Tag: sunrise

sunrise sequel

.Reading time 2 minutes.

On the last day of my visit home to see my mother, I took one last sunrise photo—my heart filled with gratitude for her return from the hospital and steady recovery… My heart overwhelmed with gratitude for the doctors and nurses, the friends and family who prayed for her recovery, for the ability and support I received from my work to abruptly drop everything and fly across the Pacific to be with my mother, for the healing she received and for her own strong will to heal, for time with my family and our cat, for the ever deepening awareness of just how precious this life is… My heart flooded with the beauty of each and every new sunrise.

The following poem is inspired by and written for my mother, who enjoys gardening and playing the lyre, who loves harvesting the blueberries and baking bread, who delights in feeding the birds and fish and all the little creatures… for my mother, who is a poet and is poetry… for my precious mother, who is the sunrise…

home free

when the sun rises
all the beautiful flowers and butterflies dance
in this garden of life
in this wild symphony of wonder and delight

when the sun rises into the sky
i dance with the swallows
and with the wind
dancing
with no particular path nor purpose
dancing
just for joy
just for the sheer love of dancing
for love itself
and for life
for one another

when the sun rises
we dance wild and we fly
home free


sunrise

.Reading time 2 minutes.

I came to realize that my mother is the sunrise. That it was she who created me, and that it was her love that brought me into this world. A fact so simple and so obvious that I had failed to notice it before. Like the air we breathe needs no explanation; we simply breathe. Suddenly, I came to know Gaia. Changing Woman and the beauty of Kinaaldá* came running home, light-footed and swift, to me. The sacred fire of Amaterasu danced inside of me. Women are creators. We are life.
In the beginning, my mother created me.

Each day my mother was in the hospital, I took a photo of the sunrise and sent it to her. It was only after the third or forth day that I realized what I was doing and decided to continue until she was strong enough to come home. And she did come home, finally… after being on the brink of ICU, after IVs and antibiotics, after nasal cannula and swollen legs and a pain which she described as the devil dancing in her body. After she heard a woman’s voice saying that she had come to get her…
But my mother is home now and recovering. And she is rising with the sun each day.

On the first morning my mother was back home from the hospital, I took a photo of the sunrise and sent it SMS to her and then went downstairs and walked into the kitchen. There she was, looking out the window into the garden and enjoying the same sunrise. I gave thanks for her life, and for mine together with hers.
My mother is the sunrise.

*Kinaaldá is a coming of age ceremony in Navajo culture in which girls come to embody the life-giving and healing qualities of Changing Woman (Asdzáá Nádłeehé); they become Changing Woman herself.

sunrise in the land of the forgotten

.Reading time 4 minutes.

On my path two white feathers nestled together like lovers—one bloodstained and the other not—give me pause. What unseen shadow is trying to come into light? Searching and searching and searching for something, weights seem to pull me down beneath busy surface waves, but my flashlight finds nothing to shine on. Like the great wall of China running beyond horizons east and west, the veil is endless and the sun refuses to rise, in this land of the forgotten. 

Like the dark side of the moon, mystery is for earthbound dwellers only. How might i drift to the other side? Might it be a perilous voyage, or pleasant? But shadows only exist in the light, disappearing as they do, into the darkness. How to find them there? Futile, is it not? Chasing shadows in the dark!

It seems i must, rather, coax them into the light. Not into the full glare of noontime, but into the gentle and warm glow at dusk—the between times in which worlds come together. Holding hands, light and dark dance together and shadows are set free to spin and to twirl without worry, without blame. 

Here, on this light red ribbon between earth and sky, the forgotten might surface softly into the welcoming arms of the soul. Into a love-lit world and shed its amnesia quietly into the sea.

But dreams crashed by despair, innocents violated, curses cast by exes, love gone astray and betrayed, bodies beaten and bloodied… these shadows are not light. Their exile into the land of the forgotten might often be the one thousand armed goddess of mercy shedding tears. Without release, without respite, they are like ominous clouds haunting the horizons, bound to erupt into fire storms and broken river banks.

ash

repressed memories 
explode
like stale fireworks past their expiration date
up into a void and blanked out space
the embers fall, slowly
drifting down
through this bitter smoke-filled sky
and choking, i shed my body
like skin in the aftermath of exposure
to flames
let the ash float
twinkle out and extinguish
in an ocean of darkness
and finally, i shall rest in peace
on a soft seabed of amnesia

The seabed is not so soft after all. Rocky, dark, cold, unforgiving, and lonely. Grave diggers will find no jewels here, no chest full of treasures. Where is my heart? It seems to have scattered somewhere—singed and scorched—in the smoke filled skies. 

Where is the way out? Where is that red lifeline, umbilical cord like, to the round curvature of mother earth? Can i surface from these depths and cry loudly into the pink light of dawn, my love and my light—memories intact? My heart, intact? And my soul, free?

Somewhere in the darkness i hear a heartbeat and a whisper: 
Look, look my love, over here.
The sun, all crimson for you,
ties this light red ribbon tenderly 
around your heart. 
Hold my hand and we’ll fly, 
spinning and twirling together now
up into the sun
dancing 
into a beautiful 
beautiful new 
day.