Wednesday, November 2, 2011

The Great Communion ~ Why We Exist

Cosmic Nest
 
From the Hubble Telescope News Pages:
"Called a light echo, the expanding illumination of a dusty cloud around the star has been revealing remarkable structures ever since the star suddenly brightened for several weeks in early 2002." This Light Echo is around a red supergiant star named V838. The Red Giants are the oldest stars in the universe, and from them, stardust made its way to Earth in the form of minerals that are essential to human life, vital contents of our bodies, potassium, calcium and iron. They also give us gold.



Cosmic Child

Worldflesh— 
My bones
Bones of the old
Red Stars!



Alla Renée Bozarth
Stars in Your Bones,
North Star Press of St. Cloud 1990
and Moving to the Edge of the World,
iUniverse 2000.

The Bosom of Heaven

                                      
 
Why We Exist
 
Before the Beginning
there was only the
One

And the One
said, “I’m bored.
And lonesome.

“I think I’ll break
into a googolplex
of pieces to infinity
and give Myself amnesia
in some of those pieces
and then see what happens!”

And that is how
the Universe came
to be —

This sweet excitement,
the divine breaking
that allows
a lonesome God
to relate, relate,
relate to an infinity
of diverse beings,
each of whom is trying
to remember something
terribly important
about itself.

Some succeed better
than others. 
And quicker.

Sometimes this leaves
us howling in agonies
of forgetfulness and
separation.

But sometimes we remember,
from tadpoles to comets,
and we wag our tails.
   
     Alla Renée Bozarth 
Accidental Wisdom  
iUniverse 2003


Belonging~  Stars in Your Bones
                             
The small plot of ground
on which you were born
cannot be expected
to stay forever
the same.
Earth changes,
and home
becomes different
places.

You took flesh
from clay
but the clay
did not come
from just one
place.

To feel alive,
important, and safe,
know your own waters
and hills, but know
more.

You have stars
in your bones
and oceans
in blood.

You have opposing
terrain in each eye.

You belong to the land
and sky of your first cry,
you belong to infinity.
                  
                                                                                                   Alla Renée Bozarth
From the audiotapes, Dance for Me When I Die and Reading Out Loud to God {under the title, “Stars in Your Bones,” from which the book of poems and paintings was later named}, Alla Renée Bozarth, Wisdom House, copyright 1990;  Stars in Your Bones: Emerging Signposts on Our Spiritual Journeys, Alla Bozarth, Julia Barkley and Terri Hawthorne, North Star Press of St. Cloud 1990 {out of print}; This Mortal Marriage: Poems of Love, Lament and Praise, Alla Renée Bozarth, iUniverse, copyright 2003. All rights reserved. 

The poem "Belonging" was put to music along with William Stafford's poem, "Ask Me," by St. Paul, Minnesota composer, Steve Heitzeg, commissioned for a concert performed in February 2000 by the people of Grand Forks, North Dakota for a ceremony of healing following the destruction and rebuilding of their town after the catastrophic Red River flood of 1997:

What the River Says  [the album]

Composed:         1999
Duration: 15 min
Instrumentation: SATB chorus, piano and percussion
Text:
Alla Renee Bozarth, Steve Heitzeg, William Stafford


Commissioned:  The Grand Forks Master Chorale through a Continental Harmony Grant            

First Performance:

Grand Forks Master Chorale; James Rodde, conductor, Grand Forks, ND, 27 February 2000

"Belonging" was presented as a reading in Aurora Chorus's winter concert, "Stars In Your Bones," December 2007, in Portland, Oregon, titled after a beautiful phrase from this poem and the book by the same name. Late in 2016, composer and conductor of Aurora Chorus, Joan Szymko requested and was granted permission to compose music for "Belonging," and on May 21, 2017, she directed the premiere of her musical composition for piano, strings and voices of "Belonging," as sung by Aurora Chorus in a concert called, "A Place Where You Belong." The music was stunning! The pianist replicated the Big Bang of the universe being born from all the keys of the piano by sliding her elbow across the keyboard~ and it went forward from that breathtaking beginning. Here is part of the program:

"Our 25th Anniversary concert season soars to a close with two world premieres! Renowned composers Carol Barnett and Joan Szymko have created works that honor and celebrate the circle of love and life that is our Aurora Chorus community.

