A STREAMING TALE
Goblin spoke to Ternerhooks
“Beware! Be long, Be gone!
Something foul is seeking
The girl with the clear blue song!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A narrow eyed man, all cloaked in black
Limps up from out the sea
Carrying a slick and leaking sack
And a spiraled iron key
He has come to make an offer
To a face without a name
And he carries his dripping coffer
With a quiet, patient shame
Down an alley dark and twisted
He waits in the puddling rain
The air is blue and misted
And his face engraved with pain
In pain he walks, in pain he waits
It engulfs, devours, transcends
He is lost within the dire straits
Of an anguish that never ends
A voice in the darkness hisses
Not an inch from where he stands
And the rain leaves frozen kisses
On his empty, open hands
“Walk on the sand when the waves retreat”
A rasping whisper taints the dark
There is nothing to see in the inky street
Not a shadow, not a spark
“Walk on the sand where the waves retreat
Find the one whose voice is true
Bring me the blood of the sweetest meat
Bring me her song of blue . . .”
Then the voice is sucked into stillness
Has he entered a pack to betray?
He feels a gist quaver of illness
The covenant bag has been taken away
A creeping shudder shakes him under
He puts his hands across his face
The wet air is split with thunder
And emptied of all grace
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She sits on a log with her face to the sun
She is almost as still as a stone
Only fingers move, in hair undone
Plaiting feathers, flowers, bone
Her dress is a patchwork of rags and rhyme
Her hair is silk indigo lace
Perfectly balanced in both space and time
She dreams with a smile on her face
And she sings in a voice borrowed from birds
Clean and most treacherously true
She sings without thought, without rhyme without words
A song that’s unbroken and blue
She sings of blue mountains, of sea and of wind
Of live gems from beneath the cracked earth
She sings without words of how sapphire sinned
And was redeemed by the white sky’s blue birth
She sings of blue whales that leap on the foam
Of bluebirds embroidering the trees
She sings of blue smoke soft wreathing a home
And the iceblue of vast Northern seas
She sings of long nights of empty blue sadness
The deep, darker blue that’s depressed
She sings of the roiled blueblack of madness
The joy of a pale Robin’s nest
She sings up blue flowers so Spring can begin
Blue silk in rich markets afar
She sings of blue veins underneath her own skin
She sings of a blue crystal star
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And here he sees her singing
And he steels his heart and brain
Such a little thing this song of blue
To commute such scorching pain
Forged in the sea, the pact makes no sense
Meaning mystic and message arcane
Yet, it’s steps he must follow, trembling and tense
The checkered path to the end of his pain
The slick sack was delivered, the hissing voice spoke
He has followed it here to the sand
The rest of the world can all go up in smoke
He must fulfil the offensive demand
And here she sits singing, eyes closed in the sun
As if she were tasting each note
Somehow he must do what has to be done
And rip that blue song from her throat
In his cloak is a dagger of cuttle and bone
A dried rose with one razor thorn
A sliver of drab, rain-colored moonstone
And a cup made of silver and horn
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She opens her eyes, he is startled by blue
So blue that they make the word shout
He is drowning in blue that is fresh and so new
Like the end of a long, barren drought
Her song has been stopped by a smile
As soft as the clouds in the sky
An enchantment that could beguile
The rivers and seas to run dry
“Why does the blue sea turn?” she asks
Shading her eyes from the sun
“Who gave the dolphins their long silver backs?
How soon will the waves be undone?”
He is stuttered to stillness by her clear crystal voice
By her words with no plan to their rhyme
Is she speaking without any kind of a choice?
Lost in some stray piece of time?
Is she speaking in madness, in some kind of trance?
As one whose wits have gone blind?
Or is this some kind of elaborate dance
Does she know what he has on his mind?
His heart skips a beat and pain clenches his back
Shoots through his arms to his head
Agony stabs at the man dressed in black
And with it a well traveled dread
It never will stop, but continue to grow
And he knows there is nowhere to run
He looks at the girl and he clenches his jaw
And prepares to do what must be done
He knows that somehow he must make her sing
It’s the only dark, desperate way
To finish this creeping, detestable thing
This pact to deceive and betray
“I’ve never . . . I’ve never heard such a voice”
His own voice is hollow as tin
“It makes the sunshine wake up and rejoice
To stop now would be such a sin . . .”
She smiles again and opens her mouth
Her voice begins soft, low and mellow
Singing of buttercups, sun in the south
She sings out bright streams of yellow
She sings out of daisies and butter
Of lemons and sunflower sun
Of canaries with wings all a flutter
And lamplight where stories are spun
He is lost in the spell of her voice
Sinking under a bright amber wave
He struggles to hold on to choice
With the desperate despair of a slave
He must stop her bright golden singing
With black terror his heart is rife
With saffron his ears are ringing
Fingers curl on the sharp cuttle knife
“Oh sing just like you sang before!
‘twas a balm so clear and clean”
She nods her head and begins once more . . .
Singing the healing salve of green
She sings of spring and the birth of green
Of a pure, fresh grassland breeze
Of jade and emerald and aquamarine
Of the lusty green song of the trees
He is caught by the vision of woodlands
His blood echos the sweet rising sap
Then he is back on these misunderstood sands
With the sharp sudden sting of a slap
She gazes up at him with eyes of green
And he is rocked with a deep dawning dread
In a whisper so clear it can almost be seen
He breathes out, “Sing something red”
So she sings about rubies and cherries
Of roses bloomed ripe from the bud
She sings of cardinals and berries
She sings of the rich red of blood
When the singing has stopped her hair is red
And she speaks through the roar of the sea
“What is it fills the waves with dread?
Who drowned the split crimson tree?
Why does the sky taste of ashes?
Why are the stars so arcane?
Is time lost when thunder crashes?
What must I give for your pain?”
A hush washes over the man dressed in black
And his head is bent down with shame
The thought of his gruesome, intended attack
Leaves him sickened and covered with blame
“Oh, She who breathes color” he whispers low
“I came here in stealth and deceit
But I can not go on with this ghastly show
Or make this base bargain complete”
The wind whips the strands of her new scarlet hair
She smiles and just shakes her head
“I know of your compact and of your despair
I know of the things that you dread . . .
I speak not of darkness, or bindings or guilt
But the harsh pain with which you’re possessed
For castles of sand must be always rebuilt
And I have a dissolving request
Who suckles the sun at midnight?
What is the language of rain?
Who gathers the threads of the twilight?
What must I give for your pain?
Put a price and a worth on your torment
If you can contain and supply it
I’ll count any fee fairly spent
I would contract to purchase and buy it”
He stares in utter disbelief
Thoughts of grim nights of unending pain
When he speaks his voice is thick with grief
“You must be completely insane.”
Her face is untouched by surprise
In her eyes the smile still swam
A smile that is patient and wise
And she answers, “you know that I am
I sit by the sea singing moonshine rhyme
In the sun and the dark and the rain
Transposing color to concrete design
There is nothing in that, that is sane
Who carved the ocean’s wildest wave?
What is the smell of a prayer?”
Here eyes are brown and still and grave
She meets his and holds him there
“Now I ask, are there weeds in a King’s wine?
Words that shout and echo ‘insane’
You can see I’ve stepped over that fine line
What must I give for your pain?”
He closes his eyes and rocks on his heals
As a sweet, aching hope shoots through
Of all the unearthly preposterous deals
Is this crazy enough to be true?
He looks in her eyes, so deep he is lost
It seems that he hangs there for weeks
Then suddenly something screams: ‘Damn the cost!’
Before his mind changes, he speaks
“You must give me the skill to compose
Though my mind is now wounded and scarred
Give back the color to yesterdays rose
Give me the words of a Bard.”
She blinks once, her eyes thick with thought
Then she answers, “‘twill be as you choose
Since this is the thing you have sought
I will give you the gift of the Muse
I will give you the blessing of words
I will hand you the lore weavers thread
I will give you the music of birds
And the deep resurrection of red
In return you will give me your pain
Secured in this gold and bone locket
You will give me the color of rain
And the moon that you keep in your pocket”
For a moment he’s startled by rage
As if he were holding the moon!
Like an eagle trapped in a cage
Then he is caught by the edge of a tune
She is singing again and swaying
A piercing song, clear, clean and true
She somehow seems to be praying . . .
A crystalline song with no color or hue
His hand has reached for his knife
A sharp edge of cuttle and bone
But this moment’s a prism of a life
As his hand meets not cuttle, but stone
Pulled from his cloak, it lays on his palm
A hard little rain-colored round
She steps up to him with a smile of calm
And takes it, without any sound
She holds out the locket, on a long golden chain
Forged of old gold and deep carved bone
As it falls in his hand he is crippled with pain
And doubles over his hand with a groan
His body is wracked with every pain
He has ever felt before
From the base of his foot to the top of his brain
Each anguish doubled times four
He is falling, the locket snaps shut
And the pain is erased in a breath
He stands silently clutching his gut
His face just a shade short of death
She takes the chain from his shaking hand
And loops it over her head
Then she bends to the shining wet sand . . .
For a dry, crumbling rose that looks dead
A memory had gone tumbling
From his clock to lay crushed on the sand
Now it lies abandoned and crumbling
Black with age, in her small pale hand
She slashes her palm cross the one razor thorn
Her blood on the crushed rose is shed
As if touched with fire, the rose is reborn
Blushing, blooming in lustrous red
With a smile, she gives him the rose
“There is yesterday’s color my friend
Though it’s different than you suppose
Our contract is now at an end”
Then she wipes her palm on his cloak
And a bright scarlet stains starts to spread
And like quick flame and billowing smoke
It is kissed with a bright spreading red
Crimson licks up his inky dark cape
Like a hot, hungry ruby red fire
Before he can move or escape
He is clothed all in Scarlet attire
She dabs a drop of blood between his eyes
Where it shines like a ruby shard
“Ah!” she says, “here, I surmise
Is the famous Scarlet Bard!”
Then she walks away, and that is the end
Calling back once over her shoulder
“Here is something to remember my friend
Before you get too much older . . .
There is an alternative flow to each river . . .
Remember, you’ve always a choice!
Now I’ve got a locket to deliver
To a man with a hissing, dark, voice . . .
Oh, why are the planets not strung on wire?
Came her voice as she vanished from sight
Have the cows formed a rainbow cloud choir?
Who paints the doorstep of night . . . . ?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“And that is the tale!” sings the Scarlet Bard
“Truth wrapped in ribbons of rhyme”
All through the crowd is a murmuring regard
For a tale both warm and sublime
One small thoughtful face by the fires
Rests her chin on the top of her knee
Tugs on the red cloak, and inquires
“What happened to the spiraled iron key?”
The Bard gazes into the fires
Where scarlet ceaselessly blooms
He considers what mythos requires
And the things that a story presumes
“I’d forgotten that iron spiraled key!
What do you know about that?
Well, he left it there by the sea
On the rock where the blue girl once sat
The waves took it away, I suppose
In their vast, mysterious space
Where it has gone no body knows
It vanished with nary a trace . . .”
“The key to his heart!” a breathy voice said
But the Bard smiles, with cynical eyes
“Nope, The key to the old decrepit shed
Where he kept his fishing supplies.”
A murmur of protest sweeps round the fire
But the Bard laughs and claps his hands
“Now I’ll tell you a tale to inspire
Filled with secrets of far foreign lands!”
Happy expectancy hums round the fire
His listeners quickly agree
As he bend down to re-tune his lyre
He feels a small hand on his knee
The child looks in his eyes and smiles
And he smells the sea and the sand
Thrown back through years and miles
He feels something slipped in his hand
She presses his hand to his heart like a prayer
“One day she’ll come back, you’ll see”
When he blinks there is nobody there
In his hand is a spiraled iron key
Edwina Peterson Cross
© June 2003
Saturday, August 23, 2003
Son Rise
I surface from the depths of sleep
Swimming upwards
Dreams still clinging like water lilies to my liquid thoughts
The night is full of hush
Cathedral silence
Except for the clear singular sound of your call
Firm, insistent summons
Wordless meaning
I flow through the shadows on some sixth sense
Until I find you in the dark
“Shhhh, I’m here . . .”
My arms were made for your roundness
I wrap you into my dreaming
Press your hunger to my heart
And we rock away warm into the rich deep darkness
Whispers of grey
Ebbing night
In the new tracings of light
You are no longer just a soft receiving bundle
But the curve of a cheek
A tiny fist hugged tight around my finger
Round sweet sounds I feel humming through my hands
Clear dark mirrors of my own big eyes
Softened with a secret smile
Just for me
And now your windows are brimming full of morning
Flowing over with a new golden day
This day and all the bright sweet tomorrow’s
Just for you
(With Love - For Taran)
Edwina Peterson Cross
©October 1989
Son Rise - Published in Welcome Home Magazine March 1992
Soccer, Five Years Old
He has a hard time understanding
someone asking him to
“get aggressive” and “fight”
He has fought
to learn peace
He has a hard time caring
About the black and white spinning sphere
Or the swarm of kicking legs
There is an airplane in the sky
Weaving a trail of marshmallows
through the blue
A butterfly almost touched
his upturned face
And halfway down the field he wondered
if you could smell the sun
He tried to tell them
But in the rushing confusion
No one listened
His thoughts are spangled dragons
whirling on the wind
His words are honeyed jewels
His face is thoughtful
sad
Does he already know?
This world is not an easy place
for a poet.
Edwina Peterson Cross
©September 1994
Mothers
(For Leita)
See how we build
My wise greathearted friend
Ours are not the rewards
Of dollars or praise
A babies sated milk deep sigh
A toddlers sticky kisses
Fleeting moments like butterflies wings
That touch between our fingers
Brush bright against our lips
And then are gone
Into the sunmist of time
The ribbons of our teaching
They will gather and weave into themselves
To be claimed as their own
In the end
The production of our lives
Will stand alone
And we will silently sit the shadows
For it is the nature of things
That open hands
At last
Are empty
And yet
We work on
In some strange way fulfilled
From the glittering pain of beginning
Towards a harvest we will never see
Vital links
In the mystery chain
Of creation
Artisans of solid dreams
Oh See!
See how we build
Edwina Peterson Cross
© May 1992
Mothers - Published in Welcome Home Magazine May 1992
Published in Welcome Home Magazine May 1999
Included in the Anthology “Motherhood: Journey Into Love”
Edited by Edwina Peterson Cross
©1997 by Mother’s At Home,® Inc.
Lullaby
I am woven of lullabies
Spun of sleepy magic
In this tawny tired end of day
Heavy with hours
My eyes will close before yours
Still shining black bright with ideas
In this cave of night light glow
How many eons have I sat here?
My cheek pillowed cool against your sheets
My song a current of surprise
In the sweet stillness of the night
True love is frozen in time
They say . . .
And so eternity may well find me
Drowsing in this dim golden half light
Singing of dragons
Holding your hand
Edwina Peterson Cross
© June 1990
Lullaby - Published in Welcome Home Magazine July 1997
Taran’s Lullaby
Little Man
Little Man
May you grow to be strong
May you have joy and happiness all your life long
May you grow to be gentle and thoughtful and kind
May you grow deep in wisdom
With a clear, questing mind
May you grow to see beauty
May you grow rich in love
May you mirror the light
Pouring down from above
Little Man
Little Man
Little Man
Little Man
May God bless and keep you in the curve of his hand
Edwina Peterson Cross
© March 1989
Impatience
(April, Six Months Old)
Impatience . . .
Before she was born she wanted to dance
Before she could roll over
She needed to see what was on the other side
Before she could crawl . . . she rolled
Because she had to get from here to there
Before she can walk
Something tells her to run
She cannot talk
And she has so much to say
She is a reaching arm
With her hand stretched out
Impatience . . .
Keep reaching for the world
Keep stretching for the stars
Edwina Peterson Cross
©October 1982
Impatience - Published in Welcome Home Magazine June 1997
First Flight
The nest outside my window is full.
Last week they were tiny, wet
with fine, fuzzy, down-covered heads
eyeless, mewing for something
not knowing what or why.
Back and forth the mother soared,
life focused, never stopping
filling the need of the open crying mouths
then flying straight for more.
In just one week
they have become
birds.
Speckled breasts and fluffed up wings,
small sharp beaks and bright black eyes
that now know the need;
fill the belly and then
the sky!
They stand in the nest
ruffling feathers,
flexing wings,
experimenting.
On the hard concrete below
one small body has already broken.
Mother bird is flying faster now.
Will she find enough
to give them what they need?
She senses spring
is almost gone.
Time is short.
And mine . . .
eighteen years of nesting
now stands teetering on the edge
testing balance,
stretching wings,
perceiving with anticipation
the sweet currents of the wind.
I cannot soften the concrete below
nor choose the moment of flight.
My thoughts are flying faster now.
Have I given her enough?
Have I given her what she needs?
A breath of summer
rocks the nest.
Time is short.
Edwina Peterson Cross
©May 1997
First Flight - Published in Welcome Home Magazine June 1999
Forty-two
It is my birthday
and
I am forty-two.
A ponderous number
unheard of
by the will-o-the-wisp spirit
that once was me,
who lived by the moment,
glittering, invincible, immediate.
A strange fragile ghost
to have given birth to
forty-two.
Midpoint.
This is where you analyze,
evaluate, appraise, diagnose,
judge
Who am I?
What have I done?
After all of these miles
Where in this life have I come?
My children were up late last night.
I wake to pink streamers
dancing in Indian summer breezes,
packages, balloons . . .
I might be ten.
I have spent twenty years of my life
pouring love like sweet water
out of my heart
into their anxious, empty cups.
