Dances With Archetypes

DANCES WITH ARCHETYPES HAS BEEN MOVED

2009-07-27T16:48:00.001-07:00

Dances With Archetypes has been reconfigured and moved to a new address.
Please find the finished version here: http://archetypesdance.blogspot.com/

2005-02-28T15:56:00.000-08:00

MINING THE JUNGIAN ARCHETYPES - THE POETRY, PROSE AND PAINTINGS OF EDWINA PETERSON CROSS

THE POETRY, PROSE AND PAINTINGS OF EDWINA PETERSON CROSS

2005-02-28T15:06:00.000-08:00

MINING THE JUNGIAN ARCHETYPES
~ A Study and Collection ~

INTRODUCTION

I have had deep, paralyzing claustrophobia as long as I can remember. Even the thought of a small, narrow space is enough to start my heart hammering, my blood jumping sickly and trigger a full blown panic attack. There are things I can not think about. And yet . . .

In a sort of inside out, yin/yang magnetism, I am fascinated by the idea of underground labyrinths, secret passage ways, hidden staircases, sequestered lands. One of my favorite stories is the tale of The Seven Dancing Princesses who go each night down a dark, secret stair to dance the night away and wear out their shoes. One of my favorite books is the second of Ursula LeGuin’s “Earthsea Trilogy,” The Tombs of Atuan which tells of the High Priestess Arha, the eaten one and the rituals and traditions of the Darkness in a phenomenal underground labyrinth. My favorite Narnian book is The Silver Chair, much of which takes place underground and Oh! I am mesmerized by the land of Bism where salamanders dance in the fire and you can squeeze yourself some fresh juice from a ruby or a diamond. This upside down fascination seems strange and mystifying, but perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps we are always a little fascinated by our own fears.

My Great-grandfather was a miner, one who was said to have the ‘Golden Touch’ and be able to intuit where minerals ran below the surface. He was very successful and struck gold several times. If he hadn’t happen to own all the banks in the city when the Great Depression struck, I might have grown up a lot more spoiled than I did. As it was, my family still owned a mine when I was young and it became a sort of familial Wishing-rock when I was a little girl. “When we sell the mine . . .” was something we said when wishing for those things that there is no use wishing for because they are too far out of reach. In the same way I hear people say, “When I win the lottery . . .” There was always plenty of room in our lives for wishes of all dimensions and stratifications of wildness because somewhere over the crest of Cedar Mountain, up past Navajo Lake there existed: “The Mine.” Obviously, I never went even a little ways down into the mine, though my brother and sister did. I didn’t need to go inside the mine, I knew what was in there. I knew it was an endless cave of stunning wonders. It held everything material I had ever wanted and a good deal more. It was filled with the scintillating magic of possibility, the enticing enchantment of potential. It held ‘The Wish’ and was brim full of dreams. We were gifted with the ability to make that wish again and again in a million different ways all because a dark hole in the side of the mountain was ours and ‘someday’ we were going to sell it.

They are powerful words: Possibility. Potential. The inherent capacity for coming into being. Capability of existing or happening or being true. Opportunity. Choice. Opening. Expectation. This study and collection begins with possibility and potential; where two other synonyms meet at a cross roads: Prospect and Theory. It began when I saw the opening to the Alluvial mine at Soul Food Café and began to wonder about prospecting with a theory.

I had already begun the mining. Before the opening of this Alluvial mine, I had already begun to dig. In the beginning I didn’t know what I was digging for. Though I would not call it a “Golden-touch,” like my Great-grandfather, I sometimes have the ability to put my hand down and intuit when and where something is running below the surface. In this instance I put my hand against my own heart and knew that despite my claustrophobia, my panic and my fear, the time had come for me to go down into the mine, because there was work down there that had to be done.

At the opening of the mine shaft I would build a Descansos. http://www.dailywriting.net/Descansos.htm
brought me to the Descansos process as described by Jungian writer Clarissa Pinkola Estés. She writes that there is a time in a woman’s life, usually in midlife, when she has to make a decision - possibly the most the important psychic decision of her future life - about whether to be bitter or not. Estés goes on to explain that women reach the point where they are full up to their ears with everything and they've had it. Dreams of the twenties may be lying in a crumple. There are broken hearts, broken marriages, broken promises. To cleanse oneself Estés suggests making descansos. To make descansos means taking a look at your life and marking where the small deaths and the big deaths have taken place. There were places in that dark, terror filled mine where old wounds were spewing out toxic poison gases, doors I had slammed shut on pain and tried to forget that were now leaking black, acrid fumes that were beginning to choke me. Bitter indeed. Dr. Estés had been describing me. This is where I began. This is where I entered the mine and went down into the dark.

For roughly the last sixteen months, as a person with acute claustrophobia, both real and psychic, I have gone deep into the darkest mines of my soul and fought suffocating fears, terrors of the dark, panic at what I might find there, horror at what I might not find. I have moved a lot of slag and downed brace-timber, cracked open long sealed shafts until my fingernails bled and walked into breathless, choked tunnels amid the specter of ghosts.

One of the most important things I have learned is this: An artist cannot create with selected pieces of their being. You cannot reach inside for the power that moves and say, ‘this I cannot touch’ or ‘here I will not go.’ The seals had to be pried off the doors, the slag mined away before a vein of gold would appear or uncut diamonds burst like sparks of white fire from the dark. But more importantly the closed, choked rooms of phantoms had to be opened so the air could flow through, so the gusts could blow the dust from walls and floor, leaving me, not a deep, dark, dirty mine, but a hallowed, hollow cave of washing wind.

I am a writer. Before I walked through the doors of the Soul Food Café two and half years ago, I was a totally blocked writer; I was not writing at all. Within these walls I relearned my skill, regained my craft, recovered my art. Within these halls I called to my Muse and she came; she has never left me since that day. Now I believe that this is attributable to one of the most arcane, mystical and hidden secrets of the Soul Food Café. Within this mansion of many doors there is such a huge wealth of material that this secret could be hidden anywhere and it would be very difficult to find. The mastermind behind the operation is so clever, however, that the greatest secret of all is hidden in the place no one would ever think to look. Since you’ve made it this far with me, I will now share this secret with you. It’s hidden in plain sight.Right in the top of the front page, dead center. http://www.dailywriting.net/Zen.htm Cunning, yes?

When I went down into the dark, I knew exactly what tools that I would need. I began to write. http://www.dailywriting.net/WritingWell-Being.htm

For more than a year I worked in the darkness, with one faithful, patient witness holding a single lantern. I moved most of a mountain. I kept finding new, deeper and more intricate shafts. I began to think about supplemental tools and I began to paint as well. Then I came to that significant cross roads of Prospect and Theory. Once again it was Clarissa Pinkola Estés who pointed me down the path toward the tools. I followed her to her source and began to study the archetypes of C.G. Jung.

In a poem I have written:

I am no Jungerian scholar
I comprehend his thoughts in mist and metaphor
His concepts in analogy and image
I met him in the Dreamtime, walking

This is exactly the case. Here I have brought some of the theories of Carl Jung to my painting and my writing. I do so as an artist and not a scholar or clinician, for what has emerged is based on image and metaphor, idea and extrapolation and not the letter of his thesis. I have used Jung’s ideas as they revealed themselves to me in image and word. My goal has been development of greater self awareness, creative expression and psychological insight, both personal and in universal.

In the end, I hope to come up into the world again having passed that balance point C.P. Estés speaks of; no longer suffering from that bitterness that can rise up like black-lung from the poison vapors of unexamined wounds. The bitterness that can strangle a person’s soul and silence an artist’s voice.

I will come back into the mountain air carrying gems and precious minerals; paintings, poems, stories, as Hamlet said: “Words. Words. Words.” They will come from the bottom of the mines, they will come washed in my blood and when I hold them to the sun, some of them may be spiked with veins of gold or the milky glow of uncut crystal.

I hope to come back to the surface closer to conscious. In the end, each of us is responsible for our self and the long painful work of becoming conscious is, in truth, our only hope in a world that approaches a phase of human history where everything hangs in the balance; where the capacity for destruction may be weighed precisely against our archetypal soul’s capacity for compassion and love.

I hope to arise from the dust and find the canary in the cage is still singing.

©Edwina Peterson Cross
January 21, 2005

This collection is dedicated to Heather Blakey, who held the light unwavering, donned the blue robe with generous sensitivity, made it all possible.

2005-02-28T15:03:00.000-08:00

MINING THE JUNGIAN ARCHETYPES

2005-02-28T14:57:00.000-08:00

CONTENTS

1. THE SHADOW

2. THE ANIMAS

3. SYZYGY

4. THE CHILD

5. THE SELF

6. THE MOTHER

7. MANA - SPIRITUAL POWER

8. THE PERSONA

9. THE FAMILY

10. THE HERO

11. THE MAIDEN

12. THE GUIDE

13. THE ANIMALS

14. THE TRICKSTER

15. ADDITIONAL CONCEPTS

Unless otherwise noted, all writing and all painting
is the work of
Edwina Peterson Cross

Author's Notes

2005-02-28T14:53:00.001-08:00

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Those familiar with the Archetypes of CG Jung may find even my metaphors and images traveling wide. For instance, I do realize the in looking at the archetype of THE CHILD, I should be considering the child within myself. Some of the poetic selections deal with my own children rather than the child within. Or do they? That is the question of course. What do you learn about the child within, by looking at the child without? What do you discover about the nurturing of self in the way you come to nurture others? There are many of these MIRRORED METAPHORS in the poems, prose and paintings included here. Often there is more than one mirror. The subsections in THE CHILD are Jung’s and added a fascinating dimension to the subject.

The archetypes are not organized in any particular order - other than the first five being the archetypes most often examined in studies of Jung. THE SHADOW, THE ANIMA/ANIMAS, SYZYGY, THE CHILD, THE SELF. This study originally began as an investigation of just these five archetypes. Then it grew. And grew!

It is perhaps unfortunate that THE SHADOW happens to be the most commonly examined of the archetypes. Since it is, it is where this collection begins, which means that the very first selections you will see are somewhat dark. I do hope you will go on, past this darkness, as there are many different dimensions, textures and degrees of illumination that follow.