"Aurora commissioned renowned composer Carol Barnett to set poetry by Wendell Berry. "The Larger Circle" is an excerpt from Berry's "Healing." Joan Szymko adds to the legacy of music she has lovingly composed for Aurora Chorus by returning to the poetry of Alla Bozarth. "Belonging" (aka "Stars in Your Bones") will feature string quartet accompaniment. Aurora looks back to our rich past and balances these exciting new works with some of the most compelling music and words from our 25 years of being a place where you belong ~ a choral community where women find their voice And a place where joy and grief and tears of hope all flow together in the concert hall."

It remains an indescribable honor that my poetry was coupled with the sacred words of the great poet of the land and its people, Wendell Berry. This year, the composer who created music for Berry's "Healing" excerpt has put my poem, "Dance then to Everything" to music. The acoustic brilliance that Carol Barnett has added to the poem invites, no, it compels the soul if not the body to dance in all kinds of ways. The rhythms that Carol draws from the text astounded me. Thank you, sister artists, musician/composers Joan Szymko and Carol Barnett.

Here is a performance of "Dance then to Everything" in concert with the Kirkland Choral Society and conductor Glenn Gregg. 

https://vimeo.com/273111660?fbclid=IwAR0zwMcci2NVUHZs9HrcsRB7c0IcD9phhQiMvjBDj4K7KOC-97nOhLah3QQ

I don't have a way to share the  music of "Belonging" with you but here is a way to listen to Joan Szymko's musical composition of my poem, "Call"~

https://aurorachorus.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/web-sample-Call.mp3


Joan Szymko, Renowned composer and Aurora Chorus Conductor 




 Renowned Composer, Carol Barnett


Carol Barnett with Glenn Gregg

of the Kirkland Choral Society after the May 19, 2018 Concert



Dance Then To Everything          


Music is everywhere
music is in sound and
music is in silence

Therefore I dance
to silence I dance
to tears I dance
to laughter I dance
to groans and moans

I dance to Rachmaninoff
and Bach, to Beethoven
and Dylan, to Carole King
and Marvin Gay and to everything
composed, harmonious and played

Dance then to birdsong and waterfall,
to the spring scented forest and garden,
to snow and the rain, to river and ocean,
with desert or mountain, I dance

For the dancing mind can dance
forward or backward in time and space also,
indeed to outer and inner dimensions uncommonly known

I dance with my eyes,
I dance with one hand,
I dance clapping,
I dance with one foot
or one shoulder, my hair
dances with wind

I dance to poetry while hearing it,
I dance to poetry while reading it
aloud to the tree for whom I wrote it

As I dance around the lovely thing
with my hand or arm encircling

As Rumi danced his grief
and finally his joy around
the cool, smooth, sacred stone 
until he warmed it with longing~

As Rumi danced around the pillar of loss
when his beloved teacher and friend
called Shams, The Sun, had died—

He danced to call back the Light 
from the belly of darkness
that had swallowed the sky,
as now the Sufi dance after him

For Dance is the Song of the Body,
and Songs are the Dance of the Voice~
as both Move, Utter, Outer the Soul

I dance to the gospels
I dance to the psalms
I dance to a friend
I dance mostly and always
to God

Don’t let the limitations
of your body deter you,
dance with your mind,
dance with your soul
across great distances
of space and time
and dance on your own

Feel free to
Dance all by yourself
so no one will know
but you and the Beloved,
in whatever form you
experience the Beloved,
and let the Beloved 
              dance with You                
  
                    Alla Renée Bozarth   ~ From the poetry collection in progress,
The Frequencies of Sound, copyright © 2011 by Alla Renée Bozarth, All rights reserved. http://allabozarthwordsandimages.blogspot.com/p/all-saints-day-and-i-begin.html

Going to Church

Lovely stone structures
that enshrine the God-given
talent of the human mind—
hand-built, soul-infused
works that say Thanks
in the direction of heaven
above—gorgeous glass
jewels of deep light,
carvings of wood
and marble,
icons of gold . . .

Here we gather
for respite and
renewal,
consecrate our cares,
find shelter in beauty,
intercede together
and for one another.

I go outside to the Source,
embrace the ancient
pear tree in the orchard,
lean against standing stones,
take sanctuary from the night,
drink in the colors
of sky and wild meadows,
bathe myself in gold
sunlight, bless and give
Thanks all around,
touch, with my hand or eye,
heaven within each presence.
We, living here, with each kind,
unself-conscious act, offering
innocent, grateful awareness,
attend God’s own service.

