ANSUZ

ANSUZ-Signals

Draw from the well and drink now
For the desert is far and the journey long
And you are on the brink
of a new beginning.

Unlikely sources point the way
Shakespeare's fools, idiots, madmen
who jabber and jest
Signs for you to unscramble.

But be careful
or you will miss the moment
Dismiss it as irrelevent.
When all the time
It is timely and sacred.

http://www.runes.info/runepiece14.htm

What Page Are You On?

We've all been here.

                  ****

You think you're on the same one
For seconds maybe

But chances are
You're really not
You just want to be
You just assume

It's reassuring
It's life affirming
It ticks boxes
Makes your heart sing

But truth be told .....a chapter or two on
You never were
And never are
Reading the same book


And for an inspiring story about a child with autism who paints like Monet see
http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family

Invocations

The New House

I dream of a house
with no roof and no doors
An open-skyed-cylinder
leaking rain on its heirlooms.

My father says- "Don't touch it!"
I buy.
I find that it is occupied.

I invoke East and West,
Buddha, Krishna,Christ,
Mother Meera, Mother Earth.
Burn sage.
Sprinkle holy water.
Chant mantras.
Chant rosaries.
Finally, I call in the experts.

They simply ask her to leave.
And she goes.

Published in Women's Work, Vol VII

Moonwalking

How did we two strangers come
to be walking in moonspace
On a winter's night
In a country lane
In the middle of nowhere
Watching a gibbous-taurus-moon rising?

Your hand following mine
in its opening and closing.
Fingers fitting,tongue in groove,
Like old friends together.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2016

5 Rhythms

Gabrielle Roth's 5rhythms:
flowing,
staccato
chaos
lyrical
stillness

I don't know how to describe this... but it's dance which you let yourself go to.
Gabrielle Roth came up with the system and writes very passionately about it in her book Sweat Your Prayers. She also produced music to go with each stage in this movement sequence.

I was never a devotee but did enjoy dabbling in it and would say that emotion is released and explored through the movement which is performed spontaneously by you.
I remember tears, exhilaration, peace, relief and a whole range of feelings in between.
Pathway to creativity?
Spiritual practice?
If nothing else it is exercise!

Google it and give it a go if you haven't already.
http://www.5rhythms.com/gabrielle-roths-5rhythms/
http://www.amazon.com/Sweat-Your-Prayers-Gabrielle-Roth/dp/0874779596/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8


The 5Rhythms

Looking out of the Big Blue Cafe window
The abbey sun-struck like your bright hazel eyes
You take me through the five rhythms

"Flowing is this," you say, wide-armed, gathering it to you.
In staccato your elbows slice and score the air.
Your head rocks to chaos, a smile breaking over you.
And Lyrical? I ask.
Stillness descends.

We take it out to Howth Harbour
Where yachts drift and speedboats tilt
Where chaos is in the watching.

On the pier you pause to pet a puppy dog
And anchor yourself in a footprint of Howth granite.
Ebullience and groundedness.
Lyrical, perhaps, is somewhere in between.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2016

Old Photographs

They often looked startled and stiff, caught as in the beam of a headlight, like deer on the road at night
Our ancestors in those early black and white photos
We, the selfie brigade, their polar opposites.

This poem was Inspired by Wendy Dison's photograph Holding.


Found in Sepia

Not like the Earl and Countess of Larkin's Arundel Tomb,
trapped in effigy, hands joined in pleated stone.

These two stand apart, caught in a web of bitumen on pewter
or chalk on silver plate, iodine coated,exposed to light,
suffused in mercury fumes and then bathed -

Until a hand immersed in light
joins her hand clasped
and his straining away.


http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177058

http://www.wendydison.com/

A Wake

There should have been three sisters.

My eldest made tea and ushered petalled trays between  mourner and mourner.
My other sat hushed at your feet weeping.
I smiled and drank tea.

It was to be a long wake
And so
The undertaker said that the window should remain open.

You would have got up and closed it, I was thinking,
as I looked at you stretched and immaculate
Your dark blue suit edged with lace trim coffin
Your hands cold dough, your mouth slightly twisted.

"Doesn't he look beautiful!" they said.

You didn't look like you at all.

Mary, Martha and Mother hovered
while I stood smiling
Until they worn out with grief
left me to do the watching.
Just you and me, and me avoiding.
I ran out of tea and chat and mass card reading.

It was time to allow
That you were not going to get up and close that window
That the lace trim that stirred
was not moved by your heart beating
That your mason's hands would fold no more stone
to your bending, plumb no more lines.

It was time
Your time and mine
And we took it....

And next day when I should before a hushed crowd reading
I was ready to cross over
To let you cross over
And I was strengthened by your passing.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2016