And now I see
this shining liquid stream
has come flowing
full circle.
My daughters
have given me a poem
priced at a dollar
from a street poet.
He looked hungry
so they gave him five.
This is where I have come.
This is what I have done.
This is who I am.
Edwina Peterson Cross
©September 1995
They tell me to embrace the pain
To give it a kind and soothing name
To stroke it until we all agree
It’s just another part of me
This tyrant that splits my bones apart
I should invite into my heart
Get it a chair and fix a drink
As it tips me slowly o’er the brink
I’ve blood to give and time to spend
With this my cuddly new found friend . . .
******
My bones with clouds of ice are filled
Watching a sickening horror build
The cadence shudder of the land
Shakes and breaks the dying sand
Sand to mill the anguished glass
In which I watch my pain go past
Decked with ribbons and tied with bones
Crushed down beneath the gnashing stones
Is a broken, bleached, forgotten joy
That grinding pain will soon destroy
The mirror will crack, sift back to sand
And desert suck the dying land
The sky will simmer, then will melt
The stars run from Orion’s belt
All will destruct twixt earth and sky
But pain will just keep marching by
With soldiers steps that jar the brain
This senseless, strutting stride of pain
And a piercing song of fife and drum
When all else is gone, pain will become
The spectacle of totality
The festival of reality
Marching through a dark abyss
Pain will be all that still exists
And trapped within a caustic rain
I’ll too, be overcome by pain
As always, I’ll be bound in thrall
And in the sickest turn of all
As the vile display draws near
I shall be required to cheer
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
Stream Pantoum VII
Sing a song of lightening
Fire in the sky
The viscous air is frightening
Thor’s hammer passing by
Fire in the sky
Dry as tindered weeds
Thor’s hammer passing by
Explodes the fire seeds
Dry as tindered weeds
The viscous air is frightening
Explodes the fire seeds
Sing a song of lightening
Edwina Peterson Cross
© August 2003
Stream Pantoum VI
Back from the brink of tomorrow
Carrying a unicorn horn
To stir in a caldron of sorrow
The question of why I was born
Carrying a unicorn horn
Of silver and adamant made
The question of why I was born
I gave to the goblins in trade
Of silver and adamant made
To stir in a caldron of sorrow
I gave to the goblins in trade
Back from the brink of tomorrow
Edwina Peterson Cross
© August 2003
Stream Rhyme III
Break and mend the lost forgiven
In your turning way
Flattened grass by hard rain driven
Still at break of day
What should be cannot be broken
Or it would be sown
Until you find a final token
Taken on your own
Words cannot remain as simple
As they are twisted there
Bow your head beneath the wimple
Shave your raven hair
Edwina Peterson Cross
© June 2003
Stream Rhyme II
Given this and other sorrows
Words I cannot speak
Cast upon the blank tomorrow’s
Tears upon my cheek
Things that must be lost, forgotten
Are better left unsaid
Planted when the seed was rotten
In the moldering bed
It cannot be what should be other
Than what will be then
Give your vision to another
Take it back again
Edwina Peterson Cross
© June 2003
Stream Rhyme I
Building webs of gossamer
Building webs of grey
Spinning pieces of tomorrow
Through threads of yesterday
Pieces of a dream unbroken
Black upon the strand
Building webs of thoughts unspoken
Dry on flooded land
Take a word and break it under
Take a broken drum
Spinning webs of distant thunder
Thoughts that will not come
Edwina Peterson Cross
© June 2003
Stream Rhyme Pantoum V
Find a spiral, walk it home
Beneath a silver marking stone
Never more the seas to roam
Broken here in blood and bone
Beneath a silver marking stone
You will wait for death alone
Broken here in blood and bone
It is a thing you’ve always known
You will wait for death alone
Never more the seas to roam
It is a thing you’ve always known
Find a spiral, walk it home
Edwina Peterson Cross
© August 2003
Stream Rhyme Pantoum IV
Tremble like dreams on the out-cusp of sight
Bemused and forgotten, a twirl of unrest
Pieces of nothing still-paint the night
Black knight come in question and quest
Bemused and forgotten, a twirl of unrest
Etched in acid the front of the moon
Black knight come in question and quest
To the song of a thin, haunting tune
Etched in acid the front of the moon
Pieces of nothing still-paint the night
To the song of a thin, haunting tune
Tremble like dreams on the out-cusp of sight
Edwina Peterson Cross
© August 2003
Stream Pantoum - III
I wait for rhyme with patient pain
Unfeathered by the day
What should be stopped cannot be slain
Or withered straight away
Unfeathered by the day
I curl and quail and ache
Or withered straight away
A promise I would make
I curl and quail and ache
What should be stopped cannot be slain
A promise I would make
I wait for rhyme with patient pain
Edwina Peterson Cross
© August 2003
Stream Pantoum II
Daylight is broken in patches of pearl
Undone on the floor of the sea
Mystery shined on the slide of a whorl
Unbroken again is the key
Undone on the floor of the sea
Salt spread for Neptune’s blue bed
Unbroken again is the key
Abalone bones of the dead
Salt spread for Neptune’s blue bed
Mystery shined on the slide of a whorl
Abalone bones of the dead
Daylight is broken in patches of pearl
Edwina Peterson Cross
© August 2003
Stream - Pantoum I
Here to find the sides of morning
Stretched out by the night
Knowledge cracked without a warning
Hidden out of sight
Stretched out by the night
The windswept swallowed stars
Hidden out of sight
The world’s untreated scars
The windswept swallowed stars
Knowledge cracked without a warning
The world’s untreated scars
Here to find the sides of morning
Edwina Peterson Cross
© July 2003
Stream Rhymes Turn To Stream Poems
Somewhere back in lines of streaming
Rhyme did a morph and flipped
It’s now a “Poem” of circled dreaming
My unconscious changed the script!
‘tis not enough to rhyme in sleep
A ‘poem’ must now be made
There’s import in this quantum leap
For the words must now be weighed
But I don’t want to weigh streamed words!
The point is they are flowing
Like soaring, overlapping birds
Unconnected to all knowing
Then, we will say we’ve now two forms
And let the words unleash to stream
Different ways and different norms
Will create a different dream
Rhyme or poem, then how to tell?
Will the question start to stare?
Here is a place that I won’t dwell . . .
I’m in charge and I don’t care!
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
Why The Gates Make You Shiver
When you enter Lemuria through the stone gates, a shiver will trace your spine. It happens to everyone; it is supposed to happen; if it doesn’t happen, you better back out quickly, because something is drastically wrong. As you pass under each of two shadows, there will be the barest second of ice water down your back; the hair on the back of your neck will lift. This is magic, of course. You can’t look at the lush, misty green hills of Lemuria, or the stone portals that open toward those hills and not know that there is some sort of magic there. It is not, however, the kind of barrier magic that holds anyone out, nor, for that matter, the kind of prison magic that holds anyone in. What it is, this silent shiver that you can’t escape, is difficult to describe.
It might be called ‘hunger.’ You might call it ‘nostalgia.’ However, neither of these words is really right. You might try ‘longing,’ or ‘desire,’ but these do not describe the subtle magic either. I suppose that possibly ‘yearning’ might be the closest, if you really had to label it with a word; though it still isn’t completely right, it is probably the closest you are going to come with human language.
This is the thing: It is a well known fact that in the past all the lands of Faerie and the human world were once much closer. There was much coming and going between the worlds and all the worlds worked together in much more symmetry and concord. This is where and when our most beloved legends, myths and stories come from.
Since the world of human kind has become cold and drifted off by itself, we feel a yearning and nostalgia for that time of harmony and rapport and anything that reminds us of that time sets off that yearning. That is why passing through any magic portal will always give you a momentary shiver of . . . whatever it is. Even though your mind may not even be conscious of it, for a split second, all the cells in your body are filled with a yearning for a time and a place that is no more; for distant, scarcely remembered dreams; long lost hopes and faraway, half remembered loves. Right on the cellular level, your whole body suffers a split second ache that spreads in a sudden flash to your mind and heart and leaves a whip-lash shiver of wishing which rolls like ice water down your back.
It’s alright. It only lasts a moment and really, some people even think that there is something pleasant about it. Besides, these particular magic portals have a sort of built in back-shock. Does it have to do with the fact that they are attached to Lemuria? I don’t know. But when the shock begins and the cells cry out, “Ah, for all that once was, or might have been!” there is a wee, strong voice that answers back, “Aye! and may well be again!”
Edwina Peterson Cross
©January 2003
MY HOMES IN LEMURIA
~A Lemurian Ballad~
Unroll your map, my artist friend
And spread it ‘cross the table
I’ll point you where my wild paths wend
Through myth and tale and fable
I’ll trace you where those lay lines lie
With the ghosts of my footsteps strewn
Where secret sarns run under the sky
With the power to drink down the moon
I’ll plot you a plan of this land of dream
Between Ithaka and the stars
Where triumphs, fears and feelings stream
Yours, and mine and ours
Where a woman will weave a door
On a mystery threaded loom
Where no opening was before
Step through and begin to bloom
And where do I dwell in this magic land
Twixt tomorrow and the sea?
It all depends on supply and demand
Of the fluid being called me
* * * * * * * *
Deep in the Dryad Wood lives a tree
Who trembles in earth’s sacred trance
The Lady will set her dreaming heart free
In Joy she will take up the dance
My body is still and smoldered with pain
But here in this land of expanse
On a hill where the moonlight pours like champagne
My sylvan spirit joins in the dance
So here’s my first home, the deeps of the wood
In a clear, crystal, drinkable breeze
Where dancing and roots are both understood
By the hushed quiet knowing of trees
* * * * * * * *
In a cool green glen where the ivy grows
By the banks of a bubbling stream
Embraced by vines and a wild white rose
Is another piece of the dream
Inside a little cottage is a bright lyric fire
And a harp strung with vision and rhyme
Its metaphoric music can inflame and inspire
Its echo is sometimes sublime
As twilight softens the Lemurian skies
And dusk whispers still through the glen
By the window’s a woman with unfocused eyes
A paper, a smile and a pen
* * * * * * * *
When the Lemurian moon is in the sky
Mirrored in circles on water below
Like a silent, sweet synchronistic sigh
I’ll somehow always know
For a piece of my spirit is always here
In this spot where I first came to rest
Through the bloomings and turnings of the year
Where the waters are hallowed and blessed
* * * * * * * *
An apartment in the city, yes!
“Lemurian Towers” top floor
There you’ll find my urban address
With it’s authentic Art Deco decor
Big closets for all my evening gowns
Of a hundred rainbow hues
And stacked up neatly on the ground
Are my faithful scarlet shoes
I stay here during the season
When the “Lemurian Players” play
Each performance an excellent reason
To come up to the city and stay
Come by for cocktails before the play
Bring whomever you’d like to invite
Apris-play is another soiree
We’ll discuss late into the night
My butler would never open the door
To something as sordid as pain
So all day museums I’ll search and explore
Then I’ll go out to the Theatre again!
* * * * * * * *
Some see the desert as wasteland
An empty, barren zone
But in strong red rock and coral sand
Is the heart of my blood and bone
The song of a desert born dryad
I bring with me into this place
And the vision of this sacred triad:
Splendor and starkness and space
Where the mountains flush like wine
And dip to kiss the salmon sand
Quest and question become entwined
With a need to understand
My Lemurian desert will age
Ancient, authentic, concrete
Red rocks and sweet, silver sage
A healing, still spirit retreat
* * * * * * * *
A part of my heart is wild as wind
Effervescent as rainbow bathed fountains
A cold breath of breeze where the air is thinned
In the highland Lemurian Mountains
Meditation and mystery with myth are twined
The cry of wild swans seeking clues
A secret sanctuary blooms in my mind
The full, giving heart of the Muse
Hallowed alchemy is created here
And the warming fire it brings
Creative courage replaces fear
The stone artist wakes and sings
* * * * * * * *
From Poetry Cottage to Dryad Wood
Mountain Mystery and Desert Retreat
Water Garden and City Neighborhood
The paths of my wandering feet . . .
A home on every spoke of the wheel?
Well, this I can tell from the start
Oft said makes a saying no less real
And home is a place in the heart
A true land of wishes, Lemuria gives
Each Lemurian just what they need
Each dream is a place where somebody lives
Each hope is a real estate deed
The truth of my Lemurian home exists
In a muted blue river’s flood
The path the runs beneath my wrists
And the source of that pumping blood
Edwina Peterson Cross
©July 2003
VEILS
I walk this lucent pathway
With the shadows of
Myself
Between the bright veils
They brush my cheeks and soothe my
Slumbering eyes
My fingertips kiss their softness
On each side as I walk
Sleep is chiffon, melting easily
With almost nothing in between
The other side and I
The breeze wafts fluidly
China silk, crepe de chine
I am here
I am gone
The dream veil wraps me round
With a thickness I perceive
I can feel consciousness slide
Thumb and finger brush each side
Cashmere, suéde, broadcloth, brocade
In the stiff wind of vision, the dream veil shifts
And I’m holding on with both hands
Corduroy, tweed, canvas, chinchilla . . .
Batik, alpaca, cheese cloth, chintz . . .
I walked under stars
Where the past melted from the present
The present slid into the past
She left finger prints on my memory
Soft dreams behind my eyes and
Rustling veils of velvet, doeskin, Venetian point
Wafting lemon oil, lemon grass, lemon verbena
When all of the selves
On this luminous path, join breath
And mystery, memory and meaning merge
We will lift the final veil
With the beating heart of a bird
The veil of real, spun gold gossamer
And behind it we will find . . .
A spill of fresh moonlight
And laughter
Like a fae blessing
In the deep
of the
Night
Edwina Peterson Cross
©April 2003
Spirals of Time
Sonnet Five
(Irene’s Spiral)
Smooth swimming spirals in pale blue
Whispered echos of your hands
I feel this circling full of you
Soft brushed, revolving bands
I trace the spiral between my breasts
My throat, between my eyes
Your weaving mirrors the Muse's
Crystal waters to baptize
Your swimming spiral in water starts
Then is lifted into air
By six wings of Goddess Earth
Who are waiting silent there
The fire from your candles, in triangle, comes awake
The final element is time; we spiral toward the lake
Edwina Peterson Cross
©January 2003
Spirals of Time
Sonnet 4
(Mandala)
Mandala wrought in secret, a spiral of three
Maze of myth, softly woven of words
Drawn with a branch of the blest hazel tree
Elegant, wise, ever circling birds
Bird, and then bird, in pattern they start
And so spin in the spiral they build
Each with a piece of the next in her heart
The promise will then be fulfilled
With a dream at the center they circle the earth
Where the seasons are perfect in mirror
Cradling the dark moon back to her birth
Each spin of the spiral comes clearer
Paint it in ebony, lilac and rose
Mandala of mystery; juxtapose
Edwina Peterson Cross
©January 2003
Spirals of Time
Sonnet 3
(Labyrinth)
A spiral that was hope conceived
Gaia in her dreaming
Traced a pattern she believed
And offered as redeeming
Past the goal the cast path leads
Past patience must it walk
Sewn with soft returning seeds
Its seasons to unlock
I walk these spirals each beginning
With solemn gladness glide
A new year slow, soft, spinning
The worlds swift turning tide
There is only one door to enter
It is a long weaving dance to the center
Edwina Peterson Cross
©January 2003
Spirals of Time
Sonnet 2
(Helix)
This helix bounces, bends, fulfills
The curves of times bright coil
Dim the valleys, lucent the hills
Slick with infinity’s oil
Will you step where the ribbon curves and twists
Sharp between dark and light
Will you slide through the swirling helix mists
Imperceptible day and night
Yesterday turns to tomorrow
As the helix is stretched and compressed
Tomorrow’s a thought you will borrow
Today a forgotten quest
Dropped in the helix from the beginning
Picking up speed and ever spinning
Edwina Peterson Cross
©January 2003
Spirals of Time
Sonnet 1
(Unicorn Horn)
The time path spiral is a unicorn horn
Where will you catch meaning?
On the coil or the point will the past be reborn
A yesterday, full of sweet greening
Will you walk to tomorrow on crystalline stairs
That twist in a wind that will crack
Will you dance to next Thursday on gossamer air
Knowing you cannot come back?
The path is wreathed and honeycombed
And some lovers are so cleaver
That as down the sinuous path they roamed
They spun off the point forever
Step on to the whorl
Into bleached bones and pearl
Edwina Peterson Cross
©January 2003
Lemurian Woman’s Dance
(a Shakespearian Sonnet)
I entered the world through a mystery door
Etched with circles, painted with dream
A blank book waiting for blessed lore
A dancing leaf in a crystalline stream
Cycles of moonlight, cycles of blood
I danced as an opening flower
The rhythm of river brimming to flood
The dawn of a clear, singing power
The moon rose full in a midsummer sky
Earths mysteries grew plangent and deep
Nurturing came with a babies first cry
Fulfilment with milk-sated sleep
I dance now at moondark, with truths I have known
I am mystery and memory, wisdom and Crone
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2002
Ritual of Gratitude at the Moonlight Water Garden
*April 28, 2003*
On this day of remembrance, I come to the stone doors of Lemuria. These doors of stone which were made of my bones, my bones which were made of these stones. I trace a spiral on the lintel of the outer door and then lay the flat of my palm against the rock and speak.
"I seek entrance at this gate. I am a weaver of words; a minstrel of a later day; a bard of imagery and imagination. I am a dancer of dreams; an illusionist of air castles and rainbows; a pilot of myth. I am a scribe of memory; an aspirant of inspiration; I am the stareyed child of the Muse. I am a poet. I seek entrance at this gate."
