you,
Lover, I beg you take it from me
And lock it away, so at last
We can be together
As it was meant to be.

KGW

The Plain Woman

It is difficult to remember how we met.
But I recall we walked along
One soft and warm afternoon.
Slowly we became arm in arm,
And then, quite naturally
Our arms were around each other,
And there was that delicious
Warmth between us
That I am sure
Only men and women know
Who begin to discover each other.
So it was with us.
She, a plain woman,
With nothing on the surface
To show this wonder of
Tender feelings that flowed
To me from her.
Even her aging body
Advertised nought of
Who I was discovering her to be.
For now, in our closeness
Breathless pleasure glowed.
And arriving home,
Walking indoors,
Suddenly we were face to face,
Such tender loving lips on mine.
So much adoring passion
As we pressed close.
For there, under the surface
Of her plainness I discovered
A beautiful woman,
Young and eager in her embraces.
Mature and deep in the way
She took me into her
Sweet and hungry body.
And so we merged,
And I found myself lying
In the garden of her love;
A garden grown and tended
Over long years,
Full of flowers and secret places.
Such was my love
Of the plain woman.

That Man

I stood upon the hilltop of my life
And looked across the years,
Seeing the enormity of it,
And feeling the impact of
The journeys made,
The relationships navigated,
Often on rough seas.
I knew again the great dreams
I had tried to live,
The heartbreak of failure
And the wonder of success.
The vision, like a sudden
And massive blast of
Profound music,
Moved in me once more
Everything I had
Ever been or felt.
I wept with the enormity
Of what was revealed;
For I had not known
I had
Been that man.

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Tony Crisp

Posts Tagged ‘Poems from the Lodge’