 Alla Renée Bozarth   ~ From the poetry collection in progress,
The Frequencies of Sound, copyright © 2011 by Alla Renée Bozarth, All rights reserved. 

Sainte-Chapelle, Paris

Image may contain: indoor

Heartland

All of Earth is holy ground,
and beneath our feet throbs
the heartbeat of our loving
Mother with such sweet power
that the stones themselves laugh
for joy, they sing, they leap
from mountain fires, they float
in sculpting rivers, by sun and moon
light revealing shadows, reflecting
the cracked and jagged, the broken,
smoothed, and soothed, the surprising,
the countless shapes of every creature’s
deep, divinely dreamed and lively, most
sacred, secret heart.

Alla Renée Bozarth
Diamonds in a Stony Field
©2016


Click on the image below or any of the images to enlarge. 
You can view all the images on this post as a slide show by clicking on them
from the Enlarged mode. Click on the darkest outer border to return here.
A Creature’s Prayer for True Community

O Mysterious One,
You who longed us
into reality, guide us now
into its fullest and best.

O Lonely One,
You who desired us
into our being, bless us now
with kindly kinship—

Let there be between us
and growing among us
that trusting spirit
of true cooperation,
whose creative power springs from
mutual good will,
reciprocal expression
and convivial intention—

and manifests in that luminous outcome
that is Your Own dream coming true. Amen!

Alla Renée Bozarth 

From The Frequency of Light, copyright 2014.


The Red Mountain of Creation, in Hebrew, El Shaddai, meaning, 
among other interpretations, the divine breasts of Mother God.

Here depicted as "Sophia," this 2016 painting by Minnesota artist Jeanne Wiger:





                                                         Invocation to Sophia

All you powers
All holies,
All things come alive,
All spirits of play,
All ancient sources

Of wisdom and song,
All creatures’
Choirs invoke you

God of Living Things
God of words alive
In our flesh--

Sophia/Wisdom
God, Hokmah, Bride
of the Beloved, Balance,
Power of Breath, Neshamah,
Life Breath of Soul, Holy
Wisdom, the Way of Knowing
Based on Love, Sophia—

Today we call you down:
Touch us with tongues
That leap into flame. 
Today we call you up:
Circle and center
Among us,
Teach us
The Dance—

Teach us the magic
Deep Reality that
Renews our spirits
Transforming the face
Of the Earth.

Come up from within us
Come out from among us
Poets of the dance
Of colors and clay
Of cloth and food
Of animal joy
And labor of bones—

All graces
All dreams
All somber
And sillinesses
We offer--

The Wisdom of Poetry,
The Playmate of God!

     Alla Renée Bozarth

This is My Body—
Praying for Earth, Prayers from the Heart
Revised Edition ©2016


As the Hebrew words for the Divine (Feminine), El, and breasts, Shaddai, from the plural form, Shadayim, may refer to the Divine Breasts, while in another interpretation the mountain of  Hebrew or Greek feminine Wisdom words, Hokmah and Sophia, is the pregnant womb of Mother God.  Breast and womb are both associated with the transformational fire-flowing mountain, especially the volcano, as an inverted chalice or caldron of the Divine Mother in ancient iconography.







Time for a visit from the Divine Feminine~ Adam reaches for the blessing of Mother God ~ Michelangelo take note, with apologies and Thanks!




