Transformation

False Monarch

This month I finish my final class for certification in Transformative Language Arts. It is a crossroads on a journey that I officially began in 2007 at Goddard College, but really has been a life journey for me. The poem this morning in my daily reading was by Jeanne Lohmann, a NW Quaker poet I happened to meet in a writing workshop in Spoleto, Italy in 2000. The poem is titled A Certainty of Transformations from her book Shaking the Tree. I'd like to share the second half of the poem here, but encourage you to read the full poem.

"...My heart pumps messages beyond the flow of blood,
and I've achieved a person eager for renewal.
Affection's earth enough to sprout such change,
and love's the richer mix for metamorphosis.
Yet mystery is where the final trust resides
and I've been transient there at other times,
often enough to know that change is how we're made.
Surprise hides laughing around corners
and weeping is a necessary healing
doubly releasing to those who've learned
to see beyond the surfaces of tears.
Lively creation labors everywhere.
We are upheld by all we do not see,
our lives enmeshed in endless restless worlds.
The whole of me moves straight toward transformation.
Alive in ways I cannot imagine I will continue,
relinquishing all that I am to new remarkable forms,
translated in death to a fresh becoming."

Ramage

I learned a new poetry form, Ramage, invented by Robert Bly.  Here are two examples:

Homage Ramage to Daylight

One crow two caws and the day launched unalarmed

with a white-green frost unlike the usual gray.

I missed the changing of the guards

from full moon to sun star day –

a covenant kept despite my absence.

So I kneel in awe before this common morning,

after a doubtful night and daunting pall.

I kneel in awe at the promise kept by my Beloved light.

The Chronic Tempest

Lime heat startles and shouts bitter darts,

an assault on her winter skin. Hibernating squint

into the imminent past. Tears salt the edge of fear

and sweat seeps down her susceptible spine.

Across stark sand, over clamoring waves,

a bruise-purple storm hangs in suspense,

cloaked but familiar, tsunami ready

to drown her in unexamined history.