Many of the images and concepts, you will find, are anything but traditional. For instance, traditional images for MANA - SPIRITUAL POWER most often revolve around phallic and lingam symbols, cultural implications that are associated with male sexuality. I have seen something different; a loosely connected collection of images which called to me. Images, which I was intrigued to note, feature, quite a bit of fire.

THE HERO is also probably not what you expect. The Hero’s quest I choose to explore is not the usual tale. There has been a cultural upheaval in women’s ‘roles’ in the last fifty years. I began to wonder where a woman looks for a mentor, a guide or a ‘hero’ now. I looked for images, listened for metaphors - and answered myself.

Archetypally, Jung considers THE ANIMALS as they interact with the human psyche. This selection features the animals that have called to me, artistically, in the last year, I think that is probably a good indication, not of the universal psyche, but of my own.

I read in several places that Jung’s identification of THE FAMILY archetype had to do with blood ties. Regardless of what the original intent was, this is a concept whose time is past. There are innumerable configurations for the word “Family” now, being related by blood is only one. The majority of this section deals with my personal shaping of the word “Family.” However, in acknowledgment of what “Family” truly means, this section begins with a painting of the Bell-Poulson family, one of the most fantastic families I know. Not one of these people is related to any other one by blood. All of them are related to each other by LOVE. Love is what makes a family.

As a note on the section titled THE MAIDEN: I consider “Maiden” to cover the period of a woman’s life between Childhood and Motherhood or taking up her Life Task and have never deemed that it had a thing to do with her sexual activity. I thought I better clarify that before some of my Maiden’s started pointing out that they didn’t think they qualified any more. Again, tradition does not reign here. You will not find these Maidens waiting helplessly for someone to come and rescue them.

The final section includes four concepts that I would like to consider in more depth at some time. Each one is represented by just one painting. They are concepts linked to Jung, but not archetypes and are therefore ADDITIONAL CONCEPTS.

The fourteen archetypes I have chosen are by no means the only ones. How did I choose which ones I would address? Yes. I listened for metaphors and looked for images. In other words: I picked those that interested me. The older I get the more I find this to be an excellent way of proceeding in life, all the way around.

I do hope you enjoy what you find here.

~ Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-28T14:53:00.000-08:00

Mirrored Metaphors

2005-02-28T09:57:00.000-08:00

THE SHADOW

THE SHADOW - OF COLD

2005-02-28T09:53:00.000-08:00

The Shadow of Cold

I.
Some find the shadow in darkness
In vine haunted forests of rot and mould
The shadow of my soul awaits
In the barren blue wraith of cold

In a world without joy or gladness
Too cold for sigh or tear
Nothing lives in the frozen waste
But the whisper of a frigid fear

A fear that unbinds all reason
Leaving nothing that I can prove
A fear that freezes every cell
And leaves me unable to move

Unable to access water or air
Or to call on the power of fire
Unable to feel dejection, delight
Bright passion or dreaming desire

Unable to laugh, unable to cry
A paralyzed, helpless disease
Curves my spine, drops my head
Numbs my muscles until they freeze

Shadow of impotence and blue ice . . .
Not what I would have chosen
Powerless, useless, immobile
Bound and locked and frozen

II.
I have found the shadow secreted
I have found the power to tame it
I have called it from the blue ice fields
Because I am able to name it

I know the fear of freezing
I know from where it came
I know the fear of fear itself
I have given it a name

I know of crippling shame
I know of ice cold dread
I broke the back of the shadow
When I learned to lift my head

I couldn’t have tracked the shadow
If I hadn’t have known it
I couldn’t have swallowed the shadow
If I hadn’t come to own it

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-28T09:35:00.000-08:00

Nightwoods

While we walk
In the wilderness of the shadow woods
All we know is it’s twining darkness the
Sense of the unknowable exhaling wildness
Lacing the next reaching root, the next
Whipping branch that reaches out to slice
Our face with unexpected purpose
The smell of something breathing on the neck,
The touch of panic threading through the blood
The raw, panting, single note of
Fear

We could walk those woods by daylight
And note that the path is clear and wide
That there is nothing menacing anywhere
And laugh at ourselves for the our way our blood
Had beat in our throat or the way our knees had felt
Each rustle in the underbrush when the world
was painted with ink and omen,
We could walk the same path with a huge, bright
Lantern, washing away the night, showing the same
Clear path, and we could laugh at ourselves again, but
That would be foolish

A lighted wood and
A wood of darkness
Are not the same place
At all

We hope to learn to walk the dark
To breath the blackness with even calm
To intuit reaching roots and whipping boughs
And learn to dance around, moving through the dimness
With the eyes of a hunting cat, the balance of a deer
To come to still the jump of panic in the blood
Smooth the raw, panting, strangled note of
Fear

We come to learn to face the night
Not turn the
Darkness
To Day

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-28T09:31:00.000-08:00

THE SHADOW - OF PAIN

2005-02-28T09:18:00.000-08:00

onion, apricot, adagio, a face turned to the light
so the shadows fall like sighs against the
cracked pavement
candles, chocolate, fingers placing spoons against
rose colored napkins in the shade of an oak tree

such things can be
for beauty’s sake alone

water
still through the rainbows of cut crystal
harp strings
fog settling into the bottom of the valley

I try to remember
Each piece that isn’t pain
Each piece whose average, unexceptional perfection
Might spell salvation

Pink satin slippers
A rosewood pen
The thick wool of a well made hat
Blood on my fingers the color of

Rain

©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE SHADOW - OF PAIN

2005-02-28T09:14:00.000-08:00

Shadow Sonnet V

Darkness black like polished rain
Licks the sides of night
Breaks the fragile back of pain
Broken wings of flight

Waiting still for something hollow
To echo from the void
There is nothing left to follow
No remains to be destroyed

Absent even loss, and sorrow
From this vacuum slick and black
Forfeit up a sold tomorrow
You cannot buy it back

Cold as a missing midnight stone
An empty echo of the word ‘alone’

©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE SHADOW - OF PAIN

2005-02-28T09:11:00.000-08:00

Shadow Song IV

Sing a song of something taken
A song that echo’s twice
Slumbering heart that will not waken
Frozen like a vice
Moths will fry against the moon light
Songs will break at dawn
In the stuttered, staggered numb night
All will soon be gone
It takes back what can’t be given
What is split and railed
Darkness, broken can’t shriven
The cold black coffin’s nailed
Daylight that will not be breaking
Leaks like tears through rain
A body frozen is not aching
Death knows no song of pain

© Edwina Peterson Cross

THE SHADOW - OF PAIN

2005-02-28T09:06:00.000-08:00

Shadow Sonnet XI

The roses wither, droop and dry
Their color grows intense
A sagging sunset colored sigh
Rot sweetened, dusty scents

The candles melt and sputter
Wax grows transparent, warm
Runs like melting butter
Assumes a different form

I danced on polished hardwood floors
I danced on breaths of air
Swallowed the sound of closing doors
And came to this stock-still chair

Pooled wax hardens without thought or sound
Rose petals scatter like poems on the ground

©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE SHADOW - OF PAIN

2005-02-28T09:03:00.000-08:00

Paradox

I feel a wry piece of a legacy
Sylvia Plath's head in the oven
Rocks in Virginia Woolf's pockets
Hamlet's oh so omnipresent consummation
Devoutly to be wished

The pain whispers endlessly
Flatly, prosaically:
"What is the point?"
And what has poetry to do with this?

Syphilis took both Mozart and Schubert
One damp, late night binge and it's following fever
Lifted Shakespeare from this world
Like an errant piece of cambric in the wind
So much for reason
To go with your rhyme

I wanted my children
With a rock deep, earth splitting passion
And now, in a silken sort of irony
They hold me here
A quivering butterfly stiff pinned to a card
Not with malice, but with love
And a need that, while diminishing,
I still must listen to
I still must hear
Despite the ceaseless, seductive, sibilant whispers of the
Pain

Now I know
I will never fly again
Never the freedom of the bright blue wind
Never the rush of a blazing, liquid sky
But there will be no euthanasia
No kindly bottle filled with desensitizing fumes
No easing oven, no numbing stream
I will continue
I will tremor and flutter
Wobble and twitch
Pinned within this
Pain
Trapped
Within this
Paradox

©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE SHADOW - OF PAIN

2005-02-28T09:01:00.000-08:00

Taking Xanax for Pain

Given shrieking pain or bone gnawing fatigue, I'll take fatigue in a second and this
hot sharp pain has wound me up like a toy until my springs shudder and shake
and I think they will recoil, snap, sending me wild, an explosion that will
Not explode, a collapse that will not give, a break down that just winds tighter until I rupture scatter into a million pieces, but even that won’t be allowed
But then
the panic begins to recede like a syrup tide, taking the tightness taunt
tense frozen taking the fright, alarm, shuddering recoil, trepidation
that was closing in double fists over the already
Insufferable intolerable unbearable that must be suffered tolerated born
The graphic twisting pain may dim, not depart but may be muffled
pushed down with a damper that presses hard for the pain may become pressure and ache

No. The bright piercing pain hasn't gone at all, it just
Doesn't matter
the exhaustion is close on the footsteps of the fierce pain
now running together, pacing one another, running through over throughout
Up and down down and up up and down
All those clear overlays in the encyclopedia H
For "Human"
clear pages laid one by one over a still very silent man that
Dale Jackson and I used to look at in kindergarten, the huge book on both of our laps our feet sticking straight out from the couch turning translucent pages with fascination
Pain has run shrieking up and down each and every transparent page
each and every system over and over eternally forever and now again this
wearing exhaustion paired with the suddenly unimportant pain
Goes burning up and down skeletal muscular respiratory reproductive
vascular excretory digestive circulatory nervous nervous nervous
Nerves and my head wants to keep dropping forward, but the fire doesn't seem to matter anymore because the panic is gone

and Dale is gone. He faced the virus, plague of a new century, viralpoison screaming up and Down over and through all those translucent pages, he fought
for skeletal muscular respiratory reproductive vascular excretory digestive circulatory nervous and lost

Somewhere in time, two little children sit with the H encyclopedia on their laps
feet sticking straight out from the couch turning transparent pages with
fascination, but not knowing
not knowing at all what it
Means

©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE SHADOW - OF PAIN

2005-02-28T08:56:00.000-08:00

LEGACY

To whom can I leave my rosewood pen
Soaked with starshine and with blood?
To whom can I will my veins of ink
That pulse with ebb and flood?
I’m circled by people who love
But few who understand
That I build this world of words and light
On a plain of pain and sand
Who will know the exquisite agony
Of questing the perfect word?
Of feeling your heart thrown open
When you know that your words are heard?
Who will feel the strength of the mountain top?
And the panicked black canyons between?
Who will taste that behind the laughter
Runs a river of tears unseen?
Who will know that being strung on a wire
Is a curse, but a blessing as well
For I do wring the power of words from pain
And mine beauty from the dark depths of hell
Who will walk the path my pain has cleared,
Though the way is still narrow and rough?
Who will know that deep in the darkest despair
The light and the words are enough?