 "Reconciliation" by Josefina de Vasconcellos

Coventry Cathedral Courtyard, Coventry, England
 

In Their Own Image~ Grandma and Grandpa God, Tears of Joy God
Today someone sent me a portrait of God the Grumpy Geezer.
I did not think much of it, except, “Poor Guy.”
Looks like God’s kids don’t call
and the pension check doesn’t
cover much of anything.
He’d probably have road rage behind the wheel.
I used to just dismiss the fellow,
no matter how much good press he gets from
God-knows-who, given the way he’s said to treat
his friends, and foes need not apply.
He’s been shown too long and too much as a big bad version
of humanity’s worst traits: immature, petty, spiteful, judgmental,
sulking, mean-spirited and downright violent, not to mention
prone to child abuse. God is Love is Right, but this is no portrait
of the Real God I know and love.
That wonderful Jewish Rabbi Yeshua who showed so much
divine transparency has been treated badly, too, made out
to be the Palestine Pansy when he’s really so direct it’s daunting.
“Judge not or you’ll be judged,” he said, but most people
ignore that and judge away.
I’m taking a turn of conscience today. I feel so bad for the persona 
in this postcard picture of him on my kitchen counter that I’ve decided to spend
some time cheering him up. First, I’d bake him some cookies, which is
really something because I’m no baker. Better make him a cherry crisp.
I can do that! I’ll whip up my special whipped cream with
vanilla and orange extracts to go with it and watch him purr
when he smells it fresh from the oven and gets a look at
the beautiful pie cherry color, then takes his first bite of it
with a big dollop of vanilla orange whipped cream.
After that he’ll feel relaxed, and I’ll start telling him jokes~
the penguin joke is good, but maybe he’s heard it too often.
Lena and Ole are always winners.
Then I’ll give him a blanket and show him the chaise
in the spring garden so he can take a nap under
the cherry tree and inhale lilacs and roses, and drift off
to the lullaby of water falling over rocks and birdsongs.
I’ll tell the birds to keep their serenade melodious and
gentle, not as raucous as it sometimes gets around here. . . .
I’ll bet he hasn’t had a time like this in millennia.
After awhile I’ll wake him up with a big loud kiss
on his furrowed forehead. I’ll ask him to tell me his dreams. . . .
I’ll listen with all my heart. Then I’ll ask how the Beautiful
Lady I know as God is. . . .
I do just that, and God’s husband says, “She cries tears of joy
and empathy every day, which doesn’t look or sound happy,
but she says they’re way past happiness into feelings
she can only express in a river of love.
“She says there is all the anguish of the world in them,
getting bathed and balmed, all the things she can’t prevent
because of the way the universe is made with every creature
freely becoming itself, everything mixed in and tumbling,
but we love it all the more.
“She tells me I need to step back and let people hear her
firm but gentler voice. They seem to relate better to her.
She is breathtakingly beautiful, that’s a fact.
“She reminds me that fire is our firstborn child, the stuff
we used for the stars, that water came next, and air, then
the dark matter of space, and finally things cooled and
settled here and there, in space pockets of places,
to make the most interesting forms, some of them
teeming with life, like yours.
“Of course, I know all this. We did it together and are
still doing it,  and anyway, we don’t really look like this,
but you humans seem to relate best to those you understand,
so you make us over into your own image in your minds, and
that’s how we come out in art.
“Even this business of “We” is strictly human.
You, We and I are the same here in God Town.
This whole conversation is just for your benefit, Child,
but I’m enjoying it, too. You had a good point.
“We went along with your ancestors and overdid that
God the Father image, and look what happened.
Men behaving badly, thinking they’re being ‘godly,’
lording it over everything and referring to me as ‘Lord,’
too. Do they think I’m an Englishman and a member
of the Peerage?
“Now there’s a rowdy bunch.
What goes on in the House of Lords
would never pass for Paradise.
“Well, Honey, Thanks for the great afternoon.
I’d better go see what your Mama God wants me to do
for her. Maybe we’ll show up together in a beautiful flower
in your garden tomorrow, and see if We/I/You can do
something to help that sick silk tree of yours. It’s already
bloomed for you for 30 years past its life expectancy.
“But you and the tree love and appreciate each other
so it sticks around, even diseased and wounded,
forgetting its suffering for love and letting your
grateful tears of joy water its roots
as deep as deep can be.
“Thanks for shedding them.
Mama God loves you for it.
So do I.
“I’m not really such a bad guy.
I really am full of love.
That’s all I am, really,
but love is big as Infinity
and has so many forms,
also to Infinity.
“I hope humans in general really, really get that,
and inspired young or old painters keep on painting me
as other things besides themselves or others on a bad day
or in a sappy mood.
“Here in the garden with you, sharing my dreams
with a good listener, I’m feeling some tears of joy
of my own coming on. Maybe it’ll rain soon.
“Grandma God, now she’s the real gardener.
She says, ‘Gramps, you’re an old fraud pretending
not to understand about feelings sometimes.
When you let them come,
your tears make beautiful rainbows.’ ”
                                      Alla Renée Bozarth
                         The Frequencies of Sound, copyright 2012.
              http://allabozarthwordsandimages.blogspot.com/
 

Christmas Tree Nebula
 


These Are the Realms of Becoming 

Thanks to Casaundra Williams Bennett for naming the image,
           “the Great Cosmic Pouch.”          

