Tag: Nature

The Promise Moon

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment

I’ve been a new moon of late — present, rejuvenating, and yet devoid of light.  It’s as if the universe had lined up the stars in just a way to pull the plug, and the best I could do was to watch my imagination, inspiration, and focus swirl away down the drain.

If you watch astrology the way I do, then you know that there are all kinds of interesting things happening in the sky right now.  Crosses, squares, interesting alignments.  I know just enough to know that the heavens reflect the happenings on this planet with amazing accuracy.  We are indeed part of a web, or perhaps many webs, both macro and micro.  When a string gets tugged by Saturn, we feel the pull.  When lines get crossed, we knot up.  When a meteor shower skips over the grid, we can hear the music of the celestial harp.  Of course, you have to listen very carefully.

I am intrigued by it all, but it is the moon that most often captures my imagination.  I ebb and flow in huge shifts of light and darkness just like our constantly hovering lunar mother.  And, of late, I’ve been a little too waning crescent for comfort.

Last night I stood out under my favorite moon, the waxing gibbous.  I know that might seem a little strange.  Isn’t everyone’s favorite the full moon?  A full and glorious, round and pregnant moon is the muse of poets.  It is the altar of nature worshippers.  It is the author of crazy nights for emergency room physicians.  Although this opportunity is rare in an urban world, try to find a dark wood on a full moon night and you will be truly amazed at how brilliantly lit the nocturnal world can be.  But the yang to the yin of a full moon is that there is nowhere to go from here except backwards.  The shadow will slowly creep back in until the moon mother sleeps again in her renewing.

Ah, but a waxing gibbous is full of promise.  It seems to say, “Here I come.  I’m bringing back the light.”  I want to do things under a waxing gibbous.  I want to write and sing and dance and create.  I want to paint pictures, which is truly strange because I really, really can’t do that at all.  Under the waxing gibbous I feel potential swell up within me.  I love the promise moon.  It brings me back.

Gaia Knocks

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

Gaia knocks at the window.

I sit at my desk and stare into a screen of

chicken scratch letters on a snowy field. 

The keys feel like river pebbles rubbed smooth from eons of erosion. 

Beside me is a maple bowl turned by a local craftsman which holds my crystals —

Tree agate, Bloodstone, Selenite, Snowflake Obsidian,

Labradorite, Carnelian, Sodalite —

the vibrations of a million years of terrestrial pressure collecting dust while I

focus on work that will be forgotten tomorrow. 

I rub my hand across the laminated desk top and yearn for wood. 

I will get no splinters tonight. 

I have not seen the moon and could not tell you if it is

full or new, waxing or waning. 

Knowing that would have been the work of my ancestors,

those noble souls who built Stonehenge

and sang songs to Brighid

and marked their bodies with triple spirals

to honor maiden, mother, crone.

 

I sit at my desk, my back to the window,

and click-clack the chicken scratch.

Gaia knocks with a ping on the glass.

I respond without looking,

“We need the rain.”

Springing

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment

First the daffodils.

Then the tulips.  Red, yellow, pink. 

Lettuce is crisping in the cool morning air.

The cucumber magnolia sends out tiny shoots at the end of each branch.

The sycamores will make a late grand entrance, but until then there are the oaks, hackberries, and redbuds getting back to business. 

The cedar and cyprus have held a green vigil through the dark death of winter, but now they catch the fever and dance a little perkier in the breeze. 

The pine will start new quills to write the lovesongs of robins and chickadees, bluejays and cardinals.

Lavender, oregano, and mint are suddenly alive again.  

Rosemary dresses up and puts on her perfume. 

Hyacinths are bursting blue.  

 

The wheel will turn and spring will

become summer

become fall

become winter.

          But today is spring,

And I am bursting blue.

Dirt-Worshipping Tree-Hugger

~ Deb ~ 2 Comments

Every day, priests minutely examine the Dharma

And endlessly change complicated sutras.

Before doing that, though, they should learn how to read the love letters

     sent by the wind and the rain, the snow and the moon.

                                                               — Ikkyu

You may freely replace priests with ministers, rabbis, imams, gurus, or televangelists.

You may freely replace Dharma with Bible, Torah, Koran, or Bhagavad Gita.

You may freely replace sutras with commandments, verses, visions, prophesies, judgements or any other claim to know the mind and will of the universe.

Or you may just replace all the words ever known with those love letters from nature and be at peace.