I look up to see the Muse standing on the far side of the walls. She is taking me at my intention and has not come to play, she is not smiling and she is not wearing her running shoes. She is robed in her full shining, white Grecian regalia and from her brow, twined within her bright hair, lift two elegant, heavy antlers.
"Greetings My Child, on this Keepsake Day; I welcome you with ceremony though a door already opened." Her voice is lucent and clear in the cool evening air. "What do you seek? What do you bring? Where will you walk? Who comes with you?"
"I seek words. I see sanctuary. I seek . . . much. I bring words. I bring poems to leave in small token for all that I have taken away. I will walk the pathway to the Water Garden. I have come alone."
The ghost of a smile plays across her mouth, but does not stay. "Not alone, I think," she says, "glance up from your words occasionally, poet, and look about yourself."
The first thing I notice are the close-packed shadows on the ground. The last rays of the setting sun show them lengthened and elongated, like a throng of silent menhirs drawn out over the green earth, stretching past the gates into Lemuria. I turn and look behind myself and smile. Well, I should have known. I amend my declaration.
"I seek words. I seek sanctuary. I seek . . . much. I bring words. I bring poems to leave in small token for all that I have taken away. I will walk the pathway to the Water Garden. I do not walk alone. With me, as always, walks my Support Fellowship. Seen, or unseen, they walk beside me, like a strong staff in my hand, like a net beneath me. Beside me walks a mystery; beside me walks Goddess Moon as child, maiden, mother and crone; the secret, scented wind of El Duende; the continual, musical mirror of synchronicity; shape changing birds of lilac and ebony; a woman named Marta who carries a broom; a dimension sliding, Green Lady with a Pooka spirit; a bearded bard wearing a doublet, hose and pumpkin pants; two Canadian singers, a man and a woman; a dancer named Isadora in white Grecian robes; a small, fat yellow bear in a red vest; a poet called Vincent, who smells of the sea; three radiant figures bloomed of roots and wings: the Starshine Angel, the Sunlightening Angel, the Moonblaze Angel; an ageless woman with a halcyon heart, leaves in her hair and a pink poetry book in her hand; An Oxford Don; a contingent of otters; a giving, greathearted friend, who wears the name of sister; a vast array of visitors from Faerie; a grove of Dryads with ivy and lilly-of-the-valley twined in celebration through their wild hair; numerous friends who are residents of this fair land and you lady, if you will walk with us."
The muse now allows herself the smile as she surveys the crowd behind me. "Are you sure you have not forgotten anyone?"
"Not sure at all," I answer. "It's quite likely that I have."
She nods. "Very well, My Child." Her voice rises again and all else becomes still. "In Ceremony and Ritual, Come into this Land of Myth and Mystery, where you have walked in joy, bring your Support Fellowship and walk the path you first walked a year ago today. I am honored to walk beside you, where I will always walk, when I am bidden."
She lowers her eyes and I can't resist a small, repressed, snicker. This is an old joke, for, of course, she by no means always comes when I call. Perhaps I just haven't learned yet exactly what it is she means by "bidden."
I tuck my first offering, a small prose piece titled "Why the Gates Make You Shiver" into the cracks between two stones and I pass under the Gates into Lemuria, a tiny shudder tracing my backbone like a fast rolling marble of ice. On the other side, I find that the Muse has mellowed, the horns have melted from her brow and her robes are golden now, her feet bare.
Before us stretches the land of Lemuria, verdant, green and mysterious as resurrection moss. The sun has set and twilight is twining it's cool blue fingers among the newly budding trees. A soft, white mist is beginning to gather among the lower hills and the moon is just peaking up from behind the black velvet shoulder of the mountain. She is a waning crescent tonight; later, her liquid reflection will hold the questions that bubble up in circles from the Water Garden between bright silver horns.
We have a lovely walk together through the lower hills of Lemuria in the twilight. I leave more words at the bridge where the path crosses the river. As we near the Water Garden, my company drifts off one by one, two by two, into the clear, still Lemurian night. Some go to hear the symphony that will play beside the river tonight and some go to dance at the Dryad's dancing lawn. Some have gone to supper, some to share a bottle of wine over a table filled with candle light; some have gone home to a book; some will cross through the stone portals back into the world. All have walked me this far, in remembrance and support; all knew that I would keep this last vigil, as I began, alone.
I come at last to where the Lemurian Water Garden continually asks it's round, cycled questions of the night and stand transfixed, once again, staring down into the bright crystalline depth. I sit beside the water and, brushing the healing waters with my fingertips, enter Ritual Space.
A year ago I came here and was washed clean, washed full. I come here today, in gratitude, to say thank you.
I asked to sit in silent contemplation beside this water waiting for words, and this I have been granted. Supportive Solitude. There has been camaraderie and fellowship when I wished it, solitude when I needed it. And the words I asked for have come; the conceptions, perceptions, metaphors; not like the single papery moth I imagined, but circling and whirling like a thousand iris butterflies, lifting my hair, brushing magic against my eye lids, sinking into my mind so fast and furious I could hardly see them as they flowed into the blue veins of my temples and gushed out of my fingers as words. I was here to greet the beat of hawk wings when the night scented air churned with image; I was here with my fingers on the keyboard.
I sat here a year ago, in the gentle, green woodhush, and forgave myself for my pain. That pain did not leave me, in fact, I think it is worse, but when I washed away the blame, it left a breathing space. And into that expanse of breath; within my bones; through my thoughts; woven around my experiences and memories; spiraled all about my being, the words came pouring. The pain is a thing apart from the words now, for they can move, breathe, exist apart from it; around it; in spite of it. This is an unimaginable blessing, one I never knew to ask for, but one that has made all the difference.
A blessing that has allowed me to write more than I have done in years and to begin to paint as well. For, to my great surprise, there are nonverbal butterflies in this magic meadow too. They sunk into my temples right along with the rest, but when they started coming out of my fingers it was one of the greatest shocks of my life. Walk warily in this land, dear stranger. You can't really begin to expect them, but don't be too surprised by any miracles that happen by.
I take out the poem that I have prepared, unfold it and leave it on the thin marbled rail, above the ferns, held in place by a small rock. It is titled "Concentric Circles" and mirrors what I am seeing in the dark water. This is all. I move the flat of my palm across the water, moving out of Ritual Space and then sit quietly, alone, listening to the limpid, sweet song of the water and the still, crystal hush of the Lemurian night all around me.
Not totally alone in the end, it seems, for here is my old friend St. Irony suddenly standing on the other side of the water, his face unsmiling. "Words?" he says, "you are thanking the universe for words with . . . words? don't you find that just a little . . . Ironic?" "Oh, yes," I answer, "deliciously so." I look at him closely, narrowing my eyes in the moonlight. He looks like an ancient, but upright Portugese man dressed in the flowing black frock coat of another time. If I squint just right, however, I can see a coyote head superimposed on his hard, righteous, old face. Hummm. I thought so. "If the world gives me macaroni and cheese," I tell him, "I will cook up such a pot of macaroni and cheese in return!" He raises an eyebrow and his lips thin. He regards me narrowly and sniffs. "You are irreverent and disrespectful to the gift you have been given." A rich ghost of laughter floats in from the darkness. "And so are YOU," he adds to the night in general.
"Poets!" he complains, looking both haughty and indignant, "luckily there are not many of you left. You make my job, most difficult." I open my eyes and the ghostly canine head disappears leaving only a frowning old man with a sanctimonious look on his face. "Well," I answer, "I, for one, certainly do try." This is too much for him and without even bothering with a pop of displaced air, he is gone. I hear the deep, warm laughter floating like a shadow out of the darkness once again and I smile. Distinct or shadowed, manifest or obscure, bidden or unbidden; in truth, my Muse is always there.
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
Entering Lemuria:
Paths to the Moonlight Water Garden
*April 2002*
I have been looking for Lemuria. I have been walking long. Walking through a barren, meaningless world; a hollow echoing emptiness devoid of words. Words that had painted my life with wonder since I first discovered them; glimmering like luscious butterflies around my ears, brushing their sweet meanings against my lips, running in rainbow rivers from my pen. Words that were somehow suddenly gone; dried into dust, parched into nothing.
Between the rock walls I could see that the air was quivering; a bright tremulous pulse that murmured of magic. I hesitated, and then plunged through. As I passed under the ancient stone arches, a shiver traced my backbone. Following the winding paths, I hardly saw the country around me, drawn forward as if by something magnetic. As I kept walking, the late sun began to fade and twilight softly pearled the sky. Still I pushed on, hurrying toward some unknown goal. Darkness descended; a curtain of soft black velvet with an old-ivory moon swimming and flickering through the tree tops.
When I came at last to the Water Garden, I stood transfixed, staring down into the bright, crystalline depth. Something inside me trembled with recognition. I knew this liquideep enchantment. I knew it carried a message. I knew it could wash me clean. More importantly, I knew it could wash me full. Iridescent moonbeams danced and reveled through the water. The water broke into clean, clear circles above the rocks. I stepped forward into ritual space and the chanting began:
Healing Ritual at the Moonlight Water Garden
This is what I want most of all, to sit here beside the Moonlight Water Garden waiting for words. Watching for conceptions and perceptions bubbling up from the depth of the crystalline water. Metaphors will come softly, lighting against the blue veins of my temples like moths with powdery wings. I will sigh with delicious consummation as they sink into my mind. Images will come with the beat of hawk wings, appearing suddenly, black against the milky moon, churning the night scented air.
When the message comes, it will not come on soft feet whispering through the dew glistened grass. It will not come with the brass bell of trumpets striding through the trees. It will rise softly and mysteriously into the hollow space below my breast bone. It will flow, fluid and effortlessly through my body, spirit and mind, smoothing the spiny, nettled hurt inside me; filling ragged holes with gentle, soothing fingers; leaving me full and whole.
Into the gentle, green woodhush, Mother of the Ages, my essence, my self, will whisper a concentrated, soul-deep, liquid word: Forgive.
It is time and I have come to the place. In the still, sweet forest darkness, with ritual silence, I begin to brush away from thought and bone, the clinging cobwebs of guilt. The ragged gray shreds are swept cleanly away, swept from flesh, swept from memory. There is no censure in the soft warm flood that has filled my knowing. A crystal rush of woodsoaked wind strips away the last raveled fragments of selfblame, leaving behind a clearer, cleaner sight. Beside the moonlit water dreams a lucid soul, innocent where innocence has always been.
The wise woman within understands this. Nothing surprises her. She has seen it all. Clear-eyed and strong, with a small half smile on her lips, she waits. She waits, for words. She knows they will come.
Edwina Peterson Cross
©April 2002
Faeries Food
This is what I want to know
(nosy little poet, a hazard of the trade)
If they had come to you
In that land of living lucent light and real rainbows
With Faery Cakes baked of spunsugar dewdrops
Crisp Cookies shaped like stars plucked from the sky
Dripping with celestial honey
And wine
Clear as the breath of morning or red as sunsets beating heart
Would you have supped?
I know you know the significance
Child of Ancient Cymru
Would you have drunk with
The Queen of the Fae
On her side of the wall?
And if you find her here
A shuffling, homeless woman with an apples face
Shriveled, withered, bent and old
Will she drink here with you?
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
The world’s largest living organism is a huge stand of quaking aspen trees growing on a hillside in central Utah. What looks like 47,000 individual aspen trees covering 106 acres actually is 47,000 “stems” from a single plant. Quaking aspen, already well recognized as the most wide spread tree species in North America, can now take it’s rightful place as an acknowledged giant among giants.
Aspen
By Edwina Peterson Cross
At the top of the world
A spirit dwells
Cradled in the hollow hand of winter
She dwells through days of brief bleached whiteness; swathed in silent snow
She dreams through everlasting moon dark nights, scrying ice like crystal
Colors are scarce at the top of winter,
Achromatic
It is a world of white
soundless
and still
Unmoving skies of slate, smoke
steal; lie heavy with snow
(a sudden shock of sapphire sky
turns the ground from chalk to diamonds
then is gone as quickly as it came)
Evergreens, settled, secluded, winter cautious
surround deepgreen silence
in shades subdued; jade, malachite, moss
Yet, into this still silvered hush
a trace of motion whispers
Haiku brush strokes of ebony ink
inscribe secrets
against pale paper skin
In the briefest breath of a clear chill breeze
bare ivory branches lift above the silent snow
and dance
In a motionless world of white
She dances . . .
Black branded alabaster branches
weaving poems
in the still bone cracking cold
She sways and bends and stretches to the sky
liquid with longing
swept deep in a sweet swirling dream of
green
She dreams of the flush of rising sap
life impulse, vital spark
First felt faintly, gently, in slowly thawing ground
then quickened through the roots, sipped slowly up the trunk
Until at last, the sun warmed earth
sets the sweet green heartsblood free
Flowing, streaming, rushing, rising, soaring
Bursting from branch tips in a surge of joy
Leaves unfold in new spring green
tender green, translucent green
Leaves that slowly open to the soft spring air
taste the music of the greenwood
smell the scintillation of the sun
hear the soft wet scent of dew drops forming
touch the vibrations of the seasons turning
Leaves that tremble . . .
tremble with chlorophyll . . .
tremble with joy . . .
tremble with delight . . .
tremble in ecstacy . . .
Tremble shake shiver quiver shudder quake
twisting with relish on their supple steams
Then with joy,
with delight,
with ecstacy
She lifts her newly luxuriant branches
to a fresh Spring sky
and dances
She rejoices in movement, in greenness, in life
With the deep, sweet abandon of ageless youth
she dances
Renascence
And she will dance the mountains brief bright summer
twisting leaves slicing sun to slivers, dappling shade
Making shadows dance
in parqueted patterns on the ground
Knee deep in emerald feather fern
She swims and sways
in the luminous laughter of the summer wind
Ardent and thirsty in this short season of green
Roots are sent deep
drinking verdant nurture from the mountain mother
Roots are sent wide
unseen fingers linked in extended, enduring family
Sisters, tossing their sylvan hair in separate shafts of sun
are, in the depths, choreographed
Together
She is surrounded by the sounds and the scents of growth
and change,
Circled by the music and fragrance of the world becoming;
the crack of rocks settling in the sun, becoming mountain
the sweet breakdown of leafmold, becoming soil
The buttery, bright warmth of sunshine, becoming chlorophyll
The clear, clean smell of rain and melting show
laughing, becoming river
seeping, becoming groundwater
rising, becoming fog and mist
and rain again
She stands at the center of becoming;
a filter, a placenta
clarifying water, sunlight, oxygen, earth
Eternal feminine
giving
and receiving
Will this delicate, dancing spirit,
grown smooth with summers song
wither and wane
When touched by Autumns first breath of frost?
She will drink that frost like rare ice wine
Sending color burning deep
bright swallowed fire
The strong green heartsblood
will undergo a rite of ancient alchemy
and be will be transformed
suddenly pulsing with a thick new luster
The fluent, graceful dance becomes
enchanted
This soul of the woodland, spirit of motion, trembling essence of joy
Begins an incarnation of glory, of magic, of exultation
In the crisp, vivid air of autumn
she begins her exquisite, elegant dance of
Gold
When the gilded magic has reached a saturation point
and the air just won’t hold another drop
The leaves begin to fall
spinning and swirling in the thin autumn sunlight
reeling toward the ground in a last dervish dance of joy
A rain of golden faery wishes . . .
A shower of pirate coins . . .
Individually they are perfect
heart-of-gold, whisper thin and delicately veined
Together they are a spinning spellbound gateway,
primordial, primeval,
into mystery,
into the deep, ancient woodland of the heart
Swirling gold in flickering autumn sunshine
unbinds a haunting yearning
a blunted ache, a wondering wish
the longing for a dream
that we have forgotten how to dream
And when the last leaf has fallen
She stands on a carpet of gold
Contemplating the color of the wind
and the light of an early winter sky
See a spirit of feeling,
of aura, of ambiance, of intuition
Hear a spirit of hope,
when fire takes the forest, she is first to return
first to regenerate, first to regrow
Touch a spirit of roots; deep drawn connections,
powerful, and profoundly strong
Smell a spirit of rich earth, sweet sunshine, pure water, thin bright air
unceasing feminine, accepting and giving once again
Feel a spirit of happiness,
sensitive and sentient;
she shudders with delight
silvers with ecstasy
trembles and quakes with joy
She tastes each season of mountain mother as a gift,
snow, saprise, warmth, gold
She finds their circle pleasing, their cycle sound
All around the circle,
her branches will ask questions
etching dreams and poems against a changing sky
Throughout the cycle,
the wind will whisper music
and the secrets of the stars
Then she will tremble,
she will laugh with joy,
she will lift her arms and
She will Dance
Edwina Peterson Cross
© June 2002
A Poem For The Ever Growing Ranks
Of Sudden Self-styled Zen-Masters; May Their Mirrors Never Tarnish; May Their $150 Meditation Pillows Never Develop Lumps
I will be so
Zen
Zen tuned in
Me
Turned into
Zen tuned into the
Me the Me the Me
Of all Me
Zen
Me
I will be so studious
I will studiously ignore that
There are other people
In the universe
And tend with Compassion and Care
To the
Me the Me the Me
Of all Me
Zen
Me
With
Deep
Zen
Concentration
There.
Is.
Only.
Me.
You will be tolerated
Unless you get in my
Zen
Way
Zenonentity, you
Are not
Me the Me the Me
Of all Me
Zen
Me
I am so righteous
Righteous in my
Simplicity
My Plainness
My Complete
Self Absorbed Zeness
Zen Me
The Me the Me
Of all Me
Zen
Me
What do you mean this
Wasn’t what Buddha
Had in mind?