The Great Cosmic Pouch holds
and carries and is forevering the worlds,
while we within them are mere time fetuses
forming ourselves to be born.

        Alla Renée Bozarth 

The Frequency of Light
Copyright 2013


Spacetime~ A Womb with a View

We are time fetuses,
wrapped in the sphere of mortal beings,
crowded among others also here,
unaware of the More around us,
the reality Beyond, the Greater Life
that awaits us~~ as the fetus is unaware
of older relatives, history, color, landscape,
the patterns of geese in flight, mangoes, movies,
music, geometry, logical positivism, the smell of grass
and the ocean, the sensations of surfing or flying an airplane,
grief, laughter, its mother or father as human beings (or hummingbirds
or trees or microbes or elephants or moons or stars)~~
though, as an embryo in a woman’s womb sometimes, without understanding
language, responds warmly to the sound of its father’s voice
crooning to it, or reading Winnie the Pooh or Shakespeare,
or as it may recognize its sister’s poke in the ribs and shouts of greeting,
and distinguish between its mother’s indigestion and elation~~
so we have fleeting moments of feeling, suggesting Something More
beyond our knowing, and that is when souls in the Great Communion
are attending us. To say that after we die from our present identities
we will be taken up in a cloud, met by old and new friends, taught the ropes
of Paradise~~ Well, how could a fetus know what to expect,
the Wonder of it, for which there is no translatable description?
Still, Eternity is always pregnant with us, always loving us,
preparing surprises beyond our imagining for us,
and meanwhile feeding us all the means of health and happiness
that it can, and letting us know that we are already part of it,
that throughout our mortal lives, every moment and all the time,
we belong, are known, and are necessary
to something more than ourselves.

        Alla Renée Bozarth
The Frequency of Light
          Copyright 2013



Time Party

Life is a party.
People arrive
and are introduced.
Things happen.
Conversations begin.
Future contact is planned.
Alliances form.
Some people dance.
Some are too shy
to engage.
Some mingle with everyone.
Some take refuge in one
or two intimate encounters.
Some tune out with toxic
substances, publicly partaking
in slow suicide.
Some play the fool.
Some take care of others.
Outside, weather happens.
The world continues
with its own silence
and noise. Children are born
and begin their own party.
Later, some of them
will come to this one.
Inside, the party goes on.
Some people
have a good time.
Some people
have a bad time.
Some leave early.
Some wait for the dawn.
Sooner or later,
everyone goes home.

         Alla Renée Bozarth
The Frequencies of Sound 
          Copyright 2013



Time Gives

Time gives itself so 
that we have it 
to use well

Create lives and
shape destinies

Develop our talents
and use our skills
for the greater good

Grow into our true selves,
learn to be kind, learn to be
still, learn to move gracefully

Whatever remains unfinished
that cannot be finished by others
will be translated into some other
form in time in this universe or
another

Whatever unhealed wounds
cannot be seared or closed
gently can be healed in another
life or eternity

Whatever injury or illness
cannot be mended or cured
will be mended or cured
by oblivion or Heaven

Time heals all, 
at least when it ends.

            Alla Renée Bozarth
  My Blessed Misfortunes
             Copyright 2013   
              
Time and I

It is four days past Christmas
and I feel finally ready for the Fourth of July,
or maybe merely the middle of June
approaching a midsummer dream.

How am I to keep from despair, knowing
as I do that I will never catch up again?
I am the child left behind empty-handed,
and time is the older child running ahead
on the beach with the kite.

Perhaps I shall sit down and watch,
mouth open in awe at the beauty of it,
the colors, how they change and gleam
as the wind dances them upward and the sun
glistens in play . . . And my eyes kiss all of them,
these three, time and the wind and the sun,
and I am happy to be here, seeing everything
there is to see in the world right now.

And suddenly, I am the kite in the scene,
and I am perfectly happy, joyous, knowing
that I am now carried where I could not plan
or decree, and the design as it happens
perfectly suits me. And the singing and laughing
burst out of me as tears sting on my cheeks
in the salt air, and I do not care if I shall ever
be on time for anything less important again.

