She recreates the world
one breath at a time.
Silently I wonder
at its beauty.
Beneath the boughs
snowflakes fall.
Each an archipelago
of sacred mystery.
I take in the magic:
slow sips of nectar
lift my heart,
fill me with her symphony.
artwork by Nicholas Roerich
Sing into the deep December darkness.
Sing into your light.
Walk, one footstep at a time,
into your heart.
Feel the pulsing beat.
Know that you are alive.
Smile because it’s a gift.
Skip because deep down you
still are a child.
Look up, see the moon, the stars,
the forest, the mountains, and the ocean.
Thank them deeply: they are a part of you.
Embrace all of creation, every being,
every human, and animal.
Soothe your caustic tongue.
Walk deeper and past, out of anger.
Feel the love, the deep appreciation,
the belonging of one and all.
Some days
Some days are better than others. They just are. The sun shines in a blue sky from dawn, and you wake up feeling rested. Or at least partially–perhaps an illusion of rest–after a night of nursing and responding even subconsciously to baby coos, babbles, hand claps, and of course cries. Some days you follow your toes. Some days you follow your nose. Some days you might follow your breath, in that one-pointed awareness that enlivens your being. It keeps you in the present. It allows you to check in with your emotions, it kindles your deepest thoughts.
Most days you need to eat, and you cook. You cook three meals a day, plus snacks. You cook for your baby. You cook for you and your husband. All meals need to be quick nowadays. You make scrambled eggs with kale for breakfast, so baby eats the whites as well as the yolks (as well as the greens). You strive to eat protein for lunch, and you get creative for dinner, meaning you think up dinners that have a prep time of under twenty minutes, leaving the rest to the oven, the grill, etc.
Some days you do laundry. Some days you do yoga. Some days you re-organize the house, water the plants, give yourself a much-needed shower. Some days you bake banana coconut chocolate-chip cookies. When it’s ready, as in bubbly and deliciously sour, you pour your kombucha batch into brown glass bottles that don’t let sunlight in. You add a slice of ginger, a mint leaf or two here, a sprig of rosemary, a raspberry or two there to give it special flavors.
Some days you are more tired than others. You try to nap and can’t fall asleep. Then, the second you plunge into sweet rest, a piercing shriek from your baby startles you onto your toes. Some days you cry at the drop of a hat. You just do. Some days you are impatient and super emotional. When your husband speaks to you in his soft voice, you thunder back: “what? I can’t hear you!! And that’s the mildest reaction, you recount.
On all days you are up by seven, minus one, (or sometimes two hours). You get your baby after she calls you. You nurse and change her. Your heart is brightened by her radiating smile when she sees you. You call to her: “Buongiorno Principessa” as you approach her room. You fall in love all over when she says DA-DA, when she claps her hands, when she kisses her bear, or possibly you, in the air.
You look at her and feel so blessed, so grateful. Later you walk together. You walk around the lake, you lie with her in the grass. You see what she sees. You point at what she points at. You watch her grab her feet and giggle. You watch her strive to roll over. As the months roll by she sits, she crawls, she pulls onto her knees, she tries to stand.
Every day, three times a day, you clean the table and the floors from smears of oatmeal, avocado, blueberries. You wipe your baby’s mouth and hands while she screams as though you were sacrificing her to the gods.
Every day you hold her. Your wrists ache on and off. So does your back. Your hips need multiple yoga and massage sessions to loosen. You hold her anyway. You carry her up and down stairs. You rock, and nurse and hum at night. In the day you swing in the swing with her, feeling bliss as her little body presses against yours. You watch her from behind as she swings. You imagine what lies hidden, ready to unfold in her tiny persona. Every day, you still can’t believe it.
Violet, I watch you come to life.
You open outward from a pearly,
bud. The motion of life written
in you, a spiraling, curling beauty;
always reminding me
of the mysteries that lie
in the sacred.
Yours isn’t the linear line dear
to Man and the rational mind.
It is the Mother’s way.
