Solstice Poems: "Turning of the Wheel", "Walking the Labyrinth", "Softest Word", and "Ache of Inarticulation"

TURNING OF THE WHEEL

It’s the turning of the wheel

Something new is writing itself
and it’s time to write something new

It’s the turning of the wheel.

I know this now,
because I’ve read all of my writing
and I realize
that everything I’ve ever written

No longer applies

The angst is different now
The anger’s different now
The grief is different now
Even the beauty has changed.

I’m in a softer place
My heart
reminds me
again and again
the goodness of things
A phenomenon I’m remembering more often

It’s a good place
And momentarily sad
To say goodbye
To everything I’ve ever said
All my convictions and emotions

But I honor them
by letting them compost into
the rich soil of what has become my life
teeming with life
building to this very moment
where the wheel is turning.

I’m on the brink
of something new

And truly
in this moment
of creative space,
where anything is possible
and hope is inevitable
and everything sparkles
with the shimmer of trust
I find myself
Euphoric

The wheel is turning
I’m on the brink of writing
new pages
rising from the composted ashes
of everything I’ve ever known
everything I’ve loved and lost
everything I’ve clung to and released
everything I’ve hated and forgiven
everything I’ve misunderstood
and everything about me that’s been misunderstood
I’m composting old pages
and building a soil
that will sustain my searching roots

It’s the turning of the wheel

Something new is writing itself
and it’s time to write something new

-Diana Tigerlily, December 16, 2009


WALKING THE LABYRINTH

I walk the labyrinth
seeking clarity

my third eye fills,
spills over to wash the salt from my eyes
and show me the picture
of my question:

Where am I to be
in order to be
a source of goodness
a reservoir of love
a resource of shared power?

Can I make homeplace here
where I am
standing in place?

Or am I supposed to walk the edge of uncertainty
pushing my comfort boundaries
in order to keep growing?

Am I a tap root or a rhizome?

*

When I’m not creating
I feel parched and dark, urged
to running rhizomous across the earth in search of water and sunlight

When I am creating
I come alive
filled to spilling, swelling and tapping
deep deep deep my roots
into the infinite source that keeps feeding me
right where I am

The trick is to sustain
my creative thirst
from where I stand

--Diana Tigerlily, December 16, 2009


SOFTEST WORD

I’m trying to form words from the feelings of my heart.
How do I translate pulses into the shapes of nouns?

malleability of clay
coaxed softly
and baked into shape

words for me are etchings
slowly carved
from heart memories

from lifetimes
from eons of spilled lava
from cell memories

from bloodlines
vesseling and branching
through the generations

I’m trying to find the softest word,
the word whose vowels are open-ended
like a river’s
flow

--Diana Tigerlily, December 18, 2009

ACHE OF INARTICULATION

(a five-minute free write with additional improvisation spoken to and inspired by music played by Maria Johnson)

Music clears the air,
makes space for meaning
to be heard
beneath the words

Clean and piercing
through the muck
of thick words

like lights in my windows
sparkling through the night,
a palette of color to balance my mood…

Sometimes I ache
with inarticulation

Sometimes I ache
within articulation

I wish my words could sound like musical notes,
wish my voice could sing
like an instrument

I want the lushness of harmony and discord
I want the clarity of melody
I want the rhythm of my body
to translate what I hear in my heart
and express it as song

I want to express what I hear in my heart like a song

That ache

it swells
but it doesn’t pour out like music

It gets trapped
in the grammar
of all things spoken
and unspoken
and not said and
undelivered

Where’s that stream of beauty?
I can see it
I can feel it
I can hear it
I just wish I could sing it

And so I just move…
I have to just keep moving…
I let the music get inside me and I just move my body
because that’s the way I sing

The music spills, it pours, it flows
out my fingertips
through my twirls and swirls
the curls of my hair and the sway of my hips

Who needs words when you’ve got a body and some music?

But, ohhh

If only my voice could move like my body
That’s where the music and the words would meld:
in my vocalizing body

Maybe one of these days I’ll sing

For now I’ll just
let the music clear the air,
make space for meaning to be heard
beneath the words

--Diana Tigerlily, December 14, 2009