Buddha Who?
Buddha wasn’t as Zen as me
Nobody is as Zen as me
Zen as me
Me the Me the Me
Of all Me
Zen
Me
as
Me
Me
Me
Me
Me
Me
Me
Me
Me
Me
Me
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
You Just Can’t Imagine
It is amazing that one can remain
After so much time
Still stunned by pain
Astonished at the assault
Amazed at the magnitude
You want to call witnesses
“Feel this! .....................Good God!................................Can you imagine ?!”
But they don’t...............He may be................................but they can’t
Edwina Peterson Cross
©May 2003
Winter Comes . . .
Demeter said, and I suppose it is time
Though my heart is heavy and
Aches with a pain that ought to break it
Each and every time
I have at least learned
In these weary years of cycles
To know
The signs
The time comes a pace
Nettled and unsettled
I feel a cold, restlessness in the wind
A rustling, rusting impatience in every leaf
And Persephone is beginning
Once again,
To look right through me
Edwina Peterson Cross
©June 2003
Desert Drink
The expectation
Is to monitor tomorrow
To constantly walk out of the dry needles of piercing NOW
In homage to the idea
Of the next
Yet, THEN does not exist, nor does WAS
The only piece of the continuum present for packaging
IS
And IS is suffering and insufferable, breaking forth between the razor riveted West and walking the brittle, broken bottles of the North. Braved beyond consciousness
the moment bends, stiff, still and marbled; given well water, ground water, seeping, pouring, swimming, least you find it forever flowing in the still glove of a yellow wilderness. This piece of future
unseen, unused, relied upon to do the least, wakes among zions of crickets open and turning East where sleep is frozen, unbridled, unbroken, spread like spiked reeds upon the forgotten fields of the South.
For NOW is the extent of the fountain
The empty wilderness spreads in every direction
And I should conserve the water for times to come
But I’ve nothing in which to carry
And it evaporates off my hot, stretched skin
Faster than tears well in the wake of sorrow
Shall I not drink?
Shall I lay down next to the cool bubbling spring
And righteously
Die of thirst
Because the desert is so vast?
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
vANISh
What will you give for a path of sand
That leads to a vast unbroken land
Will you trade your fear and give your blood
To cross a flash and rising flood
Of disillusioned ecstasy
Of split and splintered fantasy
To soar above the empty dream
And cross the temporal stagnant stream
What will you give to mount the stair
Where vanished meets the bright blue air?
Twined of wishes, tied with hope
An elegant sacrament of rope
Sanctifies the hollow sky
Baptized by the naked eye
Come scale the swinging path of sand
Toward something you can’t understand
Come climb the bridge that leads toward dawn
Step past the brink and you’ll be gone . . .
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
Red Shoes
Narrowed eyes
Compressed lips
Shortly shaken heads
Have told me that
Along with teaching her to brush her teeth and
Tie her shoes
I should have grounded her more firmly
Planted her up to her knees and
Packed the dirt down hard
When she was sleeping, I could have
Clipped those wings
That sprouted from her ivory shoulders
Like iridescent fans of lace
Or at least bound them to her back
With tight bands across her budding breasts
If I had clipped them, bound them
When they were small
They would not have grown like this
They would not now spread like golden showers
Filling the whole room
I should have told her:
“People don’t like girls with wings”
Especially not golden wings
That shine like gilded hope forgotten
With flaxen feathers that whisper dreams
And an aching, arching beauty
That takes the breath
No, the world does not approve
Of girls with wings
“Be a good girl”
I should have said
“Be a quiet girl
Don’t attract attention
We’ll keep those perilous hollow bones
Bent beneath your dresses
Stay silent and no one will know”
But what I should have said
I didn’t
What prudence dictated and caution advised
I swept over the threshold
With a firm hard stroke
And I slammed the door
Headless
I watched the alchemy happen
Recklessly
I allowed her
To grow
And now I stand
Alone in this winter field
Staring up into the sky
Holding in my hand
A glistening pair of radiantly ready
Scarlet shoes
As a promise
In spite of all the world will say
A blood red pledge
Of unfaltering, unwavering
Belief
Staring up into the sky
I am blinded and dazzled
By a lucent light that is
Not the sun
My eyes brim with gold dust tears
Which slide like prayers down my cheeks
And I am whispering rash, incautious words
“Fly Angel
Fly!”
Edwina Peterson Cross
©February 2003
Friday, August 22, 2003
Tami’s Poem
She sings of mystery, myth and fire
Sweet flames that light the wine
An ancient bard of modern word
High Priestess of the vine
She sings of grapes crushed in the cup
Of Metamorphous trance
Oracle of the Big Thicket
She weaves the greenwood dance
She weaves a wellspring of wisdom
Wakeless, wide and rich
Deep as Taliesin’s ancient eye
A talisman, bewitched
With words pared hollow to the bone
Sickle cut to show it
Words pruned to make ideas bloom
The harvest of a poet
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
Stream Song
Sing me a song of tomorrow
I’ll sing you a song of the sea
Give me green glass to trade or to borrow
I’ll give you the dust of debris
I’ll give you the dust of debris
To bake with the soul of your bread
I’ll give you a pattern of three
To carve in the foot of your bed
Open the back of the moon with a razor
I’ll open the throat of the sky
Sing me the song of whiskey appraiser
I’ll sing you a wraith passing by
I’ll sing you a wraith passing by
To bake with the soul of your bread
I’ll give you a pattern of tri
To carve in the foot of your bed
‘Tis better to wait for the end of a mountain
Than to soak all your hopes in the sea
So give me the prayer of a sweet, splashing fountain
And I’ll give you the bones of a tree
I’ll give you the bones of a tree
To bake with the soul of your bread
I’ll give you a pattern of three
To carve in the foot of your bed
Edwina Peterson Cross
©May 2003
Stream Rhyme VI
Sing of silence, sing of rhyme
Etched in beauty, out of time
Watched by midnight, soft and round
Clocks unbroken, circle sound
Time was stretched, the clock was stopped
Bird was broken, door unlocked
Sound flew out, time slammed the door
Silence sang forevermore
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
Stream Rhyme VII
Quiet sits inside like acres
of pudding still and sweet
Sleep was taken to the bakers
A crusted, sugared treat
Yesterday was wrapped and turning
Simmered slow to keep from burning
Stars were stirred into the porridge
Moon was put on ice is storage
See, it took eternity just to cook this day
So I licked my fingers, and ate it anyway
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
Stream Poem VIII - Stream Poem to a Stream Poem
Words flow out in sleepy meter
Meanings lost beyond the moon
Painting pictures sharp and sweeter
Which roll and rhyme too soon
Words drip like honey from the edge of nothing
Frayed out into lace
Their import loose and vaguely flying
Quick scattered out through space
Pluck a word like a sunturned daisy
Spread it like butter, sweet and hazy
In lines of rhyme with much less reason
Tasting time and sound and season
Things forgotten, words unbound
Stream the Stream Poem, cycle round
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
PEACHES
In the darkened basement
Patience waits ‘til spring
In glass upon the casement
Sealed with a golden ring
Sweet, thick summer’s sacrifice
Pared and sugar jelled
Simmered soft with curing spice
The seasons slowly meld
When the ground is white with snow
And shadows freeze the dial
Here they’ll wait; row on row
Succulent sunshine in each smile
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
Sleeping at the Keyboard
When I become chilled rubber
In the whir of the fan
My skin stretches and returns
Surprised
My head falls sidewards
Strangely softly
Not with a wrench or a snap
But drifting like proverbial snow
Into an expected bank
Inside, my mind tunnels gently
And floats into grey
My hands on the keyboard merely rest
Except for one finger which drops
And begins to paint a long line of sleeping f’s
ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
They look like lace, I could cut them out for paper dolls
I don’t know why I don’t get up and go to bed
Something says I have to stay here
With the heals of my hands as anchors
My fingers limp on these keys
And my eyes rolling back in my head
There is a thickness behind my forehead
That pulls; it pulls everything toward it
Rounding from my round shoulders, up from my
Hollow backbone, sucking clean my breast
Bone into the density to be rolled into grey
Morpheus ghost ; still
Here I must wait
Edwina Peterson Cross
© May 2003
Sleeping at the Keyboard Pantoum
Sleep lifts me from my centered place
Into another where
I flow sideward with a balanced grace
And stop, suspended, there
Into another where
Morpheus bestowed this fluent dance
And stop, suspended there
An elegant, drifting, trance
Morpheus bestowed this fluent dance
I flow sideward with a balanced grace
An elegant, drifting, trance
Sleep lifts me from my centered place
Edwina Peterson Cross
©June 2003
Thursday, August 21, 2003
The Spirit of Sagebrush
My father said
In all the years he painted the American Southwest
He could never mix the paints just right
To capture the elusive greygreen color of
Sagebrush
He said he never painted a sagebrush
That he felt was true
He called his paintings ‘Primitives’
And they were simple . . .
Fresh, elemental, easy, pure
In block forms and unaffected lines
He strung the desert’s cradle
With vivid orange, rich lines of red,
The blues of eternal frontier skies
The deep silent green of pine
And dustings of that
Subtle, slippery silver sage
I am a virtual painter
My hands never touching turpentine or oil
Rags, pallet knife or even a brush
On a flat grey pad, with a small grey pen
My fingers barely need to move
To slice apart the hidden harlequin doors
That open the rainbow
With pretend paint against a simulated canvas
I breathe breathless images of Make Believe
Today I come to paint
A sagebrush
On my monitor screen appears a polychrome wheel
Inside it curls every shade of every color in existence
Every color in nature, in creation, in the cosmos
Or so MetaCreations Corporation (The Visual Computing Software Company)
Would have me believe
Imagine! All of creation condensed in a symbol the size of my palm!
And will this regulated rainbow yield up
That evasive shade of green
Tinged with silver, dusted with pearl
That eluded my father all his life?
It occurs to me, that with my dropper tool and a photograph
I can siphon color and feed it to my pen like a silvergreen transfusion
Will my hands then bloom like the desert
And bleed true sage?
The photographs are flat and sterile
But they do offer me shades of green
Beryl, bottle, olive, pea
I lift the colors and reproduce them
There must be a thousand nuances, shades and gradations here
But, none carrying that
Elusive, evasive wash of silver
Nor can I find it on this precise, technological,
Supposedly all inclusive circle of Joseph’s coat
Cautiously I dab two colors on the screen
Click another selection and
Run the two together with water
Closer, but still not right . . .
I smile at the green amalgam on the monitor
Feeling like an alchemist
Casting for gold
I could be at this for
A life time
Well . . .
Today
Since that one intriguing, imperceptible shade of green
Simply refuses to be found
I will use them all
I will paint, not the reality image of the sagebrush
But a dreamer’s vision of it’s root and essence, it’s pith and marrow
So.
What lives in the spirit
Of the Sage?
Grounded with rugged tenacity in the legends of the West
Here is a plant that may be rooted in sand, but will still hold to its moorings
With the same quiet, strength and purpose
As the people who share its stretching space on earth
Almost invisibly, it gives succor to dryland animals
Still, secret animals who silently refuse to perish; white-footed mice, black-tailed jack-Rabbits, antelope, mule deer, tiny sparrows, sage-grouse, quick lizards, partridge, voles,
That revered and reviled trickster coyote, grinning up at the stars with mocking eyes
All find food, shelter, sanctuary
In its thin, scratchy, splintering branches
This is my heritage
This gift of the desert that made the mountains laugh
Incisive, pungent, dry, dusted with small round leaves of
Greygreen powered pearls
In bloom, it turns the desert to a phenomenal purple dream
It is silver satin witch wood in the moonlight
Artemisia Tridentata, wild growing bitter herb of an arid land
You have seen wide desert years roll by, grown old and horary
Rich rooted there, strong-willed in your survival
You hold in your brittle bones the slow patience of the years and
The deep, dry secrets of a low hanging marmalade moon
Burned by the ancients as sacred smudging smoke
Your spirit comes to cleanse, to bless, to heal
Your smoke might be in my eyes tonight
Balm, not of Gilead, but of the Rocky Mountains
Where they flush crimson and dip to kiss the desert
Here on the wall, my Daddy has captured that healing oil
In his primeval strokes, he has painted my heart
Elemental and absolute; in vivid orange, red, terra cotta, brown
Washed by a mist, the color of tears
But, I think he must have been mistaken all along
About the accuracy of his green, for as I look
The air is suddenly filled with a smell to break your heart
The sharp, freshwashed resin
Of sagebrush after a mountain rain and
Pure and clean, undeniably silvergreen
I hear the sound of his deep, sweet voice
Singing “The Hills of Home”
Edwina Peterson Cross
©May 2003 May 2003
(Of Rumi)
Voice
With fresh, sudden
Breath-drawn astonishment, I hear you
Dance out of the year 1207, where it seems you
Cannot possibly belong; a depth of dream, flying
Full ripened truth
Voice
Out of time, your words balance joyfully
On the edge of my heart
Sacred simplicity
A taste of clean, crisp mystery
Eight-hundred-years
So new
Blessings . . .
I hear
Blossoms . . .
Edwina Peterson Cross
© June 2003
“Inside you there is an artist you don’t know about . . . say “yes!” quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from the beginning of the universe.” ~ Rumi ~
Rivers, Bridges and Other Cliché’s
Thirty years later
I recognize your handwriting on the envelope immediately
Even without my glasses
You write to say
You are a Grandmother . . .
An unexpected gravity shift
In my mind, you are definitely
At incongruous angles with the word
I remember you holding the tiny newborn son
Who must be this baby’s father
When my own jigsaw childhunger was still
Unsolved, raw and throbbing
Even then, it was strange to me
How he fit so seamlessly in your arms
Yet had nothing at all to do
With the bright, fluid part of you
That belonged to me
A long, long time ago
The vivid, flowing beings that we were
Unclasped hands and stepped apart
And the years poured like a rushing river between us
Through all the years of motherhood
Those years of quiet joys and sleepless nights
We echoed and mirrored, but never quite touched
Drawing the traditional paper trail of
Christmas Cards and letters
Each signed at the end
With small, regretful handwritten
Sighs
I know the tale of four grown children
Though, it seems they must belong to another someone
Someone who wears a metaphor of your face
Someone who poses in photographs with beautiful strangers
Someone who can’t really be you
You, on the other side of that wide, deep, flood
Inextricably wearing the name of
“Grandmother”
So the years disappeared underwater like slick, sudden weeds
In a flood, in a rush, in a flux, in a torrent
You are a Grandmother
I struggle with a body suffused with chronic pain
We are no longer the bright, graceful beings
We once were . . .
Here I stop
Close my eyes and smile
For it doesn’t matter . . .
It doesn’t matter . . .
At all
Time may flood and rage and flow
But memory is a bridge that is stronger than time
Built of forever; anchored firm in our hearts
The river is a symbol, an image, a cliché
I’ll tell you what is real:
~
Somewhere
Out there in time
There are two young girls
Eternally
Driving around in the middle of the night
Two heads are tipped together
Chestnut, Gold
Cradling confidence; trading trust
Somewhere a full moon shines
On the clean, clear line of their throats,
Their heads thrown back in laughter
Somewhere two voices lace the darkness
Asking deep, intent questions of life
Never pausing to listen for an answer
~
So our bodies are growing old, and our eyes are growing dim
So we go another twenty years and our hands never touch
It doesn’t matter . . .
It doesn’t matter . . .
At all
Somewhere
In the deepness of a hushed summer night
An endless summer night, rich with the smell of honeysuckle and hay
We are forever sixteen
Savoring sips of sweet stolen darkness
Dancing forever
on the edge of light
( With Love, For Bertha )
Edwina Peterson Cross
©May 2003
Published in Welcome Home Magazine, July 2003
The poetry came with breath
Perhaps before: certainly, my mother says I danced
Nourished greenly on watercress and sparkling lemon-lime
The poetry came with language
In that mystic moment when labeling turned
To understanding
Perhaps before: star-fish fingers, sky-reaching to touch
The limpid moon
On a scaffolding of idea and image
I have been sculpting since my fingers formed
Perhaps before: shaping with shadow
Gilding with glitter, building with breath and bone,
With layers of learning and lore,
Hollowing out the harmony
Between the language of deep darkness
And the radiant tongues of angels
Balanced in an open door of twining twilight
Neither actuality or accuracy, factuality or fidelity
But a blending of both
Synthesis and symmetry
Something replete, round and whole
Stones of antiquity, classic bedrock granite
Blending smoothly with seafoam and mist
In this abstract, concrete creation
This spiraling, seamless montage
Produced for no audience, for no audience will come
Fact: there will be no eyes to see
No ears to hear; no fingers with enough regard
To trace my pale blue veins, from wrist to heart
Truth: it matters not at all
The creation goes on
A conception shaped of joy
Forged out of pain
Fashioned of a needless necessity
Molded to pour full and mellow
Filling a sweet, hollow yearning
Which has echoed with seasound and moonsong
Since the dawning
Perhaps before . . .