~ For Laurence Estlin Walsh ~

©Edwina Peterson Cross
April 3, 2004

2005-02-28T08:55:00.000-08:00

THE SHADOW - LEGACY FOR LAURENCE

THE SHADOW - OF LOSS

2005-02-28T08:08:00.000-08:00

What is the sound when Art dies?
As magic melts into mundane?
Is a miracle something that cries?
As it rusts in a workaday rain?

Do creative sparks rip the sky,
If they fall to the cold ground unused?
Do dreams scream when they die,
When the dreaming’s been bruised and abused?

What is the sound when Art dies?
Can you hear a soul wasting disease?
Can you hear breath and bone turn slowly to stone?
Can you hear when a heart starts to freeze?

What is the sound when Art dies?
Can’t we hear with a pin-point acumen
The sound of a massive demise
If humanity kills what is human?

©Edwina Peterson Cross

FUNDAMENTALIST GROUP TRIES TO SILENCE SMALL THEATRE COMPANY
Monday, February 7, 2005, Grants Pass, OR - Connect the Dots Theatre Company, a small community theatre organization, has been targeted in recent days by a small group of local fundamentalists who are using letters, phone calls and e-mails to harass the theatre company and attempt to erode their financial support from local businesses.

This poem was written in response to this crisis near my own home town. The crisis continues all around us from direct attacks like this to attacks on funding for the Arts on every front. Please help humanity retain that which makes us human - PLEASE SUPPORT THE ARTS.

THE SHADOW - OF LOSS

2005-02-28T07:49:00.000-08:00

I like irony
It’s rather full bodied and rich, with a smoky note
It swirls ruby in the cup and smells of humor,
Albeit a little sour,
Kirsh/licorice, fruity and incongruous

There they stood this morning
Having nothing whatsoever to do with each other
Two words, two concepts,
Too universal, too pandemic
To relate in any sentient way
“Truth is Beauty, Beauty truth.”
Ponderous. Pedantic.

Then there was a sensual touch of thought
Breath on my skin; tangible and clear
Once again your woven words
Have brought everything
To a piercing point
Of recognition

Ah, Mr. Yeats, reach your hand through time
And join me in a cup of rich ironic red
Your words have lit and mapped my heart
Let us drink to the black beauty of this pale truth you tell
The sheer white truth of beauty’s deep, dark spell

Earth in beauty dressed
Awaits returning spring.
All true love must die,
Alter at the best
Into some lesser thing.
Prove that I lie.

Such body lovers have,
Such exacting breath,
That they touch or sigh.
Every touch they give,
Love is nearer death.
Prove that I lie.

W. B. Yeats

©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE SHADOW - OF LOSS

2005-02-28T07:45:00.000-08:00

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls ~ It tolls for thee.”
(John Donne)

"I have felt a great disturbance in the force."
(Obi-Wan/George Lucas)

Glistening drops in a sea of potential
Spirits bound to spirits by our search for more
We Dance through our journey, reaching out . . .
Grasping hands, sharing thoughts, touching hearts
Building, growing, learning to become
What will be whole
What will be knowledge, beauty, understanding
What will be god goddess heaven eternity
What will become the ultimate: Love

Sudden loss declares itself
In bloated flesh, splashed blood and grinning bone
In pain, anguish, and grinding grief
Pieces of wholeness slip from our fingers
We stumble in the dance
The monstrous brown wave
Crashes over all our heads
Their screams tear through our throats
We are all diminished, all bereaved
By the unfathomable, immense multitude
Of radiant possibilities
That have suddenly
Gone still

©Edwina Peterson Cross
December 29, 2004

THE SHADOW - OF LOSS

2005-02-28T07:41:00.000-08:00

A town
A small space of earth
Lives layered like sedimentary rock
Rich sandstone stripes of remembrance and vision
Here we were together, here we grew
We lived, we laughed, we loved
A town
A small space of earth
A name

In the dark of this new winter dawn
Through a mist of tears
I shuffle my towns like laminated dreams
Laying their bright names across my knees

WellsvilleWoodbridge
AttleboroAshlandOccoquan
LosAngelesLeadvilleLeetownLamoineLogan
CedarCitySilverSpring

They sing like crystal chimes
In a clear high mountain wind
Each name is precious
Each full of meaning, memory, marrow

One is the birth of red rock desert hills
Spiced with cedar and sage
Another is forever in a thousand shades of green
Sweet with pine and stars
One brought me my hearts desire
Amidst the rolling mist of a sea washed shore
One taught me to walk in beauty
Inside the sacred circle of the Rockies Wasatch wheel

In the dark of this dawn
Through a mist of tears
I know that the world is made of this:
Not huge cosmic concepts or prodigious precepts
But these small private places of the heart

Meaning, memory, marrow
Lives layered like sedimentary rock
Rich sandstone stripes of remembrance and vision
Where we grew, we lived, we laughed, we loved
A small space of earth
A town
A name

And I hear the shadows whisper
Among the crystal chimes . . .
Anatevka
Darfur
Fallujah

©Edwina Peterson Cross
November, 2004

THE SHADOW - OF LOSS

2005-02-28T07:36:00.000-08:00

Honey smoked wood of Egypt
Turned on a lathe of time
Glossed by oil of a thousand hands
Tear cured in a vat of brine

On the other side of nothing, I,
Sit plaiting barren words
Weaving futile tinctures of light
And counting wood
Dichetal do Chennaib

Hang your harp in the tree, hang yourself, one eyed man
For what wisdom is worth in the end
Bite the apple, bite the sky
Both will turn to wormwood in your mouth
Bitter as gall in Gilead

If I tore my throat with a Valkyrie’s wail
Would it buy a cup of comfort?
To what end this eternal spinning
If it will not weave a piece of gauze
That will staunch this heartsblood flow?

The Banshee brings a rattling coach
Wood for a lychgate or bier
I see the darkness, hear the pain
Where is the fire for the Phoenix?

Shears and knives and scythes of steel
Wooden handles wear-sanded smooth
Who will teach my frozen fingers
To make a simple knot?

Smash your loom, hang it up with the harps
In this vast branching bentwood of Ash
There is no cup of comfort
No spiders lace for this monstrous pain
Save time
And what comfort is time?
The ravens gather with hungry eyes

So I whisper to the wind that moans through severed strings
Of harp and of loom and of heart
I am here
Helpless incapable powerless
With nothing to offer
I am here

He spun in the wind where the ash tree stood
A Wise Man in a dark, blood spattered hood
The spinner said, ‘tis understood
That in the end, it all comes to wood

©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE SHADOW

2005-02-28T07:32:00.000-08:00

Burqa

My boyfriend said he didn’t like people looking at my legs.

“Everyone looks at everyone’s legs” I said, “it’s this thing called a mini skirt”
“No, they look at yours more.”
“OK, so I’ve got good legs. Sue me.”
“You could do something about it.”
“Put everyone’s eyes out with the pin of a broach?” I suggested. “It worked for Oedipus.”
“You could take your hems down.”

I was still for a long, long moment. “Down to where?” I asked quietly, “down to my knees? The skirt I worked in last summer comes down to my knees
Did it stop people from looking at me?”
He looked at the ceiling, he knew perfectly well that it didn’t.
“Down to where?” I asked again, “down to my ankles?”
Now he looked at the floor.
I lifted a handful of long, gold hair.
“What do I do with this? Dye it mouse colored? Must I cut it off? Or just cover it all the time?”
“What do I do about my face? Do you know where I can catch a good old fashioned case of small pocks?”

“What is it you want sweetheart” I asked softly.
“I . . . I want other guys to stop looking at you.”
I sighed. “As far as I can see, the only thing for you to do is get me a burqa. It seems the logical thing as well, because it is what you really believe in, it’s what you really want.” His face had folded at the forehead. “What the hell is a burqa?”
I shrugged, “Its sometimes called an abaya, or a chador. It is a long, black garment worn by Muslim women to cover their body, it covers every inch of the body, with only a grid that you look through. Everything is covered so nothing can be coveted. It says to the world: “You may not look, this body belongs to someone else, it isn’t even mine to show to the air, because my body belongs to someone else.” “For hells sake,” he said exasperated, “that is not what I want.”

My eyes had narrowed dangerously and my lips were pressed tight. I was very, very quiet for a long minute. “Yes, it is, it really is, it is exactly what you want. The problem is . . . The big, huge problem is, I will never, never, wear one. Never. Not for real, not figuratively. I won’t take down my hems. I won’t cover my hair. I will not be less than who I am. I will not cover who I am. I will NOT cover who I am for you or anyone else. You want a girl in a burqa, you go find another girl.”

How sure is seventeen
Sure of every moral fight
Lines drawn in the sand
Are always black and white

How sure is fiery youth
When we have every clue
And know exactly what we would
And would not ever do

Then life came in tangles
A game you had to play
Where people wore false faces
And black and white was grey

I pledged my love to one man
And everything was rearranged
But the world only saw my body
And couldn’t see the change

I worked and studied learning
To be the best I could become
The world looked at my face and hair
And said, ‘this women’s dumb.’

I didn’t know when it happened
It was something that didn’t show
But slowly, steadily, secretly
Black fabric began to grow

A colleague at work, a stranger
It began to panic and chafe
And then my best friend’s husband
I knew that I was not safe

One day my pants won’t zip
So I buy a bigger size
Three months later, another pair
The black web begins to rise

I keep getting bigger
And unlike at seventeen
Nobody turns to look now
I move through the world unseen

I will never cover up who I am!
I once said so strong and sure
Now I see the world through a woven grid
Swathed in black from my head to the floor

I wove this burqa out of fear
A cave in which to dwell
It isn’t made of cloth or flax
But it covers just as well

It is ponderous, ugly and awkward
And I hate it, of course,
When I think of how I used to move
I am sick with a deep remorse

Sometimes I stop and consider
Taking the thing away
I could feel the air again
I could stand in the light of day

I could dance again in the summer wind
I could end this shrouded sham
I could stop being someone else
I could uncover who I am

But here I am behind these bars
Stabbed with fear that makes me doubt it
What if I took my burqua away
And I could not live without it?

