For our own sake, we follow the way.
We see it, wake in it and sleep in it.
It is the way she is healed,
sister Earth, grandmother Gaia,
revolving, evolving, Atabey,
mother spirit of life.
The way she becomes her own again
and not any man’s property
or subject to rule,
is for us to find the way and live it
through the seasons and days of our lives
regardless of culture or tradition.
Thinking why yields no answer.
This is the way we come to you, Beloved,
following your spirit scent, feeling you nearby,
watering your seeds of compassion and love.
We know why in the living of it
now and then feeling its fullness and emptiness
reassuring us it is you love
who makes it so.
We have been ourselves long enough to know
it is not us drawing forth life’s consciousness
blessing the way with intent and purpose.
It is beyond our wisdom.
We look in mirrors to see the way
that is before we know the way.
The way runs through us and begins here.
It is like that for each of us.
The Spirit of life lives in all that lives
and guides us when we let go the illusions
and shed the protective shells
slowly removing the armor.
The way stands open.
It travels through every being
and naked each chooses
to know it or not.
It Isn't Nice to Block the Doorways
-
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I find this poem evocative, dreamlike. It calls me in gently, but simultaneously challenges me to do a hard thing: look at my failings, recognize myself. Hypnotic lyricism and the lure of the natural/spiritual link are serenely seductive. We know Nature is not always kind, and we are a part of Her. Such a mystery. I'm entranced.
Guari,
It's good to see you writing.
I like the next-to-last stanza best. My basic response is that this is not a poem but a freewrite homily.
1) In poetry it is problematic to load the language heavily with abstractions because the reader is always asking what the author means by them. In extended prose you can give examples and expand to clarify abstractions, but in a short poem we are better off putting in the example and leaving out the redundant abstraction. "No ideas but in things." —W.C.Williams
2) Generalities weaken writing, particulars strengthen it.
"What do I know of man's destiny? I could tell you more about radishes."
—Samuel Beckett
3) Many of us, having been preached to in our youth enough for an entire lifetime, have some resistance to homilies. If there is enough elegance or brilliance, or wit, or imagination, you can get away with it. More often we poets set up the poem so that the readers come to their own conclusion which just happens to be ours. This is done, of course, with particulars, real people facing real problems.
I like the next-to-last stanza best, but it makes me ask if the poem is itself a protective shell.
I wonder if it is possible to launch from the content of the last two stanzas into something that we readers can have an emotional connection with, an example from your own life or someone else's life or the community, so that we can see the suffering and/or healing of one tiny piece of Earth.
"Everything written is as good as it is dramatic." –Robert Frost
Your brother in the struggle,
Len
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