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
Pantoum to an Adolescent Male
Weasel not away
The long days of summer
For they are short as sweet melon juice
Slick seeds spit between your teeth
The long days of summer
Should be woven into wonder
Slick seeds spit between your teeth
Leave autumn a dry rustling vine
Should be woven into wonder
For they are short as sweet melon juice
Leave autumn a dry rustling vine
Weasel not away
Edwina Peterson Cross
©June 2003
Insomnia Pantoums
#1
Night fades into day
Black lace edging satin
Bleeding seeping time
From sleep that will not come
Black lace edging satin
Of still silent gray
From sleep that will not come
In the blank sweep of hours
Of still silent gray
Bleeding seeping time
Of still silent gray
Night fades into day
#2
There is something intensely weary about this form
That matches my dragging days of pain
Caught in circles that won’t transform
A closed linked wheeling chain
That matches my dragging days of pain
With a mocking sameness round
Caught in circles that won’t transform
In it’s pattern I am bound
With a mocking sameness round
Caught in circles that won’t transform
In it’s pattern I am bound
There is something weary about this form
Edwina Peterson Cross
©June 2003
Pantoum to Soup
Comfort found in hot round soup
Filling corners with being warm
Willing noodles snuggle the scoop
Nestled safely away from the storm
Filling corners with being warm
Childhood lingers on my lips
Nestled safely away from the storm
Mid savory, salty sips
Childhood lingers on my lips
Willing noodles snuggle the scoop
Mid savory, salty sips
Comfort found in hot round soup
Edwina Peterson Cross
©June 2003
My daughters were raised in
Snow
Cold-chalk, lilly-ice, drifting to cover the windows, sifting
The woods full until the twenty-foot Aspens looked like
Bare bushes
Pale bleached bones on alabaster
white on white
They played on top of fifteen feet of diamonds and pearls
Crust frozen to hold their slight weight
Angels on eggshells
Their voices ringing singular notes
piccolo, flute
In a vast symphony of silence
My daughters were raised in the silence of
Snow
They learned the world muffled, hushed, wordless and white without
Laughing with color, bright with thought, warm
with the crackle of wood fire within
They have grown to be
Thoughtful, colorful, warm and laughing women
Who step easily into
Silence
Whose beautiful eyes
aqua, ebony
Fully understand the sound of
White
Edwina Peterson Cross
©February 2003
A Certain Light Over Cache Valley
(Not To Be Entered in The May Swenson Poetry Award Competition)
They would never give me your award
This prize established with such sober gravity
Amid the quasi hallowed halls of learning
Where we both trod
Here they have set you up in sacred, sacrosanct sequestration
And honor your name with worshipful lowered voices
Because in your life time you achieved
That masterstroke which can only be breathed in reverent whispers
“Publication!”
And so, lucky you, you have, in death, been glorified
And are now ‘Intellectual’ ‘Sophisticate’ ‘Lesbian’
‘Ground Breaking’ ‘Innovative’“Provocative’
‘Insouciant’ and ‘Vital’
These are their words
Were you able to be so insouciant, I wonder
When you were eighteen
A square peg that would in no way fit into any of their round holes?
I know enough to know with surety
That you were not treated in life
With whispers of respect and awe
For either your intellect or your lesbianism
In this place that now proffers
An award in your name and declares you
A “Provocative Vital Force”
In death
And were I to bring to this most serious literary panel
The fluff of clouds that flow from my pen
I would probably earn no more than a
Sniff of derision as they were swept from the table
The audacity to have submitted such frivolity to a
Competition distinguished by such high literary standards!
Were not those standards quite clearly stated after all?
But May, We galloped our willow horses in the same talcum dust
Down the same long lanes, next to the same canal
We have seen the same light
Break like a river of ice
Over the same valley
We have recognized
This certain slant of light
Held it in our eyes
In a way that perhaps no one else
On earth
Has ever done
I can read it in your words, you could have read it in mine
But no one will ever hold these two pictures up, side by side
And comprehend this identical wash of luminosity
Like double wings of diamond over the Wasatch hills
They will never know how much we have in common
How close some thoughts and visions come
For they have painted an ice perfect portrait of you
That I with my dusty toes
Would never try
To touch
Edwina Peterson Cross
©May 2003
Marta’s Box
Here have I
An inexplicable, unaccountable,
Bottomless box
Without corners, without center
Unexplainable, unfathomable a depth
Without end
You can pour it full until it fills to the brim
And it never fills, for there is no brim
No brim, no brink, no border,
No bed, no base
No bottom
Into it’s depth pour your
Questions, uncertainties, doubts
It will offer no
Answers
But only round, resonating
Echos
Telling you
You have
Been
Heard
You can pour anything here
Any vile brew of misery or fear;
Terror, sickness, dread or gloom
Any horrific mixture,
Of pain and panic
Of hurt and harm
Pour your toxins here
Into the waiting bottomless depth
Of this deep redeeming box of mine
Lined with plaited Swan’s feathers
Woven out of broom
Edwina Peterson Cross
©June 2003
Swans Lullaby
I’ll sing you to sleep on the feather of a Swan
Ebony, lilac and rose
Where hushed twilight opens the back gates of dawn
And the sage and the heather grows
I’ll sing you to sleep from an enchanted cave
Ebony, lilac and rose
And I’ll weave you a tale of three sisters brave
Where the sage and the heather grows
I’ll sing you to sleep with a song of the Muse
Ebony, lilac and rose
I’ll sing you the riddle and scatter the clues
Where the sage and the heather grows
I’ll sing you to sleep with a song of the lake
Ebony, lilac and rose
This song that I sing for only love’s sake
Where the sage and the heather grows
I’ll sing you to sleep with the song of the moon
Ebony, lilac and rose
Sleep now in harmony, breathe softly in tune
Where the sage and the heather grows
Edwina Peterson Cross
©May 2003
Lacquer
In her carseat carrier in the doctor’s waiting room
Her starfish hands seek her mouth
Like two celestial space flowers, opening and closing
In a liquid, arrhythmic flow that is purely, impeccably
Almost two-months-old
“Almost two months”
You tell me when I ask, raising her from the seat in a
Single, smooth, seasoned step to your shoulder
Where a receiving blanket waits with prescience
Over your practical denim work shirt
I see your eyes travel to my hands and an eyebrow lifts
At my cranberry flame acrylic nails
You turn your back, our conversation over
My lacquered hands having automatically sorted me as “other”
You have no way of knowing that this is the first polish
I have worn in twenty-five years
No way of knowing that I still rock grocery bags
Or the way my head whips around
When a tiny voice in a crowd calls “Mommy!” although
My baby’s voice is now a low, deep basso
You have no way of knowing
That I now must look up to see that baby’s face
Yet, when the nurse calls my name, and I pick up my things
I will spend at least a fraction of a second
Searching for the diaper bag
I cut off my long hair twenty-five years ago
And never grew it back
Starfish tangled in it like complex chestnut kelp until
It was more trouble than it was worth
I spent years without earrings
For the searching starfish quested the brightness
Discovered, clenched and pulled
Through much of my life, I wore your uniform, right down to the
Prescient receiving blanket
I know the dance you weave by heart
I walked and rocked the same patterned steps
My hands automatically patting an ancient, age-old scansion
Softly against a tiny back
It was such a very short while ago
That I put on a skirt and earrings that hang down
That the starfish I loved slipped out of my fingers
And I painted their tips with cranberry flame
Edwina Peterson Cross
©May 2003
In a brief pain-stilled moment, beset by green:
Heavy and green, this well-being of brief duration, a moment of niap, concise, too short, but enough, to experience. Experience, as a thousand shades of green glisten the summer trees, polished malachite leaves turning front to back in a scintillating verdant choreography of gushing wind, soft as green glass against my skin. Niap is the inverse of pain, reverse, verse and chapter inside-out and backwards. Do not probe too deeply into niap, for there is, of course, pain somewhere and if sought, it will arise and spit and salver, but for the moment, it is not screaming. Its shrill ever-present throb of color-sucking nothing is ever so fleetingly still; and so the pathways of my perception pulse, briefly, palpably, full and flowing with green. The mountains are enchanting emerald undulations, pine trees looking soft as eiderdown, as feathers, as rose petals, as any blanket of jade cliché you might stroke with fingertips, shocking sweet sensual awareness discovered by the absence of that which is not to be searched for. I swallow this short shot of summer sweet, as summer once was forever, when it bloomed an eternal patina of warmth; lazy and still. A creation where the world smelled of nothing so much as green; green in my eyes, my breath, my mouth; tongue tasting childhood, tasting memories of buttery sun on warm brown skin and bare feet on dew damp grass; clover-colored shamrock grass, succulent with caressing cool chlorophyl. A scarce, pain-free breathing space as tranquil as turquoise twilights when the canyon wind swam cucumber crisp through the backyard with the tang of tart apple-green and a menthol mist of mint. In this drifting moment of indrawn breath, I remember a bed among the daisies, laying on my back, the ceaseless sound of home, wet in my ears; sluicing downhill, streaming crystal singing liquid songs over slick jade moss, water splashing toward the fields below in a rush of yearning to create, to feast, to become - green. Above my summerdrunk emerald eyes the sky drifted past forever overhead; a canvas of lapis lazuli, painted with wide, sweeping strokes of tree; shivering, shimmering, honied breath of life; aware, awake, and green, of green. Of green.
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
Genesius
Spirit
Who dwells within these ancient walls
Listen soft
and come
I recognize your essence
in the smell of grease paint and sawdust
I feel your song
in the swell of an overture
echoing from my arches to my breast bone
as I stand waiting in the wings
I have learned to feel your presence
in the clamor of shared laughter
in each clear well spoken line
in the solitary stillness
as the last light fades
You have been the cradle of my potential
the wellspring of my hopes
a blank canvas for my creation
my muse
my shelter
my refuge
my home
Ancient Spirit
Who dwells within these temporal walls
Bless our circle
and stay
When this hollow shell
that has housed our spirits
crumbles and splinters to the ground
When the stairs are leveled
and the booth lays broken against the boards
After the last curtain call
when the lights are brought down for the final time
Whisper softly through the settling dust
“I am not gone”
Teach us your quiet secret
let us feel your simple truth
For you never have existed
in mute wood
or silent stone
You breathe creation cleanly
clear, through blood and bone
We are the vessels of your spirit
we are your essence of your home
Wherever we stand together
We will feel your shadow
As the blaze of bonding
in a circuit of clasped hands
As the sweet balm of belonging
As the quiet knowledge of a shared love
Wherever our energy shines
Wherever an audience waits
We will feel your touch
As a quickened pulse in the throat
in the deep waiting dark before curtain,
As the spun glass silence that hangs
between the last spoken word
and the thunder of applause
We will know you . . . silent spirit
As that stubborn love at the very bottom of the soul
That says when the music is over
and the words are all spoken
and the applause is all gone
and all is dark
All we will want
Is to come back here tomorrow
and do it again
Eternal Spirit
Who dwells within a dream
Whisper soft
and stay
(With Love for the Ashland High School Thespians, who shared the ending of one dream and the beginning of another. 1995-1999)
Edwina Peterson Cross
©June 1997
BUILDING
There in your fullsnow moon
The lucent light
Will glide on silent snow
Gold-dust on diamonds
Sweet cream on pearls
Build a Snow Goddess there
With the cold, dry powder
And your bare, dreaming hands
Mold round her milkwhite, resonant breasts
Mellow, full of moon;
To nurture a starving world
My garden
Glows moist with the same moonlight
Here it is deep and damp
Serene and saturated
Kneeling in the wet black earth
I ask blessing for a land that is dry
Slake the thirst, quench what is parched
Renew the seared, regenerate the withered
Kneeling in the calm tranquility of night
I ask peace for a world infected with war
My fingers form eyes deep with wisdom
My hands shape a face of clear compassion
Kneeling in the wet black earth, here in the dark
I will build a Goddess
Of violets and of rain
My cupped hands fill with sacred moonlight
I will build
A Goddess
Of Love
Edwina Peterson Cross
©February 2003
For Lisa
Little golden haired girl
I can still see you so clearly
Whispering childhood secrets
Skipping and dancing
Skimming the ground like a butterfly
Bubbling with laughter
The radiant high-country sunshine
Sparkling on a sweet, clear-water stream
Can you possibly be old enough
To have joined
This sad sorority of grieving women?
My heart aches
As I offer grief of greeting
You, who were my daughter’s childhood friend,
Are my sister
Today
We are many, yet so often silent in sorrow
Our vast numbers are unknown
We are hundreds, we are thousands
Each is the only one
Stunned by sudden unwanted blood
Abruptly bereft with our dreams in pieces in our palms
We are packed to bursting with disbelief, disappointment, despair
Filled with impotence, isolation, rage, regret,
Suffused with sadness, silence, sorrow
We are empty
It is not fair
There is no equity in this anguish
It will change you
It will mold you
You won’t ever understand
You won’t ever forget
But you will heal
The sharp jagged edges of the pain will round
The blistering sorrow will ebb to ache
This grief will become gentler
But it will always be yours
Know
That as you are an incomparable
Miracle
Your healing will be incomparable too
In your own time
In your own way
Talk if you feel like talking
Cry if you feel like crying
Nurture your spirit
Listen to your heart
Let yourself
Grieve
Walk the wheel that leads through
denial, anger, fear, depression
To acceptance
Remember
There is no timetable for grief
There is no schedule for hope
Remember
Though each is always the only one
You are never
Alone
Edwina Peterson Cross
©January 2003
Following Campbell
I have spent
Many late nights
With a need to know
That twisted and burned my reaching fingers
Assailed by fluttering, besieging wings of questions
Massive questions like caverns of swallowing thick black wonder
Trivial, niggling questions, pulling at my sleeves in anxious, breathless mutters
Obsessed, unsettled questions, hovering, gibbering, and moaning
Quiescent questions, lucent and sublime; piercing my hollow breast bone with their stillness
Questions came in unending floods of flapping wings
Washing over me in a rush, in a flux, in a flurry
Swirling me in vacant circles on the dry, bare floor
Answered only
By patterns in the dust
I have spent
Many late nights
Spent them like coins dropped into a slot
Only to have them returned directly below with a cavernous clunk
“Empty”
I have spent
Many late nights
Connected to a glowing box of witchery; an enchanted magic purple square
Alone in the sweet pine scented dark, I uncovered a not so secret, secret
A clear, unclouded mystery that rocked my world
Mirrored in the double shells of my ears, rang the sweet single sound
Of a mouse click
After a lifetime of ceaseless, eternal, transparent questions,
I suddenly found a pathway
To a million solid answers
When they gave me the cable hookup I began to dissolve
With the heals of my hands as anchors, my fingers limp on the keys
I pointed my arrow at the colorful play-dough words
And became unfirm around the edges; then I Asked
My silhouette shook and I
Melted
I have spent
Many late nights
Clarifying into reality
I sat staring; still and substantial
Bemused, confused . . . even quite amused
Having discovered, of course, that an answer, is never purely an answer
An answer, much as it is sought, is never quite
Enough
Information is not satisfactory, knowledge does not suffice, intelligence is not sufficient
Across the room, Saint Irony holds up a glass of dark wine and smiles his coyote’s smile
“Em Seu Olho!” he salutes me
Indeed
You can hold all the learning of the spheres in your lap
And you will always find a part of the jig-saw missing
A piece of the sky, way up there in the left hand corner . . .
Pale and blue, liquid and flowing, it just may be the piece that holds the eye of god . . .
And through that little opening the questions will begin to bubble . . .
I have spent
Many late nights
Searching the images on the inside on my own eyelids
Balancing pain and poetry like icecicles on my palms
Wading in circles of my own ink
Pens and paper, archaic instruments of a forgotten craft,
Spread across my desk like ancient questing beasts,
Searching, dowsing words splashed across them like blood
Trickling like inky foot prints down the glowing screen in front me
Hanging there like a rosebush trellis, waiting for blossom
I have spent
Many late nights
Alone in a glacial stillness, where not even frozen words could come
When I heard the echo of a familiar voice
A soft voice; gifted with metaphor, rich with myth
A wise voice; which spoke of a thousand masks, but wore none
One still cold dawn, I followed the echo of that soft, wise voice
For I had tasted and trusted it’s truth
When all the old distillations in my cup of faith
Had crusted, flaked and turned to dust
I found a cross-roads, where many paths met
The bright threads twisting and twining were hard at first to follow
Then, stepping back, I saw
That all the separate fingerprints left behind, melded to make a pattern
The wash of thought and theory; culture and color,
Shone like stained glass in the sun
I found knotty queries; snarled and complex thorn bush thought
And fair-minded singers with carding combs, tugging with interest at the tangles
I listened to a chorus of strangers
And heard the reverberate whisper
Of a single soft voice
“Balance” said the voice into my bones
“Harmony,” echoed the beat of my blood
A question begets an answer begets a question begets an answer
The tide flows in, flows out, flows in
It is the search that is sweet
Said the voice
Late nights will blossom
And I will walk the ebb and the surge of the moon
Indication will follows inspiration, form will follow fire
The Muses and Maenads will join hands in the dance
Dionysus stories the steps, Apollo sings the song
With just a little rain water, I will grow this acorn
Into a stunning, shivering, aspen tree
Green and gold, the color
Of my eyes
I have spent
Many late nights
And here I will spend many more
“Balance” whispers the voice into my breathing
Balance, balance
Bliss . . .
