Anne Allanketner is a poet and psychotherapist from Portland, Oregon. Her books of poems, Spells of Mending and Three Springs, are beautiful, magical and healing. This poem, from Spells, is her tribute to your rainforest mind.
Crystalline Structures
You are made of crystalline structures,
that vibrate like tuning forks.
Their delicate iridescent wings
unfurl and lift them high on the soft breeze
of night to gather subtle informations
which few can understand.
You inhabit these in formations.
Gathering them in tenderly and transposing them
when needed to harmonize the infinite tangled
song strands of earth.
Perhaps you ought to wear a helmet
and goggles at the shopping mall or
wrap your selves in blankets hung with spells and crystals.
Just to navigate the realm of ambient noise at work.
When the luminous wings of your soul flap,
you lift up out of ordinary time and immerse
yourself in beauty, or sorrow, or fierce love.
Whatever is before you, you enter and allow
the exquisite dilemma of life to welcome you
toward the Divine.
This is hard to accomplish at gas stations, bars or gaming arcades. Also, hospital waiting rooms, school cafeterias, truck stops, cocktail parties or among the very rich.
Naturally, you seek moving water, wetlands full of waterfowl, and the cascade of crimson leaves. Some cathedrals and Japanese garden shrines and
the company of your own strange sort.
None of this is easy. You must be an ardent scientist
of replenishment. You must be
the crafty, shape shifting magician, just to whisk yourself
into psychic obscurity at the right moment.
Certain sounds are helpful; The plunk and fall of water.
The early morning bird calls, the crackle of fire
against star light.
A gentle heart-felt chanting can lower the curtain
of protection around your ears.
No one loves to cloak them selves more:
The soft fall of the cloth that makes you separate.
The eye lids of the soul, allowed to close.
The petals holding the bud.
The silk lantern wrapped around the lilting light.
Do not listen to the harsh instructions of the world
Which might delude you into using
what is odd and fragile and capable of magic
as an inadequate tool for bludgeoning.
Or spend what you have, for endurance.
Or mire that intricate knowing
into covert arguments about power.
Allow yourself to float the billowy cape
of rose petals and golden leaves around you.
Turn away from those unhelpful influences.
Come towards the light, the beautiful night sky
Milky Way spiral of your soul.
You have lost so much, to buy this sensitivity.
Protect it like the multifaceted jewel that she is.
Wrap that tuning fork in velvet and rock it to sleep at night.
Sing love songs and lullabies to those wispy neurons, those
singed nerve endings, those antennae
you attempted to hide under your hair.
You are made for healing.
So many lifetimes you must have prayed for this.
So many languages to mend the fabric
of the world
come from your deepest heart.
Oh, sing the melody of the spheres that you were meant to hold.
Sing the songs that weave the balance.
This color strand light weaving dance that you can do.
And let go.
Of needing to be rich or strong enough
to endure shopping malls or television
Let the joy of who you are rise up,
a flowering light from the inside.
And only laugh and turn away when anyone
would measure you in money or endurance.
For what is endurance when you have fractured
and re-joined 1000 lifetimes?
Carried on your own laughter…
And the musical sounds of beauty and luminous
Hope!
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To my bloggEEs: Let us know if this poem speaks to your gifted soul. How does it describe your sensitivity? As always, I appreciate hearing from you. Or click on one of the links above to find Anne and her books.
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