What would I do when the cover came off
No longer safe behind the screen
How would I walk out into the world
Knowing that I could be seen?

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-28T07:19:00.000-08:00

THE SHADOW - BURQA

2005-02-28T07:17:00.000-08:00

THE ANIMAS - MERLIN

THE ANIMAS/BELOVED

2005-02-28T07:07:00.000-08:00

~ One of Jung's interpreters held that the anima/animus character
was only understandable to those who have known true love. ~

I am no Jungerian scholar
I comprehend his thoughts in mist and metaphor
His concepts in analogy and image
I met him in the Dreamtime, walking

But I understand the anima/animus
Down to spit, pith and marrow
It is a weaving I like, a net for thought
I find attractive and entrancing, more so because
It holds water

~

I.
I projected what I wanted, I loved what I had
Projected because it was already
Mine

The times we said we were too close to be
Two people, too much to be apart,
We were simply
Right

And what I loved so much in you, was mine
All along
Animus/beloved the other side of who
I am

I will take your laughter,
Your quick mind,
Vivid dreams, creative spark,
Your utterly unique expression
And string them like pearls
On a wire of living light
I will add your gentle hands,
Ingenious ideas,
Soft words,
Sharp wit,
The love in your eyes and
I will tie a circle with your tears

Then I will compass my throat
With this circuit of pearl
And push them through ‘til they
Click on bone
Breathe bone, become bone
From this bone they were birthed
From this bone they became
Now they are
Recalled
Returned
Restored
To make
Me
Whole

Friend/lover
Brother/sister
Soul-mate

Mine

II.
Speak from my dreams, my mythic muse
The other side of the mask
Speak leather to lace, bone to breast
A shadow that’s harlequin cast

The dynamic strength of words
The powerfulness of action
Stretch sinew to my curving
Blend strength to my compassion

Mixed potency of power
Splice spirit to my sensitive soul
Sculpt something clear and round
Translated, vibrant, whole

Coming at last to understand
I needn’t fear the other part
It is no hostile generic specter
But half of my harmonic heart

III.
The dream picks the form - sign, symbol, persona
Surfing through mythos on a rainbow wave of vision

“How the anima/animus appears reflects either the condition or needs of our soul presently” ~ That’s what the man said.
You gotta listen to what the man said. Besides

Jung said that the animus is more likely to be personified by multiple male figures, while the anima is frequently a single female. The anima/animus appears in Symbolism in Dreams and Narratives: a peer figure of the opposite sex to the ego-bearer to whom he/she has a strong and compelling tie or bond, mythological attachment, often a lover, brother/sister, soul-mate.

He dips the quill into the ink, which sloshes across his already stained fingers. I look over his shoulder. “Whatcha writing?”
He looks back at me with a small smirk. “Words. words. words.”
“Smart ass.”
He laughs through his nose and continues to scribble.
“I’ve got this incredible story . . .” he says. “Well no. It’s not that it’s an incredible story, it’s that the characters and starting to come alive here, which is MAKING it an incredible story.” He dips into the ink again. His eyes look bright and slightly fevered, his hands are moving so fast that the ink is splotching and splashing. “My hands won’t keep up with my head!” he exclaims. I know the feeling. I know the look in his eyes. I decide to leave him alone. I walk to the window to see that the world is swathed in a soft grey fog.

While my back is turned the Bard becomes a Wizard. It is always happening, doesn’t bother me in the least. I turn around to the smell of apple blossoms and find him examining his hands. “Ink. It never really comes off you know. Why does he have to be such a slob?”
“Ink. I don’t think it’s been invented, dear. I think you have to write on wax with a stylus, but I’m not sure.”
“Doesn’t help my cuticles.”
“Humm. Merlin?”
“Humm?”
“When does a story become a myth?”
“Oh, goodness, I think you are assuming some things here. What makes you so sure a myth starts out as a story?”
I raise an eyebrow. “But myths ARE stories. What else would they start as? I mean, even if they are true stories, they are still stories.”
“Even so, there are all sorts of places that a story has to go before it becomes a myth. You can’t discount legends, folklore, fables . . .”
“Right. That was my point. When does something cease to be a story and become something else?”

He is patting him self all over his robe with a distracted visage.
“What are you looking for?”
“Pipe and tobacco.”
I shake my head. “Don’t go turning into Gandalf while I’m talking to you. Merlin doesn’t smoke.”
“Right. Well. Look here above your desk. Frazer, Graves, Campbell, Estes. Briggs. Don’t you find that a rather unholy combination if you are trying to make up your mind about story and myth?”
“No, because I’m not going to make up my mind from what one person says.”
“Not even me?”
“Most definitely not even you! Though, I’ll add your opinion to The Powers-that-be.” I jerked my head at the books above the desk.
He laughs softly “You are not going to make up your mind at all. You just like kicking the idea around. Your stories are all mixed up with dreams and fantasies, reveries and illusions anyway. Bubbles. Speaking of which, where is Jung?”
“Laying open on the desk.”
“Figured he had to be around here somewhere.”

I pick up the book, but when I turn back he has changed again. I smile slowly. “Hi Pal.”
“What are we reading?”
“Jung.”
“Oi vey. Too much brain work. I vote for Yeats.”
I reach for another book and hold out my hand.

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth wood in the lake
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats
There we've hid our fairy vats
Full of berries
And of Reddest Stolen Cherries.

Come away oh human child
To the waters and the wild
With a fairy hand in hand
For the world's more full of weeping
Than you can understand
(W.B. Yeats)

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-28T07:00:00.000-08:00

THE ANIMAS - YIN/YANG

2005-02-28T06:57:00.000-08:00

THE ANIMAS - ANDROGYNY

THE ANIMAS

2005-02-28T06:51:00.000-08:00

Avalanche

Come with me to the meadow
And I will dance
I will dance until the sun splits into a million gleaming shards
Bright as heaven, sharp as silver
That will crown the top of the world
With a lucent light
As pure and piercing as the past

Come with me to the meadow
And I will dance
Until my feet bleed snowmelt flowers:
White lace arnica, cream filled lilies, blue columbine etched with gold
Larkspur, lupine, nodding limpid bluebells
Simple white daisies
Flung wildly open to the brilliant slashing sun

Come with me to the meadow
And I will dance a note of such sweet pure music
As this thin air has never tasted before
I will dance a note so clear and clean
That it will shatter diamonds, scatter light, surmount the sun
A note that will shake the soft spring air
Like a still, single cyclone,
Splintering the silence,
Slicing the sheer skin that spellbinds the snow
Until it shivers, shudders, sighs
And slides

Stay with me in the meadow
When the sharp shards of the sun go out
When the roiling whiteness settles all around like a lake of light
When all the world is silent . . .
Sing for me in the meadow
And I will hold your voice in my mouth like snow
Like silence, like silver, like splinters, like sorrow
Then softly
I will swallow

Stay with me
In this mountain meadow full of moon
Milk on marble
Pearls on platinum
Alabaster kissing alabaster
Like a promise never broken
Like a love never lost
My pale bare feet against the
Silent snow

Come my love and I . . .
Will

Dance

©Edwina Peterson Cross

Avalanche is the First Place Winner of the 2004
Palabras Press ~ Dance-With-Words Poetry Contest

2005-02-28T06:43:00.000-08:00

THE ANIMAS - AVALANCHE

2005-02-28T01:40:00.000-08:00

SYZYGY

SYZYGY - The Dance of the Archetypes

2005-02-28T01:37:00.000-08:00

Dance of Archetypes

Here some Archetypes jumble on the page. Is this all the Archetypes there are? By no means. It is an interesting list however. I look at them. Some of them are familiar. I smile. Some of them are so familiar that I know their embarrassing childhood stories. Some of them know mine. Some of them are foreign. Some of them are threatening. Some of them are neutral. Which will I dance with?

Actor Addict Alchemist Anarchist Artist Avenger Bureaucrat Beggar Bully
Caregiver Child Clown
Companion Coward Craftsperson Crone Crook Damsel
Detective Dictator Dilettante Diplomat Disciple Diva Dreamer Eternal Boy/Girl Evangelist
Fool Gaia Gambler God Goddess Gossip
Healer Herald Hermit Historian Innovator Judge Knight Liberator Lover
Magician Martyr Masochist
Matriarch Midas Monk Muse Mystic Nature Boy/Girl
Networker Nun Olympian Patriarch Pilgrim Pioneer Poet Politician Predator
Priest Prince Princess Prophet Prostitute Provocateur
Puck Puppet Puritan
Rebel Redeemer Rescuer Revolutionary Robot Saboteur
Sadist Sage Samaritan Scholar Scout Scribe Seductress Seeker Seer
Servant Settler Shaman Sidekick Slave Spoiler Storyteller Student Teacher
Thief Tramp Trickster Tyrant Vampire Victim
Visionary Warrior Witch
Wizard Zombie

Some of them will speak to me, will seek me out. Some of them will know automatically that they belong to me. Others will take some thought. In a mutual dance of electing, my Archetypes and I will choose each other.

Caregiver Artist
Crone Child
Detective Eternal Boy/Girl
Dreamer Gaia
Fool Goddess
Healer Mystic
Historian Seeker
Knight Student
Magician Alchemist
Matriarch Lover
Muse Princess
Poet Scribe
Puck Seer
Rebel Teacher
Scholar Trickster Witch
Seductress Storyteller Wizard

Now. Just as an experiment, what if I had to give some of them up and keep others? It is an exercise that is only academic, of course, for I will surely keep them all, and add more if the time comes when they fit. Sometimes an archetype is outgrown and not active any more. Still I keep even those, for their history is wired into who I am now, through who I was then. But if I had to narrow it down, which ones fit best? Which could easily go and which ones could I just not stand to part with?

I begin to narrow, to cull, to examine each Archetype more closely to see which attributes pull me the most strongly, which ones I will wear most often.

