Tag: poetry

Burn

3 Comments

The skies have been dark this week, the air stagnant and toxic. I can feel the burn in my throat. I can only think “this is how it will be forever now. Every summer now will burn.” Summer skies filled with smoke, blue turns grey, and ashen. I am sad, the kind of sad you’re not supposed to talk about. I  didn’t know I would see the change in my lifetime, not really. You know your hear about these things, this climate disaster, global warming. But it is all far away, apocalypse abstract.

These last few summers its been in no way abstract, it has been here, present and beside me. I am unable to turn away. My once blue summer Oregon skies have gone dark. We can not ignore the  truth. It’s closing time. This is only the beginning. Get ready for the fall, there will be darkness.

Our world burns.
Today smoke fills the skies
my throat, lungs and eyes.
Blue sky, a memory of summer gone now.
The earth is hot
103 in Redding yesterday
10,000 people evacuate
running from the flames.
Their cars are hot, on scorched highways
the fumes from their tailpipes fill the sky.
What of those that cannot run?
No gas in their tanks or
money in their banks.
What if they are ill?
In body or mind, those who choose to stay behind.
What of the winged ones, and the 4 legged
It is all too much to bear.
Tonight- the moon is orange and amber
a dark glow in the sky.
It seems to me she is looking down and weeping.
So am I.

 

Marianna Louise Jones

Longing for home

Leave a comment

I am alone here, in this foreign place.
This land that is my country, yet not my home
I guess this is what happens when sea to shining sea is 3000 miles.
Birds sing in songs I do not know
trees, tall with bare trunks and high canopies,
tower over my head.
The earth is light and tawny, not the brown humus that I know.
My feet fall soft upon this path, tan and fine
bones of the earth, stones, rise amid the soil.
I am stunned by sound, a cacophony of birdsong,
so sweet and raucous, sharper than the familiar calls of
the birds that call my temperate rainforest home.
Funny how, in all this space and novelty, this beauty,
I can long for home.
A stone sits in my chest, heavy for the lands of the pacific.
Even the spiders know that I am foreign here.
I have walked through so many webs this morning,
torn them apart, unintentionally upon my breast.
The air, sticky, even in dawns light,
clings to the webs and condenses,
small beads of golden dew, warm and wet,
meet my skin and spread out. I am shimmering.
Long time now, since heat touched my skin like this
heat that is alive, moist, and tender.
Still, in the wonder of it all, the birdsong, the frog song, the cicada song
I long for home, oh W’yeast, you have me wrapped around your finger
No, your rocky crags and gentle slopes…I’ll be wrapped around you, all my life.
You’re high peaks and rugged valleys, the ripple of your flesh.
Douglas fir and cedar, my trees, hold me close.
I cannot resist you dear conifers, you hold me, your boughs,
wrap my arms and legs in your green embrace and I am gone.
Gathered into you.

 

*image of a lake just outside Oxford Ohio, where I walked as this poem came to me last week.

Marianna

Blackberry- A Tumultuous Love Affair

1 Comment

I have been waging war on blackberry. Since early spring her shoots have come, bursting forth with great voracity, taking over my yard, my garden beds, my fence line and grape vines….my whole life it feels at times.
This poem came to me as I was out working, clipping away at her lush vines. My arms, covered in scratches, my brow damp with sweat. I felt the first line come in, burbling like a spring coming up inside me. I put down my clippers, went inside, took my notebook and wrote.

 

Sometimes blackberry feels like my enemy.
Her thorns catch my skin and I tear
her roots, gnarled and strong
wider than the thickness of my thumb
hold deeply in the earth
and won’t let go.

She seems to come up everywhere.
Bright shoots, thorns still soft
sprouting among the snow peas
twining herself around artichoke,
befriending a fellow spiney one.

She reaches her tips out from under my house.
Just now I blinked-and thought
I saw her growing out of my wall sconce
she is even growing in my mind now.

As I write, my arms are red with scratches.
My back tired from bending to dig and pull her roots
and still I hunger for her ripe, purple fruit
it’s a hot cold kind of love affair we have
blackberry and I.

Bee’s nuzzles blackberries white flowers.
Enthralled with her fine yellow pollen
an eruption of white blossoms now fill the places
in my yard, where blackberry reigns.

