Pan


Today I was rummaging around in those old files from older computers, looking for a poem I wrote when my daughter was little. I couldn't recall the title of the poem and so I was scanning all these forgotten files and opening them at random. I came across things I have totally forgotten about. This is a love poem for Mother Nature. All I changed was the name; I wanted to lend my younger self a little bread.

Blue sky fading into infinite shades of blue,
the clear, cool touch of water on the hand.
White snow on pale grey mountain.
Smell of damp pine tree at dawn.
Breath moving easily into body,
awakening memory within the breast,
awakening memory within the belly,
feet touching cool sand in shade of palm tree.

The Positive Mother is .....

Where words recede into open spaces,
canoe moves silently through brown reeds.
Trout darts through clear pool
in twinkling sunlight, gills prism white light
of thinking into shades of green and blue,
blood flows through veins, time begins again.
Sleep touches the dreamer like a wand,
memories of warm ocean,
scent of salt in heavy air.

The man who is blinded and alone and frightened
as the death mother closes in about him
reaches out for this.

The man who paces about his house in the night
and cannot find peace has been seduced
by the death mother. He seeks the softness
of the flute's pan music at dusk when the last light
plays on the red rocks above the desert floor.
No words can console him which do not
arise from this flute, this light, these rocks,
this desert, which do not reach down into these
things and through love's poetry seek the mystery.
Words which are not the servants of this mystery
have no poetry, can bring no life forth.

Words which move away from this, into the hard lines
of crystal formation, take him into dark, empty space,
where there is no earth, no color, no life, no love.

Thoughts which form and run along these hard lines
are masculine thoughts, seeking truth, expecting
that an answer will come from their intertwinings.
These belong to the inorganic world. Disconnected
from the source, these thoughts are insane.
The insane father, the insane lover,
feels only the yearning for the love of mother nature.

In the deep truth of woman there is only nature,
in her fecund, flowering, providing, caring aspect
or in her dark, seducing, power to withhold,
refuse to nourish, allow to wither and die,
her mind under the spell of watching
as if from outside the events unfolding.

Connection to nature is the gift woman
has to give. The intelligence of the breast.
She is the earth, dark and rich and eager
for impregnation, yearning to flower.
The man who loses connection to this fact
will not sleep sweetly at night,
will not walk contentedly with his children
and grandchildren as he grows old alone.

Reconnection to this brings reconnection to love.
To life. To poetry. To laughter. To sex.
The fecundity of nature is giving, providing,
in its most mature aspect, in being the nurture
of all the children, making the blind to see.
Love cannot serve itself and remain love.

There is no answer to the question of
"what does he want?"
There are only brown eyes which soften
into dark earth and grow green grass
with yellow flowers, to let him see
the true nature of love and connection.

His mind by nature travels away from this,
your mind by nature brings him back home.
The softness in your belly,
the sound of a bell in the distance
on a lazy, humid afternoon, where
eternity is there inside every moment.

The imitation of him will send him away,
spinning through space, no way back home.
This is the tango lesson,
the soul in the woven basket,
the secret in the madwoman's song
when the pictures have been thrown away.

Posted: Wed - July 30, 2008 at 06:14 PM