Caregiver Crone Dreamer Seeker
Magician Matriarch Muse Poet
Scholar Seductress Wizard Storyteller Artist Child Mystic
Lover Teacher Goddess Rebel

And Again . . .

Caregiver Dreamer Poet
Scholar Storyteller Artist
child Mystic Goddess Seeker

And yet again . . . closer to the bone . . . closer to the mirror. . . closer to the dream . .

Dreamer Poet Child Artist Seeker

How can I let go of one of these? OK, it’s academic. Well then . . .

Dreamer Poet Child Artist

Dreamer Poet Artist

Poet Artist

Can I do it? Can it be done? Can I take it down to one?

Poet

Indeed. And with that . . . the word is said.
And something worth knowing is known.

2005-02-28T00:55:00.000-08:00

SYZYGY

Syzygy

2005-02-28T00:51:00.000-08:00

Singing to a Womb of Words

(Shadow meets the Soul to become whole
Skadi sits and grins while her snow spindle spins . . . )

I sing into a empty room
Of stones and pain and dark bloods bloom
She smiles as she sits at her vein strung loom
Knowing well that I should not presume
Nor speak out loud from the depths of the gloom
Drawing faces on the walls of a midnight tomb
Wondering why I assumed what I should not assume
I’ve always known I was alone in the room.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What did you think?” The spinner laughed
Like a shush of slithering snow
“You, whose hands are dyed with the craft
You certainly ought to know.

Stretch the heart strings then weave the woof
In colors that dream and fly,
Push out the walls and raise the roof
Burst open to cradle the sky,

Entwine the horizon with vertical thought
Wreath patterns in circles of song,
Then taste the blessed vision you’ve wrought
Much wider than empty is long

This room is not empty, but brimming with chance:
A bright womb of words that are waiting to dance.”

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-28T00:46:00.000-08:00

SYZYGY - Megan's Rose

2005-02-28T00:28:00.000-08:00

THE CHILD

2005-02-28T00:25:00.000-08:00

THE CHILD - CIRCLES

2005-02-28T00:18:00.000-08:00

Lacquer

In her carseat carrier in the doctor’s waiting room
Her starfish hands seek her mouth
Like two celestial space flowers, opening and closing
In a liquid, arrhythmic flow that is purely, impeccably
Almost two-months-old
“Almost two months”
You tell me when I ask, raising her from the seat in a
Single, smooth, seasoned step to your shoulder
Where a receiving blanket waits with prescience
Over your practical denim work shirt

I see your eyes travel to my hands and an eyebrow lifts
At my cranberry flame acrylic nails
You turn your back, our conversation over
My lacquered hands having automatically sorted me as “other”

You have no way of knowing that this is the first polish
I have worn in twenty-five years
No way of knowing that I still rock grocery bags
Or the way my head whips around
When a tiny voice in a crowd calls “Mommy!” although
My baby’s voice is now a low, deep basso
You have no way of knowing
That I now must look up to see that baby’s face
Yet, when the nurse calls my name, and I pick up my things
I will spend at least a fraction of a second
Searching for the diaper bag

I cut off my long hair twenty-five years ago
And never grew it back
Starfish tangled in it like complex chestnut kelp until
It was more trouble than it was worth
I spent years without earrings
For the searching starfish quested the brightness
Discovered, clenched and pulled

Through much of my life, I wore your uniform, right down to the
Prescient receiving blanket
I know the dance you weave by heart
I walked and rocked the same patterned steps
My hands automatically patting an ancient, age-old scansion
Softly against a tiny back

It was such a very short while ago
That I put on a skirt and earrings that hang down
That the starfish I loved slipped out of my fingers
And I painted their tips with cranberry flame

©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE CHILD - CIRCLES

2005-02-28T00:15:00.000-08:00

Senior Year

I feel your impending absence
Like a phantom limb
Not yet severed

I follow you around
With college brochures
Questions
Suggestions
Poems
You must feel you will trip
Over me
Every time you
Turn

While you are still physically here
Your eyes look through me
I feel your intention
Moving
Out the door
Down the road
Across the country
Away

I try
Not to look too long
Listen too hard
Or touch too much

My meditation
To learn to open these hands
Meant to shelter
Which might smother now

Uncurl the clenching
And simply
Let go

And you
Gracefully
Side step my anxious
Following tread
And graciously pretend
Not to feel my tears
In your hair
In the dark

©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE CHILD - CIRCLES

2005-02-28T00:12:00.000-08:00

First Flight

The nest outside my window is full.
Last week they were tiny, wet
with fine, fuzzy, down-covered heads
eyeless, mewing for something
not knowing what or why.

Back and forth the mother soared,
life focused, never stopping
filling the need of the open crying mouths
then flying straight for more.

In just one week
they have become
birds.
Speckled breasts and fluffed up wings,
small sharp beaks and bright black eyes
that now know the need;
fill the belly and then
the sky!

They stand in the nest
ruffling feathers,
flexing wings,
experimenting.
On the hard concrete below
one small body has already broken.

Mother bird is flying faster now.
Will she find enough
to give them what they need?
She senses spring
is almost gone.
Time is short.

And mine . . .
eighteen years of nesting
now stands teetering on the edge
testing balance,
stretching wings,
perceiving with anticipation
the sweet currents of the wind.

I cannot soften the concrete below
nor choose the moment of flight.

My thoughts are flying faster now.
Have I given her enough?
Have I given her what she needs?
A breath of summer
rocks the nest.
Time is short.

©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE CHILD - CIRCLES

2005-02-28T00:09:00.000-08:00

Empty Nest

The 1982 powder-blue Volkswagen Rabbit was cute and compact; I bent to the back seat to buckle my little girls into car seats twenty thousand times; it drove to grocery stores and preschools; it lived on snow. Reincarnated as a sixteen-year-old’s alter-ego, it spent its second life sprinting from High School Theater to Taco Bell, graciously bestowing rides upon thankful subjects, making memories, night cruising.

The 1993 Dodge Caravan originated navy blue, peeled to sad, pocked gun metal gray. It was square and ugly, but it held three cellos, one bass, two violins, six musicians and could made the 20 minute drive to Youth Orchestra in 13.7 minutes. It carried the entire Odyssey of the Mind team, vast quantities of food administered to starving actors, various and sundry adolescents always coming or going and an incredible amount of garbage. Sometimes, driving down the road in the middle of the night, waves of laughter coming from the back seats, I would look at the faces in the rear view mirror and be struck with terror at the wealth of intelligence and talent cradled in my single vehicle. I’d want to pull over, too frightened to drive. The faces in the mirror have faded and disappeared, one by one, dissolved into the bright future that awaited them and the ugly gun metal Caravan is gone.

My new Honda Accord is silver with black velvet interior. The lines are long and elegant, the engine makes hardly any noise. Inside is the first CD player I have ever owned; I can listen to my own music now instead of the kids radio stations. I put in a thin metal disk and turn the dial all the way up. The sound shakes the inside of the car; I can feel it in my backbone and in my knee against the door. Crosby, Stills and Nash echo inside my skull, in the pit of my stomach. “Teach Your Children Well . . .” I glance in the mirror. My hair needs to be colored; there is a stripe of grey right down the middle. I am alone in the car.

©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE CHILD - CIRCLES

2005-02-28T00:06:00.000-08:00

The Changling's Children

What is a child born to a changeling
And a man of the mountain and wood?
Creatures of starlight and sandstone
Beings of perilous good

The stars and the moon and the sunshine
Come to dance on the green growing earth
Their fingertips parting the twilight
In a medley of mortal and mirth

They were held for a breath of an instant
Between the two worlds growing strong
Drinking learning like clear mountain water
Tasting words and movement and song

Then the strong roots that bound them secure
Loosed and bloomed hollow to wings
They spun in the sweet mountain breeze
Trailing a rainbow of Fae apron strings

And oh, ‘tis a woe to the changeling
Letting go of the creatures is hard
They heard a renaissance pipe in the greenwood
And flew off in the spell of The Bard

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-28T00:05:00.000-08:00

The Changling's Children

THE CHILD - CIRCLES

2005-02-27T23:52:00.000-08:00

April and Laura on Tree Day

Once their hair hung down to their waists
In swinging twin cascades of gold and chestnut
Sister Light, Sister Dark
Dancing spirits in bright, constant, bubbling motion
Now that hair is short and chicly shaped
Their eyes are shadowed, their lips shined
Their long legs encased in leather
Those spirits move fluid now, eloquent
Cursive, cosmopolitan, smooth, sophisticated
They go out into the night
Like twin stars
Burning sculpted double patterns of light
In a black velvet sky

But, today
They have come up the mountain
To choose a Christmas tree
Eyes bare of makeup glisten in the bright cold air
Stocking caps are pulled down
Over the short tufts of their unwashed hair
The icy white wind paints their cheeks
Bright little girl pink
Smoothing out an urbane curve from eyebrows and lips,
It wipes ten years away from their faces
And they are twelve again

I watch them skip away,
Arms linked Sister dark, Sister light
Twined shadows dancing on the snow
The tall pines echo with their bubbling laughter
And the sun on the snow sparkles, shimmers and shines
Caught in the streaming swirl and sway
Of these strong singing spirits
That time will never
Really Still

THE CHILD - CIRCLES

2005-02-27T23:48:00.000-08:00

Heart Pieces

One beside the quiet Avon
One beside the sea
Time has cracked my heart in pieces
And swept them away from me

Life has wrought well of my loss
And all the change it brings
Made each broken heart piece whole
And fitted them with wings

© Edwina Peterson Cross
January 2004

2005-02-27T23:24:00.000-08:00

THE CHILD - HOPE & PROMISE

2005-02-27T23:18:00.000-08:00

Song of the Lark
~A Circle of Sonnets~

I.
I have heard the last pearl throated thrill
From the sweet dawn promise lark
I know this in the depth of chill
Of the long and sleepless dark

The water is closing over my head
Clammy and dank and pale
The only song on this slender thread
Is the song of the nightingale

But I will not say the drowning dark
Will forever persevere
Nor assume the muteness of the lark
Because I can no longer hear

Above those clouds where surrender lies
The constant sun begins to rise

II.
She will stand at the henge of Salisbury Plain
Looking straight past trashy transient stands
They mean nothing at all to that which remains
In this deep, and enduring land

She drinks it’s power down her bones
Until it crackles through her hair
She thinks of it all as gracious loans
Which she in turn will share