(For My Friends at the Joseph Campbell Mythology Group)
Edwina Peterson Cross
© May 2003
“Florence is a gift”
(Chaim Potok: “My Name is Asher Lev”)
In wide still streets of Sunday
She dreams in ancient silence
coral and ivory walls of lace
cupped in green Chianti hills
Like a mouthful of moon, names echo
Round and hollow throughout my heart
Bargello, Pontevecchio, Duomo; Arno
shimmers sonorous under summer stars
Bright birth of beginning, elegantly rocking
Renaissance rose in a cradle of gold
city sculpted of genius, forever reborn
un regalo dei dii, Firenze
Edwina Peterson Cross
©July 2003
Existence etched in lines of ink
Emerge from the nothing of none
Features positioned, aligned, in sync
In a mouse click creations begun
Flavor and feeling, essence and thought
An ego of leather or lace
The mystery of being in seconds is caught
In the lines of one human face
Edwina Peterson Cross
©January 2003
FINGERS
Mark the pieces of a hexameter
Scansion
Dactyl/Dactyl/Dactyl/Dactyl/Dactyl/Spondee
_ - - / _ - - / _ - - / _ - - / _ - - / _ _
Spondee/Spondee/Spondee/Spondee/Dactyl/Trochee
_ _/ _ _/ _ _ /_ _ /_- - / -‘
Fingers
Pressed tight against the fingerboard
Trembling with the arcane magic of a perfect vibrato
Fingers
Lift light upon the bow
Drawing a long, deep, beautiful moan
Round, mellow, whole
No inked in dots of bound, constrained musical notation
Intrude
My eyes are closed
Fingers
Middle extended to thumb, rounded fingers
Rounded wrist, rounded elbow, dropped shoulder, raised chin
Ribcage, backbone, only lifted air between
Tucked hip bones, turned out toes
Long Black torso, thin pink legs,
Ribbon-laced satin feet, wooden blocks at my toes
Fingers
Stretched out of that perfect rounding
Because the music begged release
Arms twist, chest reaches for the sky, back bends
Hair sweeps the floor, red satin skirt whirls,
Bare legs extend, bare ankles unbind,
Extensions of the music, Expansions of feeling,
Body breathes, and spins full of sweet substance
Bare feet
Grab the floor with the exquisite sensitively of
Fingers
Fingers
Wrapped around a pen
This dactyl
Is bent
So you cannot count
The beats of my being
Nor measure the scansion of my soul
Fingers
Pry open the cage of language, throw the door wide
I spin in ecstasy, wild wings of words whirling
Against my cheeks, my breasts,
My eyelashes, my sky stretching schismatic
Fingers
Edwina Peterson Cross
©May 2003
PIECES OF MEMORIES
Segments of memories, halves of jokes
Pieces of mysteries in my palm are curled
But The Secret Weapon for scrambled eggs
Matters to no one else in this world
No one else will ever know
The Double Agent Undercover Sign
The way into the abandoned house
Or the Camp Beneath the Pine
Of the man without issue and “socks!”
Only I know the laughter now
Or why you were spaghetti
Or about the flying cow
Of all the times I crossed my heart
To promise, pledge and swear
Secrets still hidden in my heart
And I’m the only one to care
There never was a fallen box
But Green Grass sang each spring
And I’m alone with dire knowledge
When the Troggs sing “Wild Thing”
Trivia like confetti
Frosts the ache inside my heart
Covering other mysteries
Too deep to take apart
Your voice a string of colored beads,
Steps leading to the sea
Because I was the only one
Who recognized Persephone
You learned your hands in a fairy-tale,
And your mouth on a valentine
God, I never wanted the last word
When I said the Italian was mine
~
In Memoriam
Lizette Peterson-Homer
February 24, 1951 - July 18, 2002
Edwina Peterson Cross
©February 2003
February was always yours
As September was mine
Purple amethyst birth stone set
I carried home brimming expectation
clutching the white Woolworths sack so tight
it shredded in my fingers
Tiny amethyst heart locket on a gold chain
stretchy amethyst bracelet, adjustable amethyst ring that
You wore proudly with your new chiffon birthday dress
And I wore
your old one
I felt deliciously mystic, masquerading in a color that
was not my own
Too long at first
the skirt mid-calf, it swirled and flared as I spun
landed in a circle of air blue clouds when I
fell to the ground
When you went
You took an entire decade of music
You took with you every amethyst
All 28 days of February
And rent the rainbow
Leaving a spectrum
Blank and
Bare
of
Blue
In Memoriam
Lizette Peterson-Homer
February 24, 1951 - July 18, 2002
Edwina Peterson Cross
©February 2003
Empty Nest
The 1982 powder-blue Volkswagen Rabbit was cute and compact; I bent to the back seat to buckle my little girls into car seats twenty thousand times; it drove to grocery stores and preschools; it lived on snow. Reincarnated as a sixteen-year-old’s alter-ego, it spent its second life sprinting from High School Theater to Taco Bell, graciously bestowing rides upon thankful subjects, making memories, night cruising.
The 1993 Dodge Caravan originated navy blue, peeled to sad, pocked gun metal gray. It was square and ugly, but it held three cellos, one bass, two violins, six musicians and could made the 20 minute drive to Youth Orchestra in 13.7 minutes. It carried the entire Odyssey of the Mind team, vast quantities of food administered to starving actors, various and sundry adolescents always coming or going and an incredible amount of garbage. Sometimes, driving down the road in the middle of the night, waves of laughter coming from the back seats, I would look at the faces in the rear view mirror and be struck with terror at the wealth of intelligence and talent cradled in my single vehicle. I’d want to pull over, too frightened to drive. The faces in the mirror have faded and disappeared, one by one, dissolved into the bright future that awaited them and the ugly gun metal Caravan is gone.
My new Honda Accord is silver with black velvet interior. The lines are long and elegant, the engine makes hardly any noise. Inside is the first CD player I have ever owned; I can listen to my own music now instead of the kids radio stations. I put in a thin metal disk and turn the dial all the way up. The sound shakes the inside of the car; I can feel it in my backbone and in my knee against the door. Crosby, Stills and Nash echo inside my skull, in the pit of my stomach. “Teach Your Children Well . . .” I glance in the mirror. My hair needs to be colored; there is a stripe of grey right down the middle. I am alone in the car.
Edwina Peterson Cross
©May 2003
Ten Years of April
Your flaxen baby curls
Have turned to cascades of gold dust
Falling like silken water down your back
Chubby toddler legs
Stretch out to streamline
The blooming dance you begin to weave
Should I search your changing face,
Sighing as I see it recast,
Mourning its transformation?
Must I face with fear that new cocoon
That sometimes masks your incandescence?
Shall I weep at the trembling wet butterfly
That will soon emerge
Whispering . . .
“Where has my baby gone?”
Once, when you were only mine
I committed my life
As a pledge to your potential
I cradled your quiescent probabilities
Nurtured the grain of your growing gifts
Then, your eyes were turned to me alone
In undiluted trust
Now, you search
And you scrutinize
You paint
And you ponder
You dance
And you dream
With a growing gift for giving
You aspire to heal each pain filled heart
Conquer prejudice
Blot out injustice
You seek to smother hatred
In a sea of sunshine
And I in humble affirmation
Now give back that trust in full measure
To your seacrystal eyes
Wings of wonder are unfolding
From the promise that lay dormant
In the infant that I loved
My baby is not gone
My child is
Becoming
No
I will not cry
When the chrysalis cracks
For as you lift to dance the air
All the stars in the sky will sing
Edwina Peterson Cross
©March 1992
Included in the Anthology “Motherhood: Journey Into Love”
Edited by Edwina Peterson Cross
©1997 by Mother’s At Home,® Inc.
For Lezlie at Twelve
I brought you into a world
Of riots and drive by shootings
What made me believe
When I had navigated the labyrinth
Of choking, colic and croup
That I was done with terror?
I send you out each day
Book bag across your back
And cello under your arm
I am seeking for amulets and charms
I am weaving prayers through the colorless dawn
Keep her safe
Keep her true
She is so good
She bruises so easily
Oh, You who watch for sparrows falling
and number the hairs of heads
Don't let anyone hurt her
Then I watch you
Lean the golden wood against your body
Pulling rich sweet strands of Mozart from the air
Building a breath of timeless beauty
With your own strong hands
Your eyes lift from the pages of your book
Coming back to this world slowly
Bringing with them
Depth beyond your years
And a wisdom you were born with
In the end
Darkness can only be fought with light
And you
Fragile flame
With a core of blazing steel
Glow brighter every day
Leaving my door each morning
Going out into the world
With knowledge slung across your back
Beauty under your arm
Wisdom and laughter
In your eyes
You are your own talisman
Your shining self
The radiant answer
To my prayer
Edwina Peterson Cross
©November 1991
Published in Welcome Home Magazine, September 1993.
Included in the Anthology “Motherhood: Journey Into Love”
Edited by Edwina Peterson Cross
©1997 by Mother’s At Home,® Inc.
REALITY
(For Lezlie at Seventeen)
I saw you in dreams
a star behind a waterfall
crystalline, shimmering
certain
in the liquid fall of eternity
I heard your laughter
And when the doctors
armed with statistics
spoke of impossibilities
and told me not to hope
my heart quietly whispered
“no”
For your reality echoed
on the curve of every sound
in the taste of all four winds
an essence that was tangible
long before
they laid you in my arms
And you grew clear
unclouded, perceptive
knowing and deep
gazing into the well of being
inevitably, undeniably you saw
yourself
Now, I feel your centered spirit shake
under a weight of strain
engulfed by others egos
betrayed by broken trust
Caught in a vice of time and tension
you struggle just to breathe
Reality has been recast
melted molten with your pain
and poured into a nameless mold
your parched tears sear a sky
Gone inky with the portent
of a full stellar eclipse
And I,
who formed you with an unfaltering faith
in my ethereal, concrete dream
now cannot bear the reality
that would take your golden laughter
that would dim your sure, strong star
I would go before you
clearing your path with a heart of flame
I would burn cities to the ground
shake the battlements of the earth
I would disintegrate into dust
anyone who tried to hurt you
And yet, even through this shroud of sorrow
your soft, sagacious spirit
still signs the air with runes of strength
clear, luminous tracings
Which glitter fearlessly and whisper
“Woman”
I bend in humbled abdication
I must yield the keys of pain
into your narrow, able hands
yes, it takes a cloak of darkness
To reveal the radiance
and the mystery of the stars
So, I will be certain once again
my belief in you
the rock of my reality
I will step back and let you grow
I will listen for your laughter . . . and wait
for the renaissance after the rain
Edwina Peterson Cross
©January 1997
DAUGHTER’S OF LIGHT
I.
My daughter told me today that she has decided that she will pursue a PhD in Shakespeare Studies, regardless of whether or not she is accepted at the University in Stratford. She told me she has thought long and hard about the future, both her own future and the future of the world. It is a frightening, formidable time, when the ground we thought was firm under our feet shifts and sheers with every passing day.
This isn’t the world I wanted for my children. Like every other parent, all I ever wanted was everything. I wanted security. I wanted stability, safety, assurance. I wanted a world where there would always be abundance if they worked for it. I wanted a world where my children would be free to follow their dreams; free to pursue their art; free to move beyond the basics of safety, shelter and sustenance; free to spend their energy and their time thinking and creating.
Though their world is, indeed, a world of plenty, it is also, now, a world of uncertainty and doubt. The past bears a consistent, ugly message for dreamers; when stability, freedom and plenty are threatened, the first thing sacrificed is often art. If the world becomes dark and hideous, what will happen to my daughters of dream; raised in love and trained only for the light?
She squares her shoulders and tells me. “If things get really awful and everything closes, then I will be doing theater from garages, from street corners, from attics if need be.” No matter how dark things get, the world will never loose Shakespeare because she knows his words . . . and she knows what they mean. “I will always be able to teach,” she tells me. “there will always be those who want to learn.”
As the world grows dark, I strive to remember that there are always lights. I will never forget the photograph of a lone cellist playing in between snipers, in the middle of a bombed out Sarajevo street. And there is this thread of hope from the lips of my wise child; it may be a thin thread, but it is strong and ancient and in the end it may just be the only thing that will save us: “no matter what, there will always be those who want to learn.”
II.
On the morning of April 4th, 1979, a very worried young woman went into the hospital in Bangor, Maine to have a new medical procedure done. Two years before, after years of waiting, the young woman had lost her first child and nearly died with an ectopic, or tubular pregnancy. Afterwards she and her husband had been told by experts that because of combined problems, even with the use of fertility medication, their chances of conception were roughly five percent. If they did somehow conceive, they had a fifty-fifty chance of a repeat ectopic pregnancy.
The morning of April 4th, blood tests had confirmed that they had somehow beaten those odds and she was pregnant. This new test, called an ultra-sound, would tell if the pregnancy was a repeat ectopic. If it was, it would require immediate emergency surgery which would destroy the remaining fallopian tube, terminate the pregnancy and end all chances of future conception.
The first time I saw Lezlie she was smaller than my little fingernail and she had a tail, but unaccountably and against all odds, there she was, right where they said she could never be, just as certain and clear as she has been ever since.
Lezlie has been accepted at the University of Birmingham in the UK and will be studying at the Shakespeare Institute at Stratford on Avon, completing an MA in preparation for fulfilling a PhD in Shakespeare Studies.
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!
(William Shakespeare - The Tempest: V, i)
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
i dare u......
give me your longing
rip the garment of your captivity
crack the mirror..dance the broken glass
let the wound bleed clean
let the pain flow through
let go of destination..don't numb the activation
feel deeply..shake the foundation
burn the masks of your grand design..hide n seek..divine
(Lisa)
Take longing
I’ve had done with it
Tearing from inside like sweetly promising meat hooks
Wanting . . .
Needing, tearing, lacking
wishing, splitting, empty
yearning, rending, barren
craving, ripping, sans
Sans
Sans
You take longing
I’ll smash the glass of desire
Rip aside the cloth of bondage
Naked go to dance upon the shards
Until they bleed with a new awakening
Bleed clean
Bleed truth
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
Your poem
Ummm . . .
Creme Brule
Sweet, rich, satiny
Small and
Delectable
I Crack my spoon against the top . . .
Stars!
(For Fran)
Edwina Peterson Cross
©April 2003
Concentric Circles
The crystal waters of Lemuria’s Water Garden
Are hushed and plangent, deep with dreaming
There is mystery here, secrets whispered, magic singing
Lay your palm against the swirling water and you will feel it
Telling you tales of this land of breathing metaphor
Singing songs of this place of meaningful mists, which cloak the world in question
Against your palm the sweet water will continue to whisper
Of long sweet hours of meditation and contemplation
Of writing for the sheer relish and delight of writing
Lay your palms against the radiating water and you will feel it
The pull of this land, twining like ivy around your bones, sinking itself deep
Into your heart, your mind, your memory, your dreams
Claiming a piece of yourself, a part of each tomorrow
This land will have claimed you, to the root of your sighs
And yet, you will have given only the time it takes to accept
And you will find yourself rewarded with the unparalleled gift
Of yourself
Whatever you were seeking, you have found here a safe harbor
Abundant shelter; supportive solitude
Sanctuary
Lay your palm against the inspiring water and you will feel it
Lift your wet hands and touch your eyes,
See images, ideas, and visions bloom thick and bright behind your eye lids
Lift your wet hands to your lips
Taste concepts, thoughts, perceptions; salty, rich, bitter, sweet
Look at the water sparkling on your fingertips
See those droplets turn to words, falling from your fingers to glisten on the paper
In scintillating spills of rainbow composition
Smile down calmly into the clear dimpled water, at the unadorned grey rocks below
Knowing in simple serenity that the water is water
And that the images, concepts, and words
All belong to you
Lay your palm against the encircling water and you will feel it
Concentric circles, rising from the top
The sweet spinning of synchronicity . . .
Circles touching circles, always reaching outward to touch more circles
The ever expanding, widening dance of possibilities
Gifting you with the ultimate understanding; that everything is connected
To everything
Sitting beside the crystal waters of Lemuria’s Water Garden
You will see the moon rise, a sonorous sphere of gold
Which the alchemy of night has hung, reflected round and resonant in the rippling water
Lay your palm against the sweet, gilded water and you will feel it
The golden moondeep possibility,
that after a lifetime of endless circling,
you have finally
Come home
Edwina Peterson Cross
©April 2003
BEYOND THE LOOKING GLASS
Mirror, mirror on the wall . . .
Who is the fairest one of all . . .
Out flew the web and floated wide . . .
The mirror cracked from side to side . . .
The cracking of this crystal sphere
Was greeted by a rousing cheer
A joyful cry that filled the air
From thinking women everywhere
The smashing of this narrow glass
Which lived to hurt and to harass
Pernicious magic; dark, arcane
Existed only to cause pain
The things it loved most to create
Were envy, rancor, gall and hate
It’s message spoke of surface things
The beauty of the wives of kings
Who in it’s depth would sit and stare
And wonder if they were most fair
It’s true intent was low and starker
Something deep and so much darker
It’s mission here upon the earth:
To prove that women have no worth
The things it hoped to bring about
Were fear, resentment and self doubt
To feed on woman’s greatest fears
And it had worked for many years
Generations it had held in thrall
With “whose is the fairest one of all”
It’s urgent that we understand
The duplicity this mirror had planned
It made the mirror laugh and exalt
When a woman thought it her own fault
It made the mirror extremely glad
When a woman thought that she was bad
It was the foul mirror’s fondest dream
To obliterate all self-esteem
And make a woman quail and balk
For wanting to hear its wretched talk
To keep her spirit in upheaval
Believing the wanting made her evil
To feel her feelings cloaked with grime
As if emotions were a crime
To make her feel she needed shrift
For owning the Goddess’ greatest gift
Nature’s magnificent work of art
A woman’s full, emoting heart
But now we’ve smashed the wretched mirror
Broken it’s hold; erased the fear
And it’s about time that it was gone
With all the pain it’s words could spawn
Turning women against each other
Friend and sister, daughter, mother
All that trash about who is best
“Who is better than all the rest?”
