Beauty, the Brave, the Exemplary

We’ve had, against all expectations, a cool, wet Spring here in Columbia’s District.

The roses are going mad, imagining that they live in England (esp. the David Austen ones) rather than in a place that’s honestly too hot, too made of clay, and too buggy for roses. It’s maybe the best year for roses that I’ve ever seen (including those roses with my favorite name: Cuisse de Nymphe, or, in English, the Inner Thigh of an Excited Nymph) and I’m almost sorry that I don’t grown any roses.

It’s also an amazing May for peonies. If you live in a part of the world where they don’t grow peonies, then, I am, truly very, very sorry for you, because peonies are kind of the uber-flower, the archetypical flower, the apogee of flowers, even more than roses are, because peonies are more ruffled, and have no thorns and are, well, peonies. And, also because Mary Oliver wrote, I aver, a better poem about peonies than has ever been written about roses, although, feel free to prove me wrong in comments.

********************

Peonies

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open–
pools of lace,
white and pink–
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities–
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again–
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?

*********

Go on, you. You go on and be wild and perfect for a moment before you are nothing, forever. Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, now.

Picture found here.

Tuesday Poetry Blogging

The Unknown Flute

~ Kabir

I know the sound of the ecstatic flute
but I don’t know whose flute it is.

A lamp burns and has neither wick nor oil.

A lily pad blossoms and is not attached to the bottom.

When one flower opens, ordinarily dozens open.

The moon bird’s head is filled with nothing but thoughts of the moon.
and when the next rain will come is all that the rain bird considers

Who is it we spend our entire life loving?

~translated by Robert Bly, found in Risking Everything, 110 Poems of Love and Revelation, edited by Roger Housden.

Picture found here.

Sleepers Awake

The bad news: having to work later than usual and being caught in rush hour traffic.

The good news: sun breaking through thunderheads over the Potomac and Sleepers Awake on the radio.

Sleeping, of course, reminds me of Rumi:

And, an open door, of course, reminds me of this:

What stirred your memories today?

Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains PotPourri

* It’s been a cool Spring here in the magical MidAtlantic. It was sunny for our Beltane celebration, but still cool enough that the fire felt good. Shortly after we finished up, the rain came and put out the fire. It rained all night and, by morning, everything was that indescribable shade of emerald that simply bellows, “Alive!” Things change so quickly in Spring. Literata has a great discussion at her blog about Beltane, desire, relationship, and change.

* My latest article — on magical ethics, and, yes, I do have some — is out in the current issue of Witches & Pagans. You can subscribe and buy back issues here.

* Julian Meade writes:

Today I was plowing faithfully through a horticultural tome when I came to a chapter which began thus, “If you would have a really successful garden, it behooves you –”
The hell it does. My garden is one place in the world where I am not beehoved.

~ from The Unbeehoved Gardener in The Writer in the Garden, edited by Jane Garmey.

I love that. We all need at least one place, either a garden or a room of our own, where we are not even the least little bit beehoved. Where’s your unbeehoven spot?

* Today is supposed to be Pagan Coming Out Day. I know that this isn’t going to make me popular, but, here goes: I’m all for Pagan Coming Out Day and for Pagans coming out on any day — except.

Except that for some people, it’s still not safe. People do still lose their jobs (and medical benefits, etc.), their clients, their children, their homes, etc. when they come out as Pagans.

I admit to getting a bit chaffed by people, often professional Pagans who don’t have “day jobs,” and/or children, who self-righteously announce how easy it is for them to be out and how they’ve done it for years. (I’m glad for them and I hope that someday, due, in part to their efforts, being Pagan won’t be any more remarkable than being Jewish, or Hindu, or Catholic, or generic Christian.) It’s just that there’s a whiff of condescension about those pronouncements and a lack of understanding of what other Pagans have to deal with. (In some cases, there’s even a bit of unacknowledged privilege: people without children can often be unaware of what parents face; urban Pagans can be fail to understand what it’s like to live in the rural South.) And, I admit that it makes me even a bit more out-of-sorts when those same folks conduct their latest “please donate for my medical expenses” or “please contribute to my travel fees for a festival” campaign. Yes, we all need help sometimes and we should all help each other as much as we can. But some of us have funds to donate because we have day jobs that require us to stay in the Broom Closet while you’re busy being an “out” Pagan. I’m willing to honor your role and the trail that you’ve blazed; in return, I’d like you to honor my path and my contributions. For anyone coming out today, I’m sending you bright blessings and a wish for acceptance.