She’ll come home on fire with words
Concepts blooming from her fingers
And then will come the sound of birds
A soul soaring song that lingers

And even if my eyes are dark
I will still paint the sky with the wings of a lark

III.
He wonders what made the earth start
And what is the nature of time
He buys impressionist bizarre art
And he uses interior rhyme

He rewrites Homer after school
Tells me Plato was probably cracked
But Stephen Hawking is pretty cool
Though Nietzsche is kinda abstract

He listens to Beethoven and to Queen
Draws maps of imaginary spheres
I have nested this charming bird fifteen
Inexplicable paradox years

But, somehow, he’ll paint the skies alone
In a wonder of brilliant, bright baritone

IV.
And they are not different or alone
Despite what the media choose
That you are or are not to be shown
On the six and eleven o’clock news

It’s a complex, committed generation
Who have quietly already begun
They were raised on the word “conservation”
They will not fail in what must be done

As for my own inpendening silence
It matters not a shred
For on the stage an Angel stands
And her singing will wake the dead

I do not believe in endings, I do not believe in despair
They opened the cold black coffin, and not a soul was there

©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE CHILD - HOPE & PROMISE

2005-02-27T23:14:00.000-08:00

Taran at Three

Suddenly
The constraints are too much to bear
It is time
He burst the cocoon
Of zippered footed jammies
And flies into tomorrow
The air shining
Cool and bright against his smooth
golden skin
Arms extended into wings of wind

Butterfly
Is too fragile
For this strong spirit
For these sharp starblack eyes
He emerges
An eagle
Rushing to taste
The power of the sky

©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE CHILD - HOPE & PROMISE

2005-02-27T23:11:00.000-08:00

Ten Years of April

Your flaxen baby curls
Have turned to cascades of gold dust
Falling like silken water down your back
Chubby toddler legs
Stretch out to streamline
The blooming dance you begin to weave

Should I search your changing face,
Sighing as I see it recast,
Mourning its transformation?
Must I face with fear that new cocoon
That sometimes masks your incandescence?
Shall I weep at the trembling wet butterfly
That will soon emerge
Whispering . . .
“Where has my baby gone?”

Once, when you were only mine
I committed my life
As a pledge to your potential
I cradled your quiescent probabilities
Nurtured the grain of your growing gifts
Then, your eyes were turned to me alone
In undiluted trust

Now, you search
And you scrutinize
You paint
And you ponder
You dance
And you dream
With a growing gift for giving
You aspire to heal each pain filled heart
Conquer prejudice
Blot out injustice
You seek to smother hatred
In a sea of sunshine

And I in humble affirmation
Now give back that trust in full measure
To your seacrystal eyes

Wings of wonder are unfolding
From the promise that lay dormant
In the infant that I loved
My baby is not gone
My child is
Becoming

No
I will not cry
When the chrysalis cracks
For as you lift to dance the air
All the stars in the sky will sing

©Edwina Peterson Cross
March 1992

THE CHILD - HOPE & PROMISE

2005-02-27T23:09:00.000-08:00

For Lezlie at Twelve

I brought you into a world
Of riots and drive by shootings
What made me believe
When I had navigated the labyrinth
Of choking, colic and croup
That I was done with terror?

I send you out each day
Book bag across your back
And cello under your arm
I am seeking for amulets and charms
I am weaving prayers through the colorless dawn

Keep her safe
Keep her true
She is so good
She bruises so easily
Oh, You who watch for sparrows falling
and number the hairs of heads
Don't let anyone hurt her

Then I watch you
Lean the golden wood against your body
Pulling rich sweet strands of Mozart from the air
Building a breath of timeless beauty
With your own strong hands

Your eyes lift from the pages of your book
Coming back to this world slowly
Bringing with them
Depth beyond your years
And a wisdom you were born with

In the end
Darkness can only be fought with light
And you
Fragile flame
With a core of blazing steel
Glow brighter every day

Leaving my door each morning
Going out into the world
With knowledge slung across your back
Beauty under your arm
Wisdom and laughter
In your eyes

You are your own talisman
Your shining self
The radiant answer
To my prayer

©Edwina Peterson Cross
November 1991

THE CHILD - HOPE & PROMISE

2005-02-27T23:05:00.000-08:00

Reality
(For Lezlie at Seventeen)

I saw you in dreams
a star behind a waterfall
crystalline, shimmering
certain
in the liquid fall of eternity
I heard your laughter

And when the doctors
armed with statistics
spoke of impossibilities
and told me not to hope
my heart quietly whispered
“no”

For your reality echoed
on the curve of every sound
in the taste of all four winds
an essence that was tangible
long before
they laid you in my arms

And you grew clear
unclouded, perceptive
knowing and deep
gazing into the well of being
inevitably, undeniably you saw
yourself

Now, I feel your centered spirit shake
under a weight of strain
engulfed by others egos
betrayed by broken trust
Caught in a vice of time and tension
you struggle just to breathe

Reality has been recast
melted molten with your pain
and poured into a nameless mold
your parched tears sear a sky
Gone inky with the portent
of a full stellar eclipse

And I,
who formed you with an unfaltering faith
in my ethereal, concrete dream
now cannot bear the reality
that would take your golden laughter
that would dim your sure, strong star

I would go before you
clearing your path with a heart of flame
I would burn cities to the ground
shake the battlements of the earth
I would disintegrate into dust
anyone who tried to hurt you

And yet, even through this shroud of sorrow
your soft, sagacious spirit
still signs the air with runes of strength
clear, luminous tracings
Which glitter fearlessly and whisper
“Woman”

I bend in humbled abdication
I must yield the keys of pain
into your narrow, able hands
yes, it takes a cloak of darkness
To reveal the radiance
and the mystery of the stars

So, I will be certain once again
my belief in you
the rock of my reality
I will step back and let you grow
I will listen for your laughter . . . and wait
for the renaissance after the rain

©Edwina Peterson Cross
January 1997

2005-02-27T23:00:00.000-08:00

THE CHILD - NEW BEGINNINGS

2005-02-27T21:58:00.000-08:00

JOURNEY
(New Beginnings)

Ultrasound - Seven Weeks

Tiny thing
Little dot on the screen
That the person in white
Says is You

You...
YOU!!!
Who are You?

What do you do...
When a dream comes true?

Third Month

Happy hormones...
These days I spend most of my time
On my knees in the bathroom
Worship posture
To the mighty hormone
Dream maker
Life bringer
I no longer choose food by what will stay down
But by what is better coming up
I must lay down every half hour
And seriously wonder each time
If I will ever rise again
I cry because Beethoven never heard
His own ninth symphony
Because a farmer from Idaho
Won a game show
Because of the sweet dappling sun
Draped against my dogwood tree
Because my father thinks my mother
Is beautiful
I cry often
For no reason at all
These happy hormones
Have shaken me like a snow-globe

But when I am able to be still
I find
Love
Sifting down soft and deep
All around the thought of
You

Seventh Month

Tiny child
Pushing with small strong
Arms or legs insistent against the inside
Of my stretched skin
What are you dreaming of
In your dark still world?
What do you see with your
Newly opened eyes?

Firm, soft pressure against
My hands
Spread like sensors over
Where your self must be...
Keep moving...
Keep pushing...

I send you oxygen from the
Air of this foreign world...
And protein from an egg...
And such strange
Choking love
That somehow you must feel
Radiating in waves
From my wide spread
Waiting hands

Eighth Month

In a tired, happy way
I wait for you
Slow and quiet
Under the grey Maine sky
And for the first time
My mind happily throws away the summer
Smiling a slow, tired smile
At each leaf rusting from green to brown
At the chill that means the winter is coming..
Soft in the wind
Each day shorter
Each day colder
Rolling like a downhill rock
Under the grey Maine sky
Bringing winter into the world
And you into my arms

Ninth Month

And yet
In all my anxiousness
There is something in me
Unwilling to give up this bond
That binds you to me so completely
that holds your new and shinning life
Moving under my hands...
Between my ribs...
Within me..
Inside me...
Part of my heart

And when you can breathe this
Worlds atmosphere alone
Filling your untried lungs with it..
Holding your own head up...
Looking with only slightly blurring eyes
Upon the world of light...
Will you still be the same creature?
Will I really see the tiny
Fists and feet whose touch
I know so well?
Or will you be someone new?

April Star - Six Months Old

You have cherubim cheeks
And a sprite in your eyes
Constant motion packaged
Round and pink
Where are you going in
Such a wiggle hurry
With the call of a baby elephant
My living...
Shooting star?

Impatience - Seven Months Old

Impatience...
Before she was born she wanted to dance
Before she could roll over
She needed to see what was on the other side
Before she could crawl...she rolled
Because she had to get from here to there
Before she can walk
Something tells her to run
She can not talk
And she has so much to say
She is a reaching arm
With her hand stretched out
Impatience...
Keep reaching for the world
Keep stretching for the stars

Valentine - One Year Old

Oh, deep black velvet eyes
That sparkle stars from outside
And glow secret candles from within
Oh, little head
So full of new found thoughts
Covered soft with sunbrown down
Oh, tiny jeans and oatmealed face
Conquering...
Climbing to the top of any accessible anything
Oh, shining new world to understand
Oh, books and more books
Investigating the every of everything
That is touched upon by the eager stars
Of those black velvet eyes
Oh, sweet sprite dancing,
singing,
clapping,
laughing,
Sunshine laughter of a mountain spring
Oh, bumps and bruises
Oh, tears and comforts
Oh, deep black velvet eyes
Oh, little girl
I love you

First Day of Nursery School

I didn't sleep for a week
Worrying about the step we were about to take
My child
The child that I had carried and nurtured, loved to distraction
And spoiled
Stepping out for the first time
Alone
Her soft brown eyes vulnerable, framed by soft brown curls
How could I leave her?
What if someone hurt her?
What if something made her cry
And my ever ready shoulder wasn't there?
"But", I lectured myself
"She must be independent
A strong capable woman someday . . . "
So, on the fateful day off we went
Her new lunch pail clutched in her little fist
And I blinked back tears and shut the door
With her inside

And four hours later
Nearly frantic
I came back for her at last
And she cried . . .
Because she wanted to stay