We have made a treaty of sorts.
A line of demarcation
she is fair game when she rears her head in the vegetable beds
but the hedgerows are hers to dominate
and there she will grow to sweet fruition.

White blooms soon will, thanks be to bees favor.
Turn to hard green fruits- and then!
Lush purple mouthfuls, full of sweet juice
staining my fingers and my tongue
my clothes and my counters
my good wooden spoon.

She leaves her mark on me it’s certain.
I suppose it’s like any other love affair
hers and mine
prickly at times, and at others
sweet as nectar.

A Message From my Heart

Leave a comment

I found this poem in a file, saved from years ago. I had forgotten this one, and as I read it so much flooded back to me form this time in my life. Writing is like that, a secret window to a time before. I am glad to have discovered again this sweet, small poem to share now with you.

 

I was walking today
and I saw in a window
a reflection of my physical self.
I said ” hello, you!”
that house so well my own
true love, my spirit, my heart.
My body staring back at me
with equal wonder in her eyes,
reflected the reverence of my soul.
I look so like a mountain, my head
held high, my shoulder strong,
my solid body filled with a thousand rivers of blood.
Of sacred Earth my heart was formed,
to sacred Earth I will return
a mountainside I will become
my heart returning to its home.

© Marianna 2011

 

Daughter of Earth

Leave a comment

Earth-
I am your daughter
Born of the darkness
Bathed in the light
Earth dweller
Sky gazer
Guardian
I walk upon your firm brown skin
Run my fingers through your grassy hair
Taste the sweet ripe fruit of your lips
You leave treasures everywhere
Simple gifts
And magical tokens
Of your love
Roots, shoots and berries
Smooth stones and feathers
The light on the field at dawn
A gleaming spiral shell
You speak to me in sunsets,
Moonrises, shooting stars
A thousand ways you say
I love you
I am listening
I hold out my hands in gratitude
And you fill them
Wherever I am
I am with you
A daughter of mystery
Born of the darkness
Bathed in the light

Marianna Louise Jones-May 2017

Hem of my Heart

Leave a comment

A poem is like a thread…
Just tug the end gently
And it keeps coming
Before you know it,
Your whole heart is sitting in your lap.

Words are like that
They love to travel together
Make endless lines that
Run on and on and sometimes
Say something grand
But sometimes nothing at all.

Words tumbled on a page
Casually or carefully
Create an image, invite you in
A story told or simply felt
Open to interpretation.

A Poem is made of words
Words and tears,
Words, tears, and callused hands and soft smiles
A human heart, a tattered hem…..
the thread pulled clean out of it.

 

©Marianna Louise Jones 2017

 

 

A Mournful Beauty

2 Comments

I spent last week in Ontario, another session of Orphan Wisdom School complete. I am left with the richness of love and heartbreak that this endeavor of learning has filled me with. I would not want it any other way. Before I stepped onto this path all I had was an aching, painful, grey sense that life was not supposed to be this way. I am now learning to articulate in some small and humble way, why it came to be this way and what we are collectively longing for and grieving. Perhaps I should not say articulating, since as I sit here at this keyboard I feel at a loss to even begin to convey the majesty and wonder of what transpired in Golden Lake last week. I am not yet a master of this mother tongue I wield. So I will simply offer here a poem, some of that which comes from the place in me that is digesting, composting, fermenting the learnings that took place. More will be shared when the gods of time deem it right, for now, just this…

Where do the brokenhearted go?
Carrying on their shoulders the weight
of ten thousand years of sorrow
still tall under the burden
eyes open, there is no place to hide.
Let us walk together now.
Lean your troubles on my troubles
Rest your weight against my shoulder
dark times have come for sure.
As we stand to face,
what was behind us, and before us
all along.
The only place I know to go
calls to me so sweetly,
and then howls in the voice of a wolf.
Turn to the river that flows
mound the troubles deep and wide,
this canoe can hold plenty of weight
push of the shores that are no more
let us trust ourselves now to the river
eddies flow around us,
time and abundance carry us on.
Here is my hand…come-come
I will carry the weight with you.