                 Alla Renée Bozarth
 
     Diamonds in a Stony Field 
                  Copyright 2013

                                                              
Biodance
 
Everything bears the property of love.

     Sitting on a rock in the Salmon River
            watching first leaves fall . . . 
 
From sunhigh mountain treetops 
upstream the rapids carry 
old branches to the sea, 
their leaves landlocked already.

Why so soon?
Not soon at all—
your time is complete.
And so is mine.

You rest in sunlight
before transforming
into earth and air. 

You dissolve your leafy form
and recompose into a thousand bodies.

Nothing ever ends.
Everything is always beginning.

Shall I find myself tomorrow
shining in a waterdrop
on a piece of moss
on the bark of a tree
that once was you?

Green into burntred,
old leaf, our biodance began
millennia ago, but today
I am glad to see you clearly
for the first time
with just these eyes,
my changing
partner!

Your bronze body turns
to powder
with a crack
beneath my foot.

Part of you has already become me.
You are on your new way.
You will be back.
And so will I.
So will I..       





                                                                     Alla Renée Bozarth

                                                             

From Stars in Your Bones: Emerging Signposts on Our Spiritual Journeys,

Alla Bozarth, Julia Barkley and Terri Hawthorne, North Star Press of St. Cloud 19990; and This Mortal Marriage: Poems of Love, Lament and Praise, Alla Renée Bozarth, iUniverse 2003


Click on any image to enlarge it or view a slide show of all of them on this post, enlarged.


North face of Mt. St. Helens, with wasteland desert where forests once were, 
around the heart-shaped Spirit Lake in the center.









The Interior Landscape
 
Desert
Beloved—
in You I am lost,
desolate, not knowing
where to focus, and no place to hide—
then slowly my eyes adjust
to Your subtle shapes,
Your toned-down colors
and see You as both
rest and the struggle
to learn how to endure
You—

I will not live in You
through lengths of days
but I will visit You
fearlessly in times of
wilderness emptying—
Then we are one.


 

Forest

Beloved—
oh, deep heart of myself,
the streams of sunlight to warm the soul,
the shadow places to hide in,
the wet, mossy places to rest in,
the emerald places, the jade places,
the teal places, the brown places
and places blackened with ash,
oh, home of the Great Mother
where sanctuary lives—
where the wild gardens of God thrive



I trade the breath of life abundantly with Your trees
and the holy ground of Your vegetation—
So we are one.


Ocean

Beloved—
oh, Great Seas, Grandmothers
of all species, we human beings
in all our colors and voices
travel across Your waters
guided by stars
and play on Your shores—

From You we all come,
we Earthlings— we bless You,
and we are one.


River

Beloved—
flowing, always
flowing on, sight seer
and life giver, singing
Your song, forever,
we are one.
The Salmon River, flowing from a Mt. Hood Glacier.
Mountains

Beloved—
great high places
that bring up
what nourishes us
from the deep places,
that awaken and frighten us
and remind us to make room,
that teach us to be respectful,
generous with places to fix the eye,
Your great hard, solid mass a mere
window to Heaven—

You inspire everything in me
to lift and to lighten and be
unafraid for all to see—
I grow and we become one.
Mount Hood, in itself and in my soul.
Grasslands

Beloved—
the living room of the soul,
the place of home, of crops
that feed the masses,
of flowers that feed the senses,
and the senses are open doorways
to the soul—
where we are forever one.

Alla Renée Bozarth
The Map of Longing in Quartet © 2016



Scroll through this link page to see "Bare Heart" and "Heartland" as well.
Graphic art by Susan Lind-Kanne
with selected poems by Alla Renée Bozarth 
at Bear Blessings Soul Cards.



A Creature’s Prayer for True Community



O Mysterious One,

You who longed us

into reality, guide us now

into its fullest and best.

O Lonely One,

You who desired us

into our being, bless us now

with kindly kinship—



  Let there be between us

  and growing among us

  that trusting spirit

  of true cooperation,

  whose creative power springs from

  mutual good will,

  reciprocal expression

  and convivial intention—

    and manifests in that luminous outcome
    that is Your Own dream coming true. Amen!

                 Alla Renée Bozarth

From The Frequency of Light, copyright 2014.



