Season’s Christalizations

“I love Jesus. I love the Pagan Solstice Christmas pine. I love Mother Earth, I love Goddess Shakti. I love my Buddha-heart. I love freedom from religious authority. I love the perfect consistency of my contradictions. I love luscious berries of fire and mistletoe clustered on the cross of paradox. I love the tree of life, where I am ripening fruit. I love the newborn sun.

And I love what my body says to my soul. ‘Every particle of me is made of Matter, Mater, Mother Dust, each atom a cathedral where pilgrims arrive from the stars to celebrate the miracle of flesh. O my soul, You irradiate the world through me. I am your dance. Let there be no more talk of our difference.’ And so after thousands of years of religious combat, my body and my soul are Christalized in one magnum mysterium.

And where does this mystery occur? In the nameless roadside shrine of my chest, in a flame that never stops burning yet has never been lit until Now. Here I celebrate the birth of God, who is this Breath.” Fred LaMotte

 

photo by j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved, 2019

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Not Just Water…

“They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.”
Hermann Hesse – Siddhartha

Photo by J. Ruth Kelly, All Rights Reserved (my youngest, Evan, from a few years ago)

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Circles and Curves

We wend and reach ’round curves,
our circles and circuits of intent.
And whether we mean them to or whether we’re oblivious,
our days become us as we stretch
towards sun’s warmth with hope,
and a strange courage revealed
only by life’s catastrophes.
While we break, our resilience refines itself
sifting through the bits left behind,
a quiet knowing we’ve yet to find,
and ’round another bend, a field of growth flourishes as we weep.
Though we sleep through days on end,
awaiting a less raging grief,
these circles and curves unfold us
eternally towards the sun.

j. ruth kelly, 2019

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Resurrect

“Our task is to take this earth so deeply
and wholly into ourselves
that it will resurrect within our being.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

Photo by J. Ruth Kelly, All Rights Reserved
Photo by J. Ruth Kelly, All Rights Reserved

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The Dance Remains

Oh, we sway as the day’s dance pauses in the hum of moon and sun
and some ancient knowing calls us to feast in the now,
in the everydayness of our unearthings.

We stretch and weep and shout, ousting stagnations,
blooming towards the sun as we turn for one more run.

And one more run becomes us
‘til the next sleeping awakens deeper, truer love being,
love showing truth in the face of the dark histories,
and in the aftermath of all that suggests futility
the dance remains,
but we are never the same.

J. Ruth Kelly, 2019, All Rights Reserved

 

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Along The Shoreline

our pillars nest in tides suggesting endless plays of light
and long they sit in sight of eternity
resting hard against the sand – a story
posing fortitude and feasts along the shoreline,
our grief forgotten in the winds,
our hope perpetual, the slats on which we stand
and then the fall into sea,
our lines living
somewhere beyond the moon…

photo by j. ruth kelly, 2018, all rights reserved

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Blooming Song

all the dying reach
into the unknowable,
a blooming song born

Photo by J. Ruth Kelly, 2018, All Rights Reserved

 

 

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All Of This

all the answers washed away
swirling in the undertow,
the work of tides beyond me
circling, engulfing my feet
fully covering every inch
and stitch (undone)
pulled for wily moon’s musing.
and all that remains, the earth
tides, and sighs,
new wrinkles and aches
the ancient quake rumbles
but shakes this form less wildly.

do I have my sea legs, finally?

or am I becoming the woman
white haired
at the shop on the seashore
open-air fabric market
ocean behind me, encroaching
as the bolt of fabric
mocks my bloomers?

or am I the husband hiding?
seemingly afraid?

or the woman standing
reeling there with feet wet,
the shock of life melt
disintegrating in the shoreline
of all that has been
and is still becoming the mystery?

does it matter?
we are, I am
all of this…

 

Photo by J. Ruth Kelly, 2018, All Rights Reserved

 

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Earth’s Redress

and these lines lay me down deep inside
in that place where all the untamed bits fret,
caged by the dis-ease of a civilized refinement
and some notions of felling faerie spirits for the greater good.
so i stand here in awe, aware of the coming home
as all that stands guard against the onslaught of chains
bows slightly to the season’s turning
singing golden whispers to carpet earth’s redress.
deep breaths, deep breaths, deep breaths…
nature won’t be bought or otherwise programmed to forget

 

photo by j. ruth kelly, 2017, all rights reserved

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Set Fire to Heaven…

“I carry a torch in one hand
And a bucket of water in the other:
With these things I am going to set fire to Heaven
And put out the flames of Hell
So that no one worships God
for fear of hell or greed of heaven.”
Rabia, Eighth-century Sufi mystic poet

Photo Courtesy of Dave Grant, 2011, 2015
Photo Courtesy of Dave Grant, 2011, 2015

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