While all those words of false self-pride
Just bruised and wounded from inside
But, now we know it’s words are hollow
A new-found wisdom we will follow
Henceforward we’ll show lots more smarts
And believe the truth of our own hearts
We’ll scatter this dark glass on the waters
And build a new glass for our daughters
A smooth, clear glass that will project
Authenticity and self respect
With wisdom’s width and truth of length
To mirror a woman’s many strengths
A looking glass not made of sand
But shaped of things we understand
A mirror milled from moon and star
That shows exactly who you are
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Out flew the web and floated wide
The mirror cracked from side to side
Good riddance to that harping witch!
That mirror was always such a bitch!
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
Beltane Cold
Beltane morning
Cold and dark before dawn
Where have you turned your three faces
Anna-apos
Anna-futuro
Anna-interno
Where are the rainbow ribbons, the flowers?
That giving warmth, that opened May
Blooming sweet, scattered petals on the floor?
Cold are the fires on the hill
Broken the ancient circles
The day comes black and vacant
Jack-in-the-Green as flown
With the bright spirits who have left my house empty
The dark, chill air smells of earth and stars
With not even a breath
of lilac
Edwina Peterson Cross
©May 2003
An Actor’s Autumn Acrostic
Sunlight spilled like a gift of gold
Cross the boards where dreams unfold
Her magic’s spun with webs of light
Of gifts that burn the radiant night
Of gifts that free and break the heart
Love that is the soul of art
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
Alone At Leo’s
(A Sacred Sandpainting of Being)
Tessellated images paint the aura of afternoon; the coffee-colored words of strangers wafted on slices of unformed rhyme, disjointed in fans of opening butterfly verbs, rising consonants with unnoted meanings vague, obscure and creamy-brown; intimately, individually known, but not conveyed as they break like brittle and float like silk on the still summer air. These are the same words that poets sing with tears of ink between the covers of my books, but dropped at random, sifted like sand or cornmeal, this painting comes in jigsaw with further sounds of life; the clink of china, the whoosh of water, the deliberate heartbeat pulse of footsteps; a newspaper crinkles; it’s screaming black declarations stilled with a rattle, snap and silence. Breath. Only when the words stop and the constant tick of living is hushed can it be heard; small transparent sparrow of life, unmarked except in absence, it hops among the larger birds of existence, head tipped curiously to one side, questing. Asking with each inhalation: “life?” and exhaling: “yes.” Then querying again.
The words drift down, like pinches of pollen blessed by being, they glitter through this air of typical, glistening this routine space of everyday sparrow-breath with gold. They fall from scattered conversations and mound into patterns, sinking into configurations on the floor, spirit shapes, sacred geometry of humanity which sing of the exquisite beauty of every, the all encompassing sanctity of all.
Edwina Peterson Cross
©August 2003
AGNI, GOD OF FIRE
I called you Agni, god of fire
Agni Devta, clear and just
I lay my heart upon your altar
With simple, artless
Trust
I called you Agni, god of fire
As lightflash through the storm is thrust
I lay my heart upon your altar
Where the stars told me I
Must
I called you Agni, god of fire
A smoldering, sky flaming lust
I lay my heart upon your altar
Ashes, ashes
Dust
Agni was one of three great gods in the Rig Veda and was also worshiped by the Persians until the time of Zoroaster. His personification of fire made him the center of the ancient Vedic worship. Agni took three forms: celestial as the sun, atmospheric as lightening, and terrestrial as fire. He is all that burns: sun, heat, stomach, lust, and passion. His three spheres are the Earth, Sky, and Space, the worlds respective of men, spirits, and deities. He is priest of the gods and the god of priests, and serves as liaison between gods and men. His fire altar was oriented toward the East, the direction of the sunrise, the ever-new beginning.
The last stanza of this poem was written when I was in college; actually, it was written on the fly leaf of my Lit to 1650 text book I believe. I added the first two stanzas in 2003 upon reading more about the three incarnations of Agni. I was quite fascinated to discover how the final verse fit the deity and still fit into the poem perfectly, with the first two verses just expanding and rounding out the character of the deity that the original verse had begun thirty years earlier.
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
A Prayer for Heather & Darryl
One candle in the window
A single flame against the dark
I wrap focus in your glowing
A prayer in your slim, white spark
Such a tiny light in the chill hushed night
Infused with such great power
As the wings of time enfold the earth
I bless this, my waking hour
With the flame of one small candle
On the window seal curled
And the light of a prayer that does not dim
But echos around the world
Edwina Peterson Cross
©May 17, 2003
A Streaming Tale
Goblin spoke to Ternerhooks
“Beware! Be long, Be gone!
Something foul is seeking
The girl with the clear blue song!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A narrow eyed man, all cloaked in black
Limps up from out the sea
Carrying a slick and leaking sack
And a spiraled iron key
He has come to make an offer
To a face without a name
And he carries his dripping coffer
With a quiet, patient shame
Down an alley dark and twisted
He waits in the puddling rain
The air is blue and misted
And his face engraved with pain
In pain he walks, in pain he waits
It engulfs, devours, transcends
He is lost within the dire straits
Of an anguish that never ends
A voice in the darkness hisses
Not an inch from where he stands
And the rain leaves frozen kisses
On his empty, open hands
“Walk on the sand when the waves retreat”
A rasping whisper taints the dark
There is nothing to see in the inky street
Not a shadow, not a spark
“Walk on the sand where the waves retreat
Find the one whose voice is true
Bring me the blood of the sweetest meat
Bring me her song of blue . . .”
Then the voice is sucked into stillness
Has he entered a pack to betray?
He feels a gist quaver of illness
The covenant bag has been taken away
A creeping shudder shakes him under
He puts his hands across his face
The wet air is split with thunder
And emptied of all grace
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She sits on a log with her face to the sun
She is almost as still as a stone
Only fingers move, in hair undone
Plaiting feathers, flowers, bone
Her dress is a patchwork of rags and rhyme
Her hair is silk indigo lace
Perfectly balanced in both space and time
She dreams with a smile on her face
And she sings in a voice borrowed from birds
Clean and most treacherously true
She sings without thought, without rhyme without words
A song that’s unbroken and blue
She sings of blue mountains, of sea and of wind
Of live gems from beneath the cracked earth
She sings without words of how sapphire sinned
And was redeemed by the white sky’s blue birth
She sings of blue whales that leap on the foam
Of bluebirds embroidering the trees
She sings of blue smoke soft wreathing a home
And the iceblue of vast Northern seas
She sings of long nights of empty blue sadness
The deep, darker blue that’s depressed
She sings of the roiled blueblack of madness
The joy of a pale Robin’s nest
She sings up blue flowers so Spring can begin
Blue silk in rich markets afar
She sings of blue veins underneath her own skin
She sings of a blue crystal star
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And here he sees her singing
And he steels his heart and brain
Such a little thing this song of blue
To commute such scorching pain
Forged in the sea, the pact makes no sense
Meaning mystic and message arcane
Yet, it’s steps he must follow, trembling and tense
The checkered path to the end of his pain
The slick sack was delivered, the hissing voice spoke
He has followed it here to the sand
The rest of the world can all go up in smoke
He must fulfil the offensive demand
And here she sits singing, eyes closed in the sun
As if she were tasting each note
Somehow he must do what has to be done
And rip that blue song from her throat
In his cloak is a dagger of cuttle and bone
A dried rose with one razor thorn
A sliver of drab, rain-colored moonstone
And a cup made of silver and horn
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She opens her eyes, he is startled by blue
So blue that they make the word shout
He is drowning in blue that is fresh and so new
Like the end of a long, barren drought
Her song has been stopped by a smile
As soft as the clouds in the sky
An enchantment that could beguile
The rivers and seas to run dry
“Why does the blue sea turn?” she asks
Shading her eyes from the sun
“Who gave the dolphins their long silver backs?
How soon will the waves be undone?”
He is stuttered to stillness by her clear crystal voice
By her words with no plan to their rhyme
Is she speaking without any kind of a choice?
Lost in some stray piece of time?
Is she speaking in madness, in some kind of trance?
As one whose wits have gone blind?
Or is this some kind of elaborate dance
Does she know what he has on his mind?
His heart skips a beat and pain clenches his back
Shoots through his arms to his head
Agony stabs at the man dressed in black
And with it a well traveled dread
It never will stop, but continue to grow
And he knows there is nowhere to run
He looks at the girl and he clenches his jaw
And prepares to do what must be done
He knows that somehow he must make her sing
It’s the only dark, desperate way
To finish this creeping, detestable thing
This pact to deceive and betray
“I’ve never . . . I’ve never heard such a voice”
His own voice is hollow as tin
“It makes the sunshine wake up and rejoice
To stop now would be such a sin . . .”
She smiles again and opens her mouth
Her voice begins soft, low and mellow
Singing of buttercups, sun in the south
She sings out bright streams of yellow
She sings out of daisies and butter
Of lemons and sunflower sun
Of canaries with wings all a flutter
And lamplight where stories are spun
He is lost in the spell of her voice
Sinking under a bright amber wave
He struggles to hold on to choice
With the desperate despair of a slave
He must stop her bright golden singing
With black terror his heart is rife
With saffron his ears are ringing
Fingers curl on the sharp cuttle knife
“Oh sing just like you sang before!
‘twas a balm so clear and clean”
She nods her head and begins once more . . .
Singing the healing salve of green
She sings of spring and the birth of green
Of a pure, fresh grassland breeze
Of jade and emerald and aquamarine
Of the lusty green song of the trees
He is caught by the vision of woodlands
His blood echos the sweet rising sap
Then he is back on these misunderstood sands
With the sharp sudden sting of a slap
She gazes up at him with eyes of green
And he is rocked with a deep dawning dread
In a whisper so clear it can almost be seen
He breathes out, “Sing something red”
So she sings about rubies and cherries
Of roses bloomed ripe from the bud
She sings of cardinals and berries
She sings of the rich red of blood
When the singing has stopped her hair is red
And she speaks through the roar of the sea
“What is it fills the waves with dread?
Who drowned the split crimson tree?
Why does the sky taste of ashes?
Why are the stars so arcane?
Is time lost when thunder crashes?
What must I give for your pain?”
A hush washes over the man dressed in black
And his head is bent down with shame
The thought of his gruesome, intended attack
Leaves him sickened and covered with blame
“Oh, She who breathes color” he whispers low
“I came here in stealth and deceit
But I can not go on with this ghastly show
Or make this base bargain complete”
The wind whips the strands of her new scarlet hair
She smiles and just shakes her head
“I know of your compact and of your despair
I know of the things that you dread . . .
I speak not of darkness, or bindings or guilt
But the harsh pain with which you’re possessed
For castles of sand must be always rebuilt
And I have a dissolving request
Who suckles the sun at midnight?
What is the language of rain?
Who gathers the threads of the twilight?
What must I give for your pain?
Put a price and a worth on your torment
If you can contain and supply it
I’ll count any fee fairly spent
I would contract to purchase and buy it”
He stares in utter disbelief
Thoughts of grim nights of unending pain
When he speaks his voice is thick with grief
“You must be completely insane.”
Her face is untouched by surprise
In her eyes the smile still swam
A smile that is patient and wise
And she answers, “you know that I am
I sit by the sea singing moonshine rhyme
In the sun and the dark and the rain
Transposing color to concrete design
There is nothing in that, that is sane
Who carved the ocean’s wildest wave?
What is the smell of a prayer?”
Here eyes are brown and still and grave
She meets his and holds him there
“Now I ask, are there weeds in a King’s wine?
Words that shout and echo ‘insane’
You can see I’ve stepped over that fine line
What must I give for your pain?”
He closes his eyes and rocks on his heals
As a sweet, aching hope shoots through
Of all the unearthly preposterous deals
Is this crazy enough to be true?
He looks in her eyes, so deep he is lost
It seems that he hangs there for weeks
Then suddenly something screams: ‘Damn the cost!’
Before his mind changes, he speaks
“You must give me the skill to compose
Though my mind is now wounded and scarred
Give back the color to yesterdays rose
Give me the words of a Bard.”
She blinks once, her eyes thick with thought
Then she answers, “‘twill be as you choose
Since this is the thing you have sought
I will give you the gift of the Muse
I will give you the blessing of words
I will hand you the lore weavers thread
I will give you the music of birds
And the deep resurrection of red
In return you will give me your pain
Secured in this gold and bone locket
You will give me the color of rain
And the moon that you keep in your pocket”
For a moment he’s startled by rage
As if he were holding the moon!
Like an eagle trapped in a cage
Then he is caught by the edge of a tune
She is singing again and swaying
A piercing song, clear, clean and true
She somehow seems to be praying . . .
A crystalline song with no color or hue
His hand has reached for his knife
A sharp edge of cuttle and bone
But this moment’s a prism of a life
As his hand meets not cuttle, but stone
Pulled from his cloak, it lays on his palm
A hard little rain-colored round
She steps up to him with a smile of calm
And takes it, without any sound
She holds out the locket, on a long golden chain
Forged of old gold and deep carved bone
As it falls in his hand he is crippled with pain
And doubles over his hand with a groan
His body is wracked with every pain
He has ever felt before
From the base of his foot to the top of his brain
Each anguish doubled times four
He is falling, the locket snaps shut
And the pain is erased in a breath
He stands silently clutching his gut
His face just a shade short of death
She takes the chain from his shaking hand
And loops it over her head
Then she bends to the shining wet sand . . .
For a dry, crumbling rose that looks dead
A memory had gone tumbling
From his clock to lay crushed on the sand
Now it lies abandoned and crumbling
Black with age, in her small pale hand
She slashes her palm cross the one razor thorn
Her blood on the crushed rose is shed
As if touched with fire, the rose is reborn
Blushing, blooming in lustrous red
With a smile, she gives him the rose
“There is yesterday’s color my friend
Though it’s different than you suppose
Our contract is now at an end”
Then she wipes her palm on his cloak
And a bright scarlet stains starts to spread
And like quick flame and billowing smoke
It is kissed with a bright spreading red
Crimson licks up his inky dark cape
Like a hot, hungry ruby red fire
Before he can move or escape
He is clothed all in Scarlet attire
She dabs a drop of blood between his eyes
Where it shines like a ruby shard
“Ah!” she says, “here, I surmise
Is the famous Scarlet Bard!”
Then she walks away, and that is the end
Calling back once over her shoulder
“Here is something to remember my friend
Before you get too much older . . .
There is an alternative flow to each river . . .
Remember, you’ve always a choice!
Now I’ve got a locket to deliver
To a man with a hissing, dark, voice . . .
Oh, why are the planets not strung on wire?
Came her voice as she vanished from sight
Have the cows formed a rainbow cloud choir?
Who paints the doorstep of night . . . . ?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“And that is the tale!” sings the Scarlet Bard
“Truth wrapped in ribbons of rhyme”
All through the crowd is a murmuring regard
For a tale both warm and sublime
One small thoughtful face by the fires
Rests her chin on the top of her knee
Tugs on the red cloak, and inquires
“What happened to the spiraled iron key?”
The Bard gazes into the fires
Where scarlet ceaselessly blooms
He considers what mythos requires
And the things that a story presumes
“I’d forgotten that iron spiraled key!
What do you know about that?
Well, he left it there by the sea
On the rock where the blue girl once sat
The waves took it away, I suppose
In their vast, mysterious space
Where it has gone no body knows
It vanished with nary a trace . . .”
“The key to his heart!” a breathy voice said
But the Bard smiles, with cynical eyes
“Nope, The key to the old decrepit shed
Where he kept his fishing supplies.”
A murmur of protest sweeps round the fire
But the Bard laughs and claps his hands
“Now I’ll tell you a tale to inspire
Filled with secrets of far foreign lands!”
Happy expectancy hums round the fire
His listeners quickly agree
As he bend down to re-tune his lyre
He feels a small hand on his knee
The child looks in his eyes and smiles
And he smells the sea and the sand
Thrown back through years and miles
He feels something slipped in his hand
She presses his hand to his heart like a prayer
“One day she’ll come back, you’ll see”
When he blinks there is nobody there
In his hand is a spiraled iron key
Edwina Peterson Cross
© June 2003
Following Campbell:
A Circle of Sonnets
I.
I sing into an empty room
An invocation to the stars
The hollow dust within this tomb
Cakes my half-healed, bleeding scars
Murmurs and echos whisper back
A vacant and pointless farewell
Through an opening silent and black
I seek for the voice in the shell
I have quested a verdant bliss
In the spiral of every thread
I have sought for Beatrice kiss
But they tell me the great Pan is dead
I search through this concave frontier . . .
Not here. Not here. Not here.
II.
At the borderline of the wood
I search for the hidden trail
A metaphor half understood
That leads to the wraith of The Grail
That leads toward something unfound
Though sought until its become blurred
I study the loam on the ground
For the footprints of a lost word
The wood has grown thick o’er the track
It’s surface eroded and scarred
Knowledge substantial, but slack
Virtue scorned in the mirror of the Bard
This wood is a echo of choice
In it’s depth: a myth colored voice
III.