In you Nature shows
her hidden power.
I watch your majestic purple
unfolding over days. You move
as though a creature
asleep; curled in on yourself,
a timid child with rounded fists
hovering over her eyes.
You glisten. Your velvet stem
of emerald and magenta,
has grown fine hairs
that whisper against the light.
Each day you peer
out a bit further.
From your head a cup of leaves
unfurls to protect their golden,
inner treasure. Deep, royal violet,
fresh and cool. In them the thirst
of life moves visibly through veins
of love and hope.
I hear your music. The melody
sounds in my ear, singing
the beginning of renewed life.
In your presence I remain
in awe each day a little deeper.
Tuesday blues on rooftops soar.
The eye as wild as eagle wings,
spanning the heights of mountain rims.
Connecting knuckles;
curving spine.
A low sound, emitted from within
vibrating of cells
in silent energy.
The boundary lost
of archetypes, hieroglyphs.
Strawberries.
Colors forming geometries of the sacred.
I ventured out into the great beyond.
Holding my shoulders.
A poncho draping
In loose folds.
I held my name, an essence
I can only begin to grasp,
in unity. Between notions
so fractal, they move
in faceted fashion
of fingerling fineness.
Flower of immortality,
nocturnal halo, candles
glowing in darkened candor.
Nymphs sing in perfect
tones of emanated radiance,
flowing essence.
The power to behold fulfills
the nucleus of divine being.
Staggered I fluctuate
on waves of ethereal,
outward and in.
Blending boundaries,
until thinking disappears.
The child enters now,
oscillating from lacelike expansion,
to creviced contraction.
The place where time and space
appear both odd, and more tangible.
Painted with memory, wafting
with scent, it carries me
back in time to mildewy leaves,
in the shade of the mottled tree.
The rainbow shimmer in each apple bough
sage green, white, and dark olive leaves,
purple and russet queen bark.
Veins, buds, opening, closing.
The world is breathing,
one breath.
Particles of flesh weave
the texture of my shell
in the ebb of the tide,
under the watchful eye
of the moon.
Air, water and fire united
to mass, weight, earth
in a pattern so infinite
it mesmerizes my gaze.
They constitute in an ever
changing unison of form,
colliding into elliptical swerves,
like super eight volcanoes.
I am here, under the toes of elves,
nimbly fingering my inmost being,
from molecules so minuscule
they elude my consciousness,
to veils so vast they expand far beyond.
And when the light goes on,
even if just for an instant, I absorb
bubbles of effervescent geometry
before my close-lid eyes.
Manifesting the archetypes
of an awareness I did not know
was mine.
Colors so bright, so ethereal,
like flowers blooming,
the next moment gone.
Only to find a knot in my spine,
a grovel in the bark of an old tree,
its growth arcane.
Roots of my being break through
to rivulets of energy, a dimension
so warm, so beautiful
it fills me with ecstasy.
In the bliss of a moment’s kiss
the body electric sees itself:
alive and held
full and empty
finite and eternal
one with all creation.
I open my eyes to the darkness of the hall
and sing within my being
to the forces above and within.
The truth now lies instilled
in a wave of tears.
Salt and earth sediment together
as kernels yielded from years of forming,
on a journey where love and trust
are linked with the fibers
of a mesh that resounds
of beginnings.
A fleeting overload of sensations
fills me, sucking on breast,
the fuzziness of a peach.
Thin grasses swaying,
coated by a white mantle of ice,
nod translucent to the tangerine glow.
The disc of light makes its way
above the horizon,
while my heart exults
in the force of creation.
One stem at a time
I sweep and arch from sky to earth,
cloud, grass, pebbles and stream.
In the violet hour I sing
to the harmony of the seraphim sky,
surrounded by the symphony
of all creation.
Its oneness brims over
and holds me
awash in a transitory glimpse of eternity.
I wave to the oncoming night and the star filled sky.
A salute to that emptiness
that is fullness.
oona's looking glass 