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-27T21:41:00.000-08:00

New Beginnings - Senryu

See him play with words
When the puzzle pieces fit
Hear, he laughs with joy

Brushes, hairspray, books
Sox and music, one odd shoe
Echoes of my girls

Sweet, calm and still now
Tomorrow’s bright tornado
Sleeping in his bed

Growing up so fast
Balanced on the brink of life
A book in her hand

Hungry for the world
Tiny child with stretching arms
Reaching for the stars

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-27T21:40:00.000-08:00

THE CHILD - INNOCENCE

2005-02-27T21:18:00.000-08:00

Son Rise

I surface from the depths of sleep
Swimming upwards
Dreams still clinging like water lilies to my liquid thoughts
The night is full of hush
Cathedral silence
Except for the clear singular sound of your call
Firm, insistent summons
Wordless meaning
I flow through the shadows on some sixth sense
Until I find you in the dark
“Shhhh, I’m here . . .”
My arms were made for your roundness
I wrap you into my dreaming
Press your hunger to my heart
And we rock away warm into the rich deep darkness

Whispers of grey
Ebbing night
In the new tracings of light
You are no longer just a soft receiving bundle
But the curve of a cheek
A tiny fist hugged tight around my finger
Round sweet sounds I feel humming through my hands
Clear dark mirrors of my own big eyes
Softened with a secret smile
Just for me

And now your windows are brimming full of morning
Flowing over with a new golden day
This day and all the bright sweet tomorrow’s
Just for you

©Edwina Peterson Cross
October 1989

THE CHILD - INNOCENCE

2005-02-27T21:13:00.000-08:00

Lullaby

I am woven of lullabies
Spun of sleepy magic
In this tawny tired end of day
Heavy with hours
My eyes will close before yours
Still shining black bright with ideas
In this cave of night light glow

How many eons have I sat here?
My cheek pillowed cool against your sheets
My song a current of surprise
In the sweet stillness of the night

True love is frozen in time
They say . . .

And so eternity may well find me
Drowsing in this dim golden half light
Singing of dragons
Holding your hand

© Edwina Peterson Cross
June 1990

THE CHILD - INNOCENCE

2005-02-27T21:10:00.000-08:00

Soccer, Five Years Old

He has a hard time understanding
someone asking him to
“get aggressive” and “fight”
He has fought
to learn peace

He has a hard time caring
About the black and white spinning sphere
Or the swarm of kicking legs
There is an airplane in the sky
Weaving a trail of marshmallows
through the blue
A butterfly almost touched
his upturned face
And halfway down the field he wondered
if you could smell the sun

He tried to tell them
But in the rushing confusion
No one listened

His thoughts are spangled dragons
whirling on the wind
His words are honeyed jewels
His face is thoughtful
sad

Does he already know?
This world is not an easy place
for a poet.

©Edwina Peterson Cross
September 1994

THE CHILD - INNOCENCE

2005-02-27T21:00:00.000-08:00

Cut Short: An Echo of Columbine

She stares in the mirror at her golden hair
That the stylist has cut too short
And her eyes well with tears

Once again
I am astonished
At the depth of ache in my own heart
At the smallest sign of her pain
Immediately, I want to fix it, make it better
It is almost a pressing need . . .
Drain the dismay,
Smooth away the hurt,
But I can only offer words
“It’s cute honey. It just looks different to you,
that’s all. It will grow.”

And at this exact moment
Another beautiful young woman
Just your age
A beautiful young woman
Who, like you, played the lead in her school play
Lies dead on the floor of that school
All of her possibilities
Cut short
By insanity

And at this moment
A mother waits
Watching a door
For a face that will not appear
Listening for a voice
That will not speak again

Heart break
Is not a metaphor

How in the name of heaven
Can this fragile vessel
a human heart,
Hold this kind of pain?

And now she sleeps
Her lips slightly parted
Her eyelashes dark trembling birds
Against her creamy skin
She smells of perfume, powder
Innocence
Her short golden hair fans against the pillow
And she dreams . . . .
And she breathes . . .
And it will grow

©Edwina Peterson Cross
(April 20, 1999)

2005-02-27T20:03:00.000-08:00

THE SELF - MY MANDALA

2005-02-27T19:46:00.000-08:00

Seeking Self

Seek the grail in a circle of stones
Seek the future in a spill of bones
Seek the riddle in the pine wood’s bark
Seek the spirit in a light-bound lark
Seek the Westwind in the mountain’s throat
Seek the flower in the wild red oat
Seek for feeling in the dawns cold dew
Seek for meaning in the sunset’s hue
Seek for blessing in the sun warmed vine
Seek for laughter in the moon chilled wine
Seek for beauty in the wreathing of birds
Seek for joy in the dancing of words
Seek for flavor in the journeying breeze
Seek for soul in the jazz of the bees
Seek for magic deep inside your eyes
Seek for silence in the moonhushed skies
Seek for radiance in a starwashed stream
Seek for understanding, deep inside the dream
Seek for seekings sake a image existential
Seek for self creative, unlimited potential
Seek for self, in a transcendental chance
Seek for creation, in the self’s eternal dance

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-27T19:31:00.000-08:00

THE SELF - THESE HAVE I LOVED

THE SELF

2005-02-27T18:51:00.000-08:00

These Have I Loved

These have I loved . . .
The sweet silver shiver
of wind chimes in a mountain breeze
The soft caressing spill
of a Celtic harp

Shakespeare . . .
Sagebrush . . .
Bathtubs . . .
Books . . .
Merlin and Mozart
Honeysuckle moonlight
My husband's hands

Midnight Rocking, a babies petal soft hunger
pressed strong and sure against my heart
Lezlie's vibrant, nourishing laughter
April's giving, sunshine glow
The thoughts that shine in Taran's starblack eyes

Aspen leaves trembling in a dryad prayer
And
Mountains

The lights of Ashland . . .
stars poured on a darkened hillside
in a west wind sweet as wine

One soulblue night when time stood still
and a creamdeep moon painted ribbons of silk
across the Bay of Naples

Narnia . . . Middlearth . . . Prydain . . . Hed
all those worlds of wonder where I wander free

These have I loved . . .
The abundance of lushly twining ivy
The therapeutic kaleidoscope of laughter
The secrets of Swans
Lily of the Valley in springtime shade
The smell of the desert after rain

Hot tea and labyrinthine teatalk . . .
Labyrinths which stretch across dimensions
weave throughout the truth of life
spiral around the meaning of being
only to suddenly spring back laughing
at irrelevance or irreverence
Labyrinths always leading me back
to the center
of myself

Songs from the Greenwood
Renaissance remembrance
Roller coasters
Pad Thai
Every single blessed pause
in the pain

My totem, the Otter
Reminding me of the important things in life:
merriment, revelry,
festivity, freedom, fun
the strong, solemn necessity of
Play

The lucent cyberpathway which leads to
Lemuria
land of El Duende, of moonlit mists and clear healing waters
where my muse dances with joy under synchronic stars
and kindred souls from all corners of this spinning, sapphire sphere
look up from their writing
and smile

These have I loved . . .
Enchantment
Mystery
Magic
Night

The fire that kindled the alabaster light
And loved the rosebud into beautiful blossom

The body wisdom
Nourishment, passion, depth and joy
that is
The Dance

Cut crystals slicing light to rainbows
Waterfalls and fountains . . .
air rejoicing in water
water exulting in air
Vacations
Traditions
Celebrations
Home

My sisters, my brother
woven from my fabric
extensions of my heart
My father's briefcase
My mothers voice
A big soft house upon a hill
smelling of leather, learning
and love baked bread

Candle light
Firelight
Light of creation in a child's eyes

Gordon Lightfoot
Coca-Cola
Pink
And words

Words that I sculpt and sing and shape
Making them dance
In the cold still night

© Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-27T08:18:00.000-08:00

FLOW

2005-02-27T08:02:00.000-08:00

THE SELF - My Library

2005-02-27T07:58:00.000-08:00

Stonehenge

I walk today where I have wished my entire life to walk. I come here in my fiftieth turning, at the cusp of Aries and Taurus. I do not find here what I expected. Not at all.

I expected power. I expected to feel something akin to the spirit medicine I have felt in a younger, wilder land; power that hurls down narrow canyons on sage brush wind; an earth force that pulls the lightening from the sky, energy beating the air; thunder in the ground. No. Not at all. That kind of raw power is not what I find in these great stones, nor in the earth that cradles them. The ground here is silent . . . yet it sings. The air is silent and hugely hollow, yet it is full of massive memory and replete with forever. The only sound is the worshipful piping of the birds. There is power here; vast, deep, immense, but it is not as I thought it would be.

This is the power of endurance, of long remembrance, of sacredness undiminished by time or circumstance. The stones stood. The stones fell. The ground remains sacred; a sanctity of depth and time I have never felt anywhere before.

I knew the stones would be roped off and thought I would not be able to even come close, but the path passes very near; near enough that I can feel the power of the stones in wide waves that sing through my body and radiate under my feet. I hold both hands out open. I am glad the stones are roped off, empty in the hushed hollow air.

Between the stones, I see only grass and birds; the air, the rolling grey sky. Then suddenly in the narrow opening between two stones, I see horns; the perfectly formed figure of a stag - on two legs. Is it only a tree? Only a tree? What folly of words is that? It is The Wood. I turn in a wide circle, gazing at the fringe of woodland that still circles here. It has been cut, it has been pushed back, it has been cultivated, shaped; theoretically tamed, but like much else, it is still here. They are still here. I incline my head to the figure framed between the stones. I am deeply glad.

So I close my eyes, then bring them slowly, barely open; there, through my lashes, I see crowds of ghosts, weaving in and out; in procession, in dance, in worship, in celebration; they spill like sand through hundreds of years. In the watery sunshine of this clear grey day, I see them dancing in the moonlight, chanting at the dark of the moon, still as the stones themselves as the sharp bright arrow of yet another Solstice dawn pierces the end of night.

The ghosts of the past melt one by one, until none are left and it is only me, standing alone with the tall, silent stones, the grass, the birds, the air, the sky, and the vast flowing waves of sacred power. My body is not alone, the world’s winds blow my skirt in spinning spirals and gust over my husband, gathering the silent stones into his camera for me to keep; he has brought me here. The world’s wind catches in my daughter’s fiery hair; the child of my body who understands the composition of my heart; she has opened this gateway, made this possible. She reaches out to hold my empty corporal hand. There are others walking the wide circle around the stones; people whose voices have become hushed, stilled; who walk slowly, aim cameras and gaze.