* Here’s a poem for you:

You May Leave a Memory, Or You Can be Feted by Crows

~ Dick Allen

Three years, Huang Gongwang
worked on his famous handscroll,
Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains.

As he put successive applications of ink to paper
over the “one burst of creation,” his original design,
it is said he often sang like a tree frog
and danced on his old bare feet.

One day, he adds one hemp fiber stroke,
the next a moss dot.

What patience he had,
like a cat who comes back season after season to a mole’s tunnel.

Honors may go to others.
Riches may go to others.
Huang Gongwang has one great job to do.

And he sings like a tree frog,
and he dances on old bare feet.

That’s how I want to live, to write, to garden, to be.

* What’s the best change that you’ve made in your life since Samhein?

Picture found here.

Sunday Ballet Blogging

I am the old women on the folding chairs. I am the young maidens, watching and longing for their turn. I am the young women with strong backs, making the maypole glad.

I AM the wind which breathes upon the sea,
I am the wave of the ocean,
I am the murmur of the billows,
I am the ox of the seven combats,
I am the vulture upon the rocks,
I am a beam of the sun,
I am the fairest of plants,
I am a wild boar in valour,
I am a salmon in the water,
I am a lake in the plain,
I am a word of science,
I am the point of the lance in battle,
I am the God who creates the fire in the head.

Who is it who throws light into the meeting on the mountain?
Who announces the ages of the moon?
Who teaches the place where couches the sun?

I am the stag of seven tines;
I am the wide flood on the plain;
I am the wind across deep waters.

I am the sun’s bright tear;
I am the hawk descending from the cliff;
I am the beauty of the flowers.

I am the battle-keening spear;
I am the red-tusked boar;
I am the roaring raging sea.

I am the sea’s seventh wave;
I am the salmon in the pool;
I am the mountain full of poetry.

I am the god who sets the brain afire with swirling smoke.
To whom but I are known the whispers of the unhewn stone?

~ Author unknown

Shipwreck

Earth Day Poetry Blogging

Leeks

~ Abbot Cutler.

Two sticks in drifted snow
mark the trench where I laid the leeks
in cool dirt in October.
Now I dig down through old
frozen crust to damp dark hay
to the thick grey green leaves
of the leeks and pull them
from the piled earth and
shake dirt from their white
hairy roots. They come up
like creatures from under
the ocean. In the half-cold,
half-light the odor of earth
gone all these long months
wraps around me, and it is as if
these leeks have come from
a world where there are great
pleasures of the body, where
the mind grows smaller, where
libraries mold in the dark,
where worms in purple and brown
rule the streets, and the corridors
of power are moist and rich
in a way that radio voices
can’t conceive of, and the talk
is of the thick trunk
of seasons, the nose
of rootedness, the eye
that works its way through,
hair that feels its way,
the skull that follows,
the toad of desire, the beetle
of bone density, the grub
of grief, the larva of longing,
the moon coming up and the quiet
at the end of February.

I pick up the pile of leeks
and carry them to the kitchen.
I wash them clean. I chop them
on the old board. I cook them
in oil and salt. I taste
their great sweetness. I remember
that the earth will hum into spring.

Picture found here.

Tuesday Poetry Blogging

Start Close In

Practical Magic

Some people don’t believe in magic. But how could I not believe in magic? As Mary Oliver says:

How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn’s beautiful body
is sure to be there.

May it be so for you.