© Marianna Louise Jones 2017

Morning has Broken

Leave a comment

Morning comes
sorrow and praise live in my heart together
strange bedfellows it may seem
but no…
All that we love will go
All that we claim will be lost
All hearts that love will be broken
and yet…
The sky pours generous rains
through oak branches
nearly naked now
leaves lie on the soft earth
and are claimed again by her
birdsongs erupt in the still dawn
and I am here
my feet wet on that same soft soil
a heart full of wonder
and eyes to see this beauty
eyes that pour their own generous rain
down the soft curves of my cheeks
Sorrow and praise
resting together in the
dark chambers of my
Heart.

© Marianna Louise Jones 2017

IMG_3930

A golden heart leaf- photo by yours truly. Taken one cool morning on a trail at Elk Rock.

Hank’s Poem

1 Comment

This poem was left as a reply to my recent post,A Measure of Worth. Hank has left me poetic responses to a few of my posts and I always treasure his skill to respond to my musings with his own mythopoetic beauty. This one I felt called to share and do so here, with his permission. This makes Hank Delison my first guest poet on the blog. It is with great joy I share this poem here. If you have not read the post I linked above, please do, and you will see the powerful lines of connection that Hank weaves here. A big thank you to you Hank, for your support of my blog and your willingness to share your poem here. The thistles on the header are in remembrance of our mutual Scottish heritage ♥

Worth is a false idea, it is empty.
It was invented a very long time ago
To control behavior.
We accept it as we accept the mountains

There must be a scale
From worth to non-worth
For worth to exist.
And there is no such scale.

For such a scale to exist
There must be a worthiness judge.
For thousands of years people
Have tried to create a worthiness judge.

We have called these judges
God, Gods, Goddesses.
But they have all been false,
Because they are all human made.

But God, Gods, Goddesses are useful.
Priests, holy men/holy women use them
To mold their bit of humanity into
An understandable controllable whole.

What if you do not accept
Worth as having meaning?
What if you accept yourself
As who you are?

Without worth?
Beyond Worth?
Outside of worth?
Worth-less?

Then you cannot be controlled.
You
Are
Free

Delison 2017

I too, am Animal

Leave a comment

I wrote this poem last May. While away at my first solo writers retreat. You can read more about that experience here,  A New Old Forest, My Birthday, and the Power of Following my Heart, a few poems are in that post as well. I am sharing  this poem today as it seems to connect so well to my post from yesterday, A Measure of Worth. This inquiry around worth has been burbling inside me for some time, asking to be examined. I do not usually write in rhyme, but for some reason quite a few of my poems from this particular retreat came in the form of rhymed couplets, I do not know how I feel about that, to be honest… but here it is. I desire to share this anyway. Rhymed couplets and all .

I too, am Animal

Swallow does not question God,
he just proceeds to fly
Bear is steadfast in his good,
he needs no reason why.
Deer knows she is worthy,
it was built within her bones.
But somehow, I have lost my way,
can find no path to home.
Otter plays and feeds herself,
she does not need a list.
To track her time and plan her days,
to make sure nothings missed.
Yet it seems that I have chosen,
to live another life.
Away from being animal,
in worry, debt and strife.
I doubt my good, I cannot fly,
I rarely play or fish.
I live my life within white walls,
And always have a list.
To check a box, to prove I’m good,
To set the markers high.
So that I deserve a place to live,
I rarely question why.
Yet somethings shifting in my bones,
I am seeing crystal clear.
That I have picked the short straw,
I would rather live as Deer.
Or Bear or Otter for that part,
live free and take the risks.
Then settle into servitude,
and securities deadly “gifts”.
I’ll tear my hair from its confines,
Let my face grow brown with mud.
And sun and wind and wildness,
feet planted on the ground.
I’ll bathe in rivers cold and clean,
until my skin is pink.
And live on wild berries,
and the shoots and leaves of green,
I return to the Earth,
And her enormous lap.
To suckle on the breast of God,
And never to look back.
Oh, culture you have tricked us well,
But you have not won just yet.
I return to the wild now,
With no pains of regret.
Welcome me home-
Sweet green ground.
Take me as your own,
The bride of life,
The soils wife,
Marvelous and brown.

 

~ Marianna Jones 2017