But the spirit wind cresting the wide green hill finds me standing quite alone, above the singing ground, beneath the wide grey sky. These stones spoke to me as a child; I heard them call from across the sea when I was very small; on a page cut from National Geographic they looked down from above my bed, whispering. Here in a stillness of green and grey is a dream - the dream of a gold eyed child; a child who sought mystery, who hungered for magic. I have come fifty years and across the sea to find that the mystical enchantment is something I understand to the center of my bones.

I feel the power. I have come in need. I ask without even forming words.

The world’s wind ruffles my hair; my husband and daughter have moved on and I stand here, in both worlds, alone. Alone where I was meant to come; and the spirit wind blows cleanly through me and leaves me clear.

Clear. Straight. Strong. Alone. Exalting.

And then I walk on.

I walk and I keep walking.

2005-02-27T07:54:00.000-08:00

THE SELF - Stonehenge

THE SELF

2005-02-27T07:44:00.000-08:00

TEN TIMES TEN

LISTS, Lists, lists . . .what do lists tell you about people? What they wanted to get at the store? What they needed to do today? Take ten lists of ten and see what you can find out. One hundred items making SELF:

10 places to scatter my ashes:

1. Off the balcony, across the “O” in the Shakespearian Theater in Cedar City, Utah
2. In Logan, Utah: on the track in front of the bleachers at Logan High School
3. Across my mother’s back yard, probably in the mint.
4. In the aspen grove behind my house in Leadville, Colorado
5. At temple of Sinawava, in Zion National Park
6. Beside our fence in Jackson, Wyoming at the foot of the Tetons
7. At new Mountain Avenue Theater Complex, at Ashland High, at the base of the fly tower.
8. Across the bricks at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
9. Inside my Aspen grove in my back yard in Ashland
10. Off the cliffs of Sorrento into the Bay of Naples.

10 Favorite songs

1. Jesu , Joy of Man’s Desiring - J.S. Bach
2. If I had a Million Dollars - The Bare Naked Ladies
3. Morning - Edvard Grieg
4. The Minstrel of the Dawn - Gordon Lightfoot
5. Perhaps Love - John Denver and Placido Domingo
6. The Dark Night of the Soul - Loreena McKennitt
7. Christian Island - Gordon Lightfoot
8. A Summer Song - Chad and Jeremy
9. Here, There and Everywhere - The Beatles
10. "Hosanna" from Requiem - Andrew Lloyd Webber

Ten Daughters

1. Lezlie - A Shakespearian Scholar
2. April - An Artist, An Actor
3. Laura - An Independent Firm Contractor
4. Laurence - A Writer, An Actor
5. Sarah - An Ecologist and Geologist
6. Kate - A Writer, An Imaginer
7. Ellen - An Actor and teacher
8. Rachel - A Midwife and Douala
9. Jocelyn - A Medical Student
10. Becca - A Social Worker and Nurse Practitioner

Ten Things I Love That Define Me

1. Otters
2. Ivy
3. Aspen Trees
4. Shakespeare
5. Celtic Harp
6. Poetry
7. The Dance
8. Traditions
9. Mountains
10. Pink

Ten Places/Things of Magic

1. Standing in the dark, in the wings of the theatre, while the overture plays, waiting for the curtain to go up. Your heart gets in your throat and beats double time to the music. It is an anticipatory, expectant, absolutely lovely feeling. Something similar, though not quite the same, can be felt from the audience by a mother in red shoes, waiting for a daughter behind the footlights. You get the same beating in your throat, but when the dancing starts, you have to stay in your chair.

2. The Temple of Sinawava, Zion Canyon, Zion National Park, Utah. Big medicine comes down the narrow canyon on the night wind. My sister, my nieces, my daughters and I lie on the soft, fine sand by the river’s edge, looking up at the glory washed cliffs and a golden moon tinted sky studded with sharp, bright stars. The whipping spirit wind blows over us easily, accepting us as it does the rocks and the river. We belong.

3. Three Ultra Sound screens; one in Bangor Maine, one in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, one in Woodbridge, Virginia. Each discloses a tiny creature, who when measured in the apparatus cross hairs, is revealed to be just the right size, placed firmly in the correct position; with a minute jumping bleep, bleep, bleep . . . the magic flicker of a beating human heart.

4. From the cliffs of Sorrento, Italy, a ripe, full moon paints a butter soft ribbon of gold across the bay of Naples. I stayed up all night and watched it go from one side of the bay to the other. It is said that it was from here that the sirens called to Odysseus, but I was silent all night and so was the moon.

5. At the top of Independence Pass in Colorado one is about as close to the sky as one can get on earth. Between Leadville and Aspen, at 16,000 ft, the pass is only open a few months a year. From the summit, you can see for miles in every direction, the air is thin and rarefied, the ground is covered with snow and grassland tundra, and for a few weeks every summer, thousands of tiny wild flowers. When the sun goes down the sky looks as though it has caught fire and all of creation is burning: crimson, tangerine, carmine, peach, rose, gold, vermilion, maroon, apricot, and cardinal red. When I was nineteen, my cousin and I stayed up at the summit until all the tourists had disappeared; then we waited for sunset. We cranked up the stereo on the car . . .an 8 track tape of Cat Stevens singing “Oh Very Young,” as I recall . . . and danced up and down the paths in the blaze of the sunset. Upon arriving in Aspen, sometime during the next few days, we heard, for the first time, John Denver sing “Rocky Mountain High” with the words: “Colorado Rocky Mountain High, I’ve seen it raining fire in the sky,” and we looked at each other and said, “exactly.”

6. My mother’s house is a most magic place, this is agreed by everyone who has ever been there. It is filled with the magic of childhood; the enchantment of books; the sorcery of beauty and wrapped all around with sapient spells of love. There is also this eternal mystery about it, this something that no one has ever quite figured out, something mystic, something deliciously mysterious and magical. Every child that walks in there feels it and somehow thinks, “I just might be the one to figure it out . . . whatever it is . . .” But of course, no one ever does.

7. The front room - any of many different front rooms - very early Christmas morning. The stockings are filled and Santa has left the children’s presents laid out on their chairs, presented just perfectly. I am savoring three expressions of surprise and delight that will come with the sunrise, squeals, gasps. Once again, I have managed to get each one just what they asked for as well as something for each one that is totally unexpected . The lights of the Christmas tree are soft and a little blurry; I’m very tired and quietly, bone-deep happy.

8. “Inside this Wooden O.” The smaller one in Cedar City, Utah, where I was born. The bigger one in Ashland, Oregon, which is now my home. Both are modeled on the original in London. So much magic has passed through these that it is sunk deeply into the wood, yet if you touch that wood, during the day, you will not feel the magic shuddering under your fingers. It sleeps until it is time for it to come alive. When the trumpets sound, when the lights go up, it will wake and begin to glow. Then it will simmer and sing for a few precious hours while the stars wheel over head, in a night breeze that smells there of sage, here of pine.

9. High Country Crocus. At the top of the world everything is white for many months out of the year. There is snow on the ground from September to June and by May one begins to wonder if anything living and green will ever grow again. But it does, like magic, like a promise, as soon as a little piece of grass is visible in the dripping from the eves, the crocus will start to sprout. I used to say that the reason they were called crocus is because they came up right under the eves, opened their little yellow beaks and said “croak us!” and all the snow slid off the roof and croaked them. And that was usually exactly what happened. Still. They were the first green things to be seen bravely peaking their heads above ground after months and months of unbroken whiteness. The magic of returning life, the magic of spring. Unchanging. Unfailing. My little snow angles, after months of living in white would come shrieking, “Green! Green! There is Green coming through the snow!”

10. Words. With a yellow legal pad in front of me, or the back of a piece of scratch paper, or my fingers on the keys of my faithful Adler typewriter, or the keyboard of a computer . . . I write a sentence that is almost. It kind of goes around a corner, but doesn’t quite make it. It is halting, it is frozen, it is wobbly, faltering, broken, fragmented. Then I look at it again, I think it, I taste it, I wiggle it, I smooth it, I do who knows what to it, I change a few words, I move a comma, a erase something, I add something, I move something and suddenly it flows, it fits, it harmonizes, it tallies, it lines up, it WORKS. Eureka! Banzai! Hallelujah! Magic.

Ten things I wouldn’t have missed on a bet

1. Breast feeding
2. Roller coasters
3. Waterfalls, fountains, rainbows
4. My husband’s hands
5. Narnia, Middle Earth, Prydain, Hed
6. The smell of the desert after a rain
7. My children’s laughter
8. The secrets of swans
9. Gordon Lightfoot, Loreena McKennit
10. The light that lit the alabaster and loved a rose bud into blossom

Ten Delicious Words

1. Soothing
2. Lengthen
3. Liquid
4. Lyric
5. Mellow
6. Moon
7. Cello
8. Whisper
9. Soft
10. Bliss

Ten Favorite Movies (only cheating slightly)

1. Franco Zeferelli’s Romeo and Juliet
2. A Midsummer Night’s Dream - (Rupert Everett in Glitter, Stanley Tucci as Puck)
3. Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing
4. Franco Zeferelli’s . . .OK it’s a tie between The Taming of the Shrew and Hamlet
5. The Turning Point
6. Ferris Buhlers Day Off - Better Off Dead (A Person should not have to choose)
7. A Chorus Line - The Company (Again . . .)
8. Noises Off
9. For Rosanna
10. Elizabeth

Ten Favorite Books (Cheating Quite a Lot)

1.The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
2. The Lord of the Rings (Trilogy) J.R.R. Tolkien
3. The Chronicles of Narnia (Seven) C.S, Lewis
4. The Riddle Master of Hed Trilogy Patricia McKillip
5. The Pridain Chronicles Lloyd Alexander
6. The Woodwife by Terri Wilding
7. Eloise by Kay Thompson
8. Six By Seuess by you know who
9. Women Who Run With the Wolves Clarissa Pinkola Estes
10. Motherhood: Journey Into Love Edwina Peterson Cross (well?!)

Ten Favorite Quotations:

1. “Follow your bliss” Joseph Campbell

2. “Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness the energies of love. The, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire” Teilhard de Chardin

3. “Go Slowly, Breathe and Smile” Thich Nhat Hanh

4. “