Tuesday, May 01, 2012

Tuesday Poem - Persephone







                                     In darkness Persephone walks
                                     the earth flinches
                                     with every absentminded footfall.
                                     She does not speak, she listens,
                                     and listening, hears her rough soles
                                     smooth and cut, chip and polish
                                     her surrounding plateau of shadows.

                                     Every forward step she takes,
                                     she makes the dark earth tremor.

                                     Persephone walks - and on and on
                                     and on she walks. And when
                                     - pre-dawn - she stops
                                     she finds she's standing still
                                     on solid ground; so strange
                                     and dark a land she knows
                                     she's not been here before
                                     nor felt the restless press
                                     of moths mistaking her presence
                                     for a candle; how slight
                                     their quiet antennae tracing
                                     the contours of her face,
                                     her heart - each passing wing,
                                     an eye; each eye, a question
                                     hovering.

                                     CB







Hello friends. I'm still on the road/in the air, making my way from North to South and East to West with a glide, a lunge, a swoop. My suitcase has taken itself off on three independent adventures since I left home in late March. It's showing signs of wear, must surely have a story or two to tell? Right now, 'tis 'here', 'tis all. I've enjoyed being without it more than I've enjoyed being with it; cumbersome thing, baggage. Next time I go anywhere, it'll definitely be with a whole lot less 'stuff'. 


This has been a time of acceleration and quietude. Two mind-altering, heart-opening conferences later, I find myself in a new landscape. Everything and nothing is the same as it was this time a month ago. Everything and nothing is different. 


As often seems to happen, we're tuned in to the same frequencies out here. Computer time - when I've had it - has been pretty much all work-related this past month (I'm way behind with correspondence and haven't been able to read, comment or answer comments in yonks - apologies, apologies). Reading around the blogosphere this evening, I'm not surprised to discover moths are a theme this week. I arrived in Albuquerque, New Mexico last night and - as if in response to some faintly-whispered cue - we're being visited by moths. And I mean flocks of moths - flittering, fleeting, fluttering, floundering dusty-winged moths. Along with Marylinn, I consider them messengers. If you haven't read her post titled 'Attributes of the Moth', pop over to her blog where she has written about them as only she can.

". . . When I looked into what moth brings as a totem I found: the ability to perceive with clarity, strong healing abilities, protection for traveling between darkness and the light, finding light in darkness, metamorphosis and, in common with the phoenix, rising from the ashes, in moth's case of the flames to which it is drawn. . . "







For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill.
 This week's editor on the hub is Alicia Ponder with Helen Lowe's poem Fey. . . and, guess what? Yes, you'll find moths there, too.






4 comments:

  1. Namaste, Claire. Your moth drawing is so perfectly other-worldly. Of course you would have been visited by flocks of moths. Thank you. (((0))) xoxo

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  2. "Plateau of shadows" is very fine!

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  3. Claire, I love the poem, but also the way you have given in a 'form'

    Enjoy your continuing travels!

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  4. Beautiful poem, and the drawing too. There's something about moths, I have a moth poem or two as well which I may use as a Tuesday Poem one day.

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