I go in where the thicket is thick
I start down the dark trackless track
I am drawn like oil to a wick
To try and sing the voice back
To weave the words that it sings
Into meaning more lasting than chance
To give it’s bright images wings
Let it’s symbols and metaphors dance
On the Trackless track I leave old skin
I go toward the life that now waits
My search for the flowering begins
And the humanity that it creates
And the voice speaks to me from afar:
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are”
Edwina Peterson Cross
©July 2003
“Pathless indeed: all we can do is find where the forest for us is the thickest. And somehow return what we found.” (David Cohea)
“We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.” (Joseph Campbell)
“One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that.” (Joseph Campbell)
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” (Joseph Campbell)
I am a woman of giving and grace
Of clear understanding and deep innerspace
With thoughts and emotions as complex as the sea
Who is constantly shaping this opus called ‘me’
I know love from all angles, I know every part
I was born in it’s circle and raised in it’s heart
I know love in action, I take care of my friends
I know love is a thing that expands and transcends
Love is not something that starves and then smothers
I will give myself wisdom, as I give it to others
For I am a woman of worth, and of measure
Valued and priceless, a rare precious treasure
You chose the darkness, you chose to run
It was you who could not live in the light of the sun
I will NOT dim my glimmer, nor shadow my glow
For mine is a soul that must constantly grow
I’ve evolved, I’ve unfolded, I am someone new
Someone who is simply not affected by you
I don’t want to discuss it, I don’t want to be ‘friends’
Nor dissect what went wrong, nor make sad amends
I am not unhappy, I am not alone
And you are just something that I have outgrow
(For April)
Edwina Peterson Cross
©November 2002
Women
We bear
burdens
inequity
injustice
babies
We share, a collective past of
exposed infants screaming on cold stone hill sides
bound feet
bound breasts
burnings
an unstoppable, indestructible, mutual strength
Woman of grace
Who bears the honored name of Crone
A name I now thirst to learn
to fill my bones with
to wreath my hair with
to celebrate, exalt and revel
to learn one day to
deserve
Woman of honor
in roughly woven cape and hood
I do not know your burden
I cannot offer to help you carry
I cannot offer you shade or
even a place to rest
But as my sisters before me
throughout antiquity
I will not let you bear it alone
See the footsteps in the sand
I will walk beside you
Edwina Peterson Cross
©May 2002
The Art of Consolation
He will not ever remember
That I smelled like bread
He will not remember
Meals at the table
With a family around
A kitchen scrubbed and clean
Coming home to the smell of cooking
He has never seen himself
In my oven door
He will remember finding food
in the refrigerator
Dirty dishes
Sticky floors
A mother in bed
Sometimes crying
But he will remember
That when he talked
I listened
He will remember things
We wondered
Words we searched for
Books we read
Ideas we stretched
He will remember
Kissing my forehead and
Wishing out loud
That he could take the pain away
Will this be enough
For a man?
Or will he always smell
The yeasty ghost of
The bread
That was never baking?
Edwina Peterson Cross
© September 2002
Testa di fanciulla
She lies in the sun
her hair curling around her face,
soft brush strokes
from the master’s hand.
Did Leonardo frame the curves
and contours of this face?
the olive perfection of skin,
the fine, delicate lines of mouth,
single, perfect springtime rose
curved in a smile
secret with the promise of summer?
He might have drawn these lines,
for he wore well the richness of genius.
He might have sketched,
with the arch of a gifted wrist, the extension
of inspired fingers, the shading and shadows
of this face, so consummate
with beauty in the soft honey wash
of autumn sunshine.
And yet,
there is something
in her eyes
that even Leonardo
could not have rendered
could not have described
could not have conceived
not for all the genius that pounded in his veins
and flowed like consecrated oil from his hands.
And how will I find words
For what the brush of Di Vinci could not capture?
The blessing of my life
sketched in sepia in the still afternoon sun
her hair curling around her face,
her smile secret,
shining sublimely, softly
with
something
Edwina Peterson Cross
© October 2002
Taking Xanax for Pain
Given shrieking pain or bone gnawing fatigue, I'll take fatigue in a second and this
hot sharp pain has wound me up like a toy until my springs shudder and shake
and I think they will recoil, snap, sending me wild, an explosion that will
Not explode, a collapse that will not give, a break down that just winds tighter until I rupture scatter into a million pieces, but even that won’t be allowed
But then
the panic begins to recede like a syrup tide, taking the tightness taunt
tense frozen taking the fright, alarm, shuddering recoil, trepidation
that was closing in double fists over the already
Insufferable intolerable unbearable that must be suffered tolerated born
The graphic twisting pain may dim, not depart but may be muffled
pushed down with a damper that presses hard for the pain may become pressure and ache
No. The bright piercing pain hasn't gone at all, it just
Doesn't matter
the exhaustion is close on the footsteps of the fierce pain
now running together, pacing one another, running through over throughout
Up and down down and up up and down
All those clear overlays in the encyclopedia H
For "Human"
clear pages laid one by one over a still very silent man that
Dale and I used to look at in kindergarten, the huge book on both of our laps our feet sticking straight out from the couch turning translucent pages with fascination
Pain has run shrieking up and down each and every transparent page
each and every system over and over eternally forever and now again this
wearing exhaustion paired with the suddenly unimportant pain
Goes burning up and down skeletal muscular respiratory reproductive
vascular excretory digestive circulatory nervous nervous nervous
Nerves and my head wants to keep dropping forward, but the fire doesn't seem to matter anymore because the panic is gone
and Dale is gone. He faced the virus, plague of a new century, viralpoison screaming up and Down over and through all those translucent pages, he fought
for skeletal muscular respiratory reproductive vascular excretory digestive circulatory nervous and lost
Somewhere in time, two little children sit with the H encyclopedia on their laps
feet sticking straight out from the couch turning transparent pages with
fascination, but not knowing
not knowing at all what it
Means
Edwina Peterson Cross
©June 2002
Swan Sisters
Our eyes are made of moon
Our throats of unshed tears
and shared laughter
Our blood is brewed of red rock,
sea spray, hazel wands
Our hearts are on our sleeves
But when we dance, in circle,
To the deep beat of earth and stars
My hand will softly cover your heart
And yours mine
Each protecting the other
From bruises, from wounds
from breaking
We feel magic
in the slanting silver rain
Hear perfumed music
in the sighing of the wind
We see things in the clouds
Taste heaven with our eyes
And feel almost everything
Too much
I cannot tell the world
The breathless wonder I feel for
Words
Beating against my eye lids
Blooming in my brain
Settling like bright butterflies
Into the honey of my thoughts
I cannot tell the world
Of the exquisite ache
When words begin to bridge
Connect
And click
Spinning their separate webs of starlight
Into a perfect, radiant whole
I cannot tell the world
But, to you, I will never need to explain
For you know
You understand
You are my sister
Cisne Cor-de-rosa Dançando
Edwina Peterson Cross
© December, 2002
Jane Yolan’s “Sister Emily’s Lightship”
Sometimes I read poetry that is so aciculate and fine that it makes me hurt. A pulling ache that starts in my heart and radiates backward through my scapula and shoulders, returning through my close-held elbows to my breast-bone, for a final, shaking clench of my heart. This elegant pain very rarely happens with prose, but it does happen. I have just finished reading parts of Jane Yolan’s collection of short stories “Sister Emily’s Lightship.” Some of the stories throbbed my heart and elbows with such an exquisite ache, that I couldn’t even finish the whole book. I read some of them though; something like sampling a strong, sweet liquor with tiny sips . . . it burns the mouth like fire, but is wholly delicious held on the tip of your tongue and the inside apex of your lips. Some of the stories merely evoked a smile; albeit one of those deep, intense smiles that goes down to your navel. Two of them, however, hurt.
This pain is partly a descendent of my love affair with words. Sometimes mere humans are able to twist words into such a confection of glittering beauty that it takes the breath away with a sharp stitch that is the beginning of agony. Sometimes they smooth words into perfection; thin clear perfection like a lake of glass, which cuts without ever being broken. Part of the distress comes from utter aching originality; there is only one smooth, perfect lake of glass in the universe and someone has led me there blindfolded, then removed the mask with a flourish. Part of it, of course, is envy. These are my Dryads, my woods, but will I ever make them dance like this? Emily Dickenson’s consummate, concise three lines of pure, perfection coupled with Jane Yolan’s nonpareil conception and ambrosial execution . . . . clench, diffusion, concentration, tremor, stab! . . . ah, that fine, exquisite, enchanting ache.
Edwina Peterson Cross
©December 2002
Poems for Lois - October 2002
Swallow Street, Lemon Tree
Freshing wind blows off the sea
Yarra River, Hobson’s Bay
Breakers do not roll away
Tasmania’s Spirit on the tide
These strong roots will not be denied
This hearth is shrine to kith and kin
And breakers break by rolling in
Dreamtime woke on Liardet’s Beach
As deep as loving heart could reach
Haven framed by seasalt foam
And breakers break by rolling home
Edwina Peterson Cross
©October 2002
Names
Nature speaks in song of name
‘Rita’ crickets voice proclaim
‘Ruth’ rolls out the whipo’will
‘Pamela’ bubbles the forest rill
‘Zoe’ is the lightening flash
‘Cassandra’ is the river’s splash
‘Faith’ is soft wind ruffling grain
‘Anna’ is the breath of rain
‘Wanda’ small frogs all agree
‘Lois’ sings the sounding sea
Edwina Peterson Cross
©October 2002
House Blessing
Blank walls, open door
Spread the blessings across the floor
Bread upon the hearth, that hunger be unknown
That life be full of flavor, salt across the threshold thrown
Wine, that joy and comfort may forever reign
happiness and glad delight begin the blessing chain
The whisper of a sea soft wind, the grace of falling rain
And every drop of inner light one dwelling can contain
Now draw the circle, mark the ways
Beneath the Ladies lucent rays
Walk the wheel, trace it’s sphere
And hear Her glad words singing clear:
Turn north for counsel wise and true
East your challenges to pursue
South reminds where trust is due
West will bring your truth to you
From Cymru’s ancient heart of green
A wind is blowing clear and clean
Blessings on this sea wind pour
Heart come full circle to this shore
Blessings on the salt sea air
Bless these walls with moondeep prayer
Bless these books, this plant, this chair
Bless this home; for love is there
(For Vi)
Edwina Peterson Cross
© October 2002
The View From My Desk
Perspective altered
Prospect canted
Outlook shifting
Vista transfigured and strange
She sees things, this poet,
Beveled, oblique
Neither parallel nor perpendicular
But peculiar
A world built of bubbled words
Coagulating iridescence, expanding opalescence
Deliciously joining to form astonishing wholes
Dissolving and changing, transforming and becoming
Thoughts fall on paintings piled on poems piled on notes on scraps of paper piled on photographs piled on envelopes and empty teacups, piled on music piled on notebooks piled on piles of paper and glitter pens piled on reference books piled on novels and candles piled on piles of paper piled on poetry piled on paintings . . . there is no use looking at the desk
The universe is happening on the monitor screen
Edwina Peterson Cross
©May 2002
Editing
Editors
Vicious animals of the pack variety
or solitary hunters, with ripping teeth and claws
sending out rejection slips, with sneers
claws, regrets with no regrets
When I prepare to review, I am crisp and focused
and always as well as humanly possible
I know what our parameters are, our requirements, our
format and my own underskin underlying elemental fundamental
knowledge of what essentially basally
Works
We can't take everything
only what fits, works, dovetails, is the jigsaw piece that
corresponds if not matches and I am looking for
freshness, quality, distinctive language, arresting images, metaphor
Unique conceptions, vivid vernacular please do not trouble me with anything that is flat, prosaic, predictable, containing
monotonous meter, rhyme that is forced, turned, pounding, insipid or
Makes my teeth hurt
We can't take everything
I make decisions painstakingly meticulously, considering carefully every and each editorial comment, weighing with indiscernible scales what we have and what we need and what will work, what fits where, what will harmonize integrate, blend, stand out, be read, be remembered, be meaningful be
Loved
We can't take everything
It isn't until I begin making entries, my fingers rattling the keyboard
Reject Merge FIELDNAMES (firstname;lastname;address;city;title;status)
that the meltdown begins. Oh this is sweet, Oh baby, baby, babies
This is someone's life. This is someone's deepest strongest most intense
profoundest in words that are not so bad? I didn't see this quite this
way when I thought . . . anxious, avid, ardent "I have never submitted
anything for publication before" I ache. we can't take
Everything.
motherhood, mother . . . and babies, Oh babies Oh soft, scented, nursing, newborn
so what if we've heard it all before? I don’t know this person. But I do. What is it like on
Washington Street, Maple Avenue, Planters Road, Kings College Court
in Carlsbad, Cape Cod, Chula Vista, Saratoga Springs where they wait for this letter Ah, a widowed greatgrandmother and the rhyme isn't
Really so We have fifty two poems waiting for publication 52 we can't take everything
why didn't I like this? Why must I do this? Faces, vague beside mailboxes. Waiting. Hoping. I think my milk is letting down after eleven
years rattle, rattle, reject, reject, 52, 52, thank you for your time and
Consideration
(firstname;lastname;address;city;title;status)ENDRECORD
Edwina Peterson Cross,
Poetry Editor
©April 2002
Japanese Boys Festival
On the fifth day
Of the fifth month
Almond trees flower
in the ancient land of Matsuo Basho
snow crowned Fuji,
land of the Rising Sun
On poles and in the trees,
hang radiantly colored, fish shaped kites
bright, visual pride for each household
blessed with the honor
of a man-child
Here the honored ask
that these valued sons
may always swim
On ivory winds
(On hoary stone studded hillsides of antiquity
they screamed to the uncaring air
shaking tiny pink, futilely fisted hands
this insult to patriarchy
this affront to patrimony
Punish with death
the offence,
the outrage,
of having been born
female)
The beauty, gaiety, and bright colored festivity
of this celebration
does not change it’s deepest meaning
Even profound respect for a culture
ancient, picturesque, complex
Cannot make a basic injustice
Right
On the fifth day
Of the fifth month
Apricot trees flower
in this young, green land of Emily and Edna, T.S. and Walt
land of multiplicity, land of diversity
of sweeping prairies, streaming cities
marsh, desert, seaside, field,
cascading multitudes of purpled hills
Here dawn will find me
hanging ribbons in dancing profusion through the trees
Ribbons of pink
soft, visual thankfulness
that this household has been blessed
with the honor, the riches
the joy
of women-children
And may you, my daughters
all your lives long
dance bright in a wind of acceptance and understanding
Blessed to be born
Where the wind blows
Free
Edwina Peterson Cross
©May 2002
Within the Sacred Mountain
Unseen,
Unnamed,
Unknown
Are slender, silent
Shafts of gold
Every second
Rock is being wrought
Worn away by wind and water
Layered and pressed,
Earth is pressured into stone
Ceaselessly, in a constant, slow dripping
Adagio
Magma bubbles, shapes, cools
Simmering, smoldering, seeping, slow
Beneath the twining roots of trees,
The wordless feet of animals,
Beneath the unquestioning crust
Secluded, sequestered
Slowly
Secretly
Gravity enfolds the mass
In an embrace of eternity
And the mountain continues to
Become
Self:
Here beneath this thin, susceptible skin
Beyond bone and blood and brain
Is a question
Eternally asked
By poets,
Mystics and fools
Called by many names,
This transcendent query
Is, like mountain,
In a timeless tide of transformation
Stratified and squeezed
By senses
Hollowed and shaped by the wind
Of words
Lava of image, vision, concept, thought,
Bubbles, shapes, and cools into a structure
Called
Self
If the mind could be mined . . .
Its sensitive skin split,
Shafts sunk
And core samples taken,
When they had been analyzed,
Anatomized, augured
Would I know the
Minerals from the motivations?
The pyrite from the perceptions?
The obsidian from oblivion?
I have begun
To begin
Begun to learn the difference
Between diamonds and dross
To define the source of
My own gravity
To choose the energy
That will effect my change
Where my soul has been seamed with slag
And my spirit strip mined
I am learning to seal the excavation
Resurface, replant
Tree roots will learn their labyrinth dance anew
And the ground will heal
And some core samples yield up
Gold
An abundance of spirit, a wealth of soul
See . . . in this shaft shines understanding
And delving deeper,
Care, healing, trust
Glittering from this one, gilded nuggets of laughter
Below simmers celebration, merriment and revels
Down at the core, bubbling with delight,
Is the glowing, bright, liquid glass of joy
And Here
Here is a well of light and warmth,
A profusion of comfort, loyalty and giving
All resting,
Deep at the mountains heart,
On a solid bedrock of
Love
It is here I will invest my thoughts
My precepts, my concepts, my visions,
My words
My transcendent query
Called Self
For it is built on this bedrock
That becoming
Becomes
Belief
Edwina Peterson Cross
©October 2002
Deep Winter Affirmation Prayer
The year ends in darkness, with absence of light
Days shortened and shadow enshrouded
Long, still, ebony hours of night
Silent and dimly cold clouded
Yet, the voice of a dream affirms meaning in night
With purpose the darkness is rife
It whispers the chill, stark absence of light
Is a metaphor searching for life
In the deep cold of winter, in the length of the night
Nine candles glow bright from afar
The sun returns with briefbright Solstice light
Earth is lit by the hope of one star
Each soul, as the seasons, turns like a wheel
A sacred cycle each of us make
When things seem the darkest, the circles reveal
That the light may be ready to break
And so we believe that the darkness will end
That a warm wind will swallow the cold
That the world will be something we can comprehend
As the seasons expand and unfold
Once a heart understands the nature of change
It is free to wait for the dawn
To know warmth is not rare, affection not strange
In total darkness; the light is not gone
The heart speaks a promise the mind cannot break
That there is nothing that cannot be mended
Never a nightmare from which you can't wake
Nor a hurt that cannot be transcended
Darkness can be washed away by the light
Disillusion by laughter undone
Depression can be replaced by delight
Despair bleached to hope by the sun
Even bone-cracking winter ends with new birth
As the world is rekindled with green
There isn't a stain on the heart or the earth
That cannot be finally washed clean
Though our world is still threatened by darkness and pain
And we sometimes feel frightened and small
The light is still stronger, it's strength will remain
And love is the strongest of all
Edwina Peterson Cross
©December 2002
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