hypothesis: plums contain
all that is necessary
for the elevation of soul toward
ultimate communion
with the dancer/wood/god/shadow
in the plum stone's heart,
weaving the coming-into-being
of dwarf stars and solar halos,
cricketsong and the singular acorn
Spirit, communion, god, love, soul, dreaming, holiness, death, eternity. Large, infinite, ineffable things, these. Nobody can properly or exhaustively catalog, quantify, define, or prove them. We can conceive of them, look at them, turn them over and around and contemplate them, but we can’t give them to one another like tulip bulbs or toast. And we can’t sum them up in a two-minute elevator conversation.
Still, we sense their presence. Human traffic moves and dances, and we ourselves roil and shift like galaxies…our souls moving around the red muscle of our hearts like burning suns. And because we feel these immensities in our lives, and because we are relational creatures, warm-blooded and social, we reach out to each other, opening our mouths, and the words spill over our lips and into the world, and so it is that the startling precious quality of our most human moments are preserved and shared. And we live our purpose, sacred artists mirroring the beauty of the universe back unto itself. And we hear god.
note the skin - like its cousins:
yellow peach, apricot, and bird cherry
(being a family of sunset fruits), it is
a mirror held to deeps - black honey
of the northern sky at winter's zenith
its waxy bloom
can be rubbed with a thumb, curtain
of stars and moss in contact -
hold a plum between your teeth
and exert fractions of pressure until
the ruby/cobalt/nocturne skin splits -
its red pulp, angry and savage sweet,
secretive stone, heavy with things unmade
and made
Yes, I believe that poetry is the language of god. That’s a heavy sentence – a simple jumble of words that contains within it galaxies of assumptions, ideas, falsehoods, truths, comparisons, emotions…like a palimpsest. Like a poem. I believe that poetry may be one of the most direct ways we human beings have of communicating with our gods – with the planet, the spirits and powers, the air we breathe, the water and wine we drink, the skin and bone we live in. Poetry is the language of dream and prophecy. The emotional language of the heart. The precise language of moment.
I might also say that poetry is the spiritual documentation of the human heart. The cataloging of that which impregnates a moment with meaning – the smallest mote of light or heat or breath moves almost imperceptibly to the left and suddenly a door opens in space and the face of god rests in the hand of some maple tree, or the trembling eye of spring rain.
Yes. The alchemy of experience in the realm of art. The universe, vast and open – a shocking, elegant and humbling expanse – pouring light down into our bodies, rushing and hurtling into our lungs and our senses, wind and breath, resting in the citrus rind of a desert at sunset, the grace of waking on the cusp of some delicious dream, and mingling with our tongues, our breath and our hands, to become intimate markers of our passing; poems are what is left in the wake of true relationship, that which exists in the space between my skin and the skin of god, dancing now near and now apart from each other, holy and human.
and, we shouldn't forget,
the spicy, exquisite pepper of
the plum blossom in the frigid
swept sky of early march - see:
some plant nursery, there is a woman, tired
and tired, with a tremor in her soft
hands, her eyes still pots full of rain,
her nose buried in the chest of
its scent, the young tree smooth
and flexible, and upon which,
there is almost
nothing left to say
Words are just fingers pointing at the moon. But in a poet’s hands, there are moments when words become the moon, and the moon becomes a silver dish of words, if only for a nanosecond. Reaching the place of being joined. Reaching relationship. Uncovering the place where the fact of Beauty leaves the mind and floods instead in a wash of bare branches.
Where all the holy, infinite and shattering universe can be found inside the wind, the rain…the weight and color of a single plum.
Ruby Sara is the author of the blog Pagan Godspell (www.gospelpagan.wordpress.com - note that this blog is now defunct), and the editor of Scarlet Imprint’s (www.scarletimprint.com) recent collection Datura: An Anthology of Esoteric Poesis. Come explore the rich and sublime realm of poetry with Ruby in her 6-week course on Poetry and Spirit, offered at LFAC beginning March 8, 2011!
Scarlet Imprint is accepting magical poetry through October 31, 2011 for its second collection, to be entitled Mandragora. You may read the details here.
The Wheel of the Year turns to Beltane. Blessed be!
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