Bear’s Twilight Prayer

Just now, among the nuthatches
and crows, I went out to pray.
Among the wildflowers with small deer
and their mothers I prayed.

With injured trees and moles
and gray rabbits I prayed.

With purple kale and white cosmos
holding still under first stars
in the sapphire sky I prayed.

With red leaves of liquid amber
and the fallen leaves of golden walnut
I prayed.  With the beautiful corpses
of summer I prayed.  With waking coyote
and motors of cars returning
weary humans to their evening homes
I prayed.  With Great Mystery I yearned
for their well-being, I yearned
for their happiness.

An old bear crying in the wilderness,
furry prophet manged among the wildflowers,
bare patches of pink skin shining golden
in the gloaming light, blending in
with the last brave roses in bud,
and thorny as their tired brown branches.
Here I kneel and roll and sleep.
And breathing in the crisp air
of crimson autumn, I pray for Creation.
I pray for Creator.  And my prayer
is naming Them by my own secret names
of gratefulness.  My prayer is holding their own
true sacred names in silent empty space.
My prayer is enjoying their company.
My prayer is being glad to be one of them.

               Alla Renée Bozarth                   
From Quartet, copyright 2011.

Toklot Bear

Below~ Spiral Galaxy from the Hubble Space Camera.

*    *    *    *    *






She Loves It All 

when god was a girl she loved
to play dress up with hydrogen
and nitrogen, she wiggled her hips
and blew kisses from her voluptuous
lips and wiggled her fingers to toss the stars~
she juggled them and tied ribbons on them
when she wanted to create new dimensions,
to open all the directions she hurled them like a salad
that no one told her not to play with, so she giggled
and played until all the ingredients stuck on the ceiling of sky,
but then she’d coax them back into action and let them decide
where to go and how far and when or if to land, and



she would go far out, way, way out to play

with her dolls, the gaseous, luminous balls of delight,

hold them in her cool hands for a millennial minute

to turn them into planets and things of that sort,

with what we call substance, solid stuff



but there was precious little of that compared

to the zillions of light years and miles of raw energy

she stores in those closets disguised as nothingness,

dark matter if it’s just out there and going nowhere

(we think), and dark energy if it seems to push

the many verses ever outward from each other~

for epic cosmic poems gone lyrical and operatic wild



there is always music as silence and vice versa
going on in the movement between beings

and yes, she likes those comets, never lost
her taste for new things, plays with galaxies and constellations
of beautiful toys and wears them like jewelry in living colors,
lots of necklaces and rings, baubles on Christmas trees, then turns them
into mirrors of herself, better than hot melted many-colored glass spinning
in the fire~ though sometimes she is shy and covers them with night invisible, 
that brilliant dark country that covers the map of heaven, and she does it
the better to show her curls, her graceful arms, her reach into fire for love,
her laughter-made comets~ and sometimes she braids their tails

and sometimes she says, you are simply gorgeous,
delicious as roses on a birthday cake, scrumptious
as a coarse lemon poppy seed wedding cake with
thick passion fruit frosting, with gold leaves and silver
bangles and pearls, with marionberries and cream

and she then gets distracted and remembers it’s lunch time
and she cooks up something new to serve variously
here and there around the place~ and to her, the future
is not in front or ahead or out there but inside, always
inside everything, where the past is pretending to govern
what we call the present but she calls Beloved, and where
nothing yet imagined is just about to happen

next week we’ll talk about when god was a mountain,
then how all the kinds of rocks became her feet

until she wanted to run again with a bird’s eye view
and became a baby giraffe
and later, about how she tried on the whole zoo,
and then settled down for several millennia
as an entire evergreen forest, yes,
the ancient sequoias, the redwoods mingling
with blue spruce, and then she became an etude,
a fantasie-impromptu, a symphony, a garland
of roses, a garden of petunias and pansies
and marigolds which she served in salads
to strengthen the blood of her mammals,
and dandelions, which doubled as tonic and
oh~ maybe she’d like to be a mermaid
and swim all the seas, yes, that would
be fine, she says

and about then god the old woman decides it’s time
to figure out what to do about all the beings who suffer
in pain, sorrow, confusion, anger or fear, which she knows
from being all of them, and asks us please to pray for her . . .     

                               Alla Renée Bozarth
              The Frequencies of Sound, copyright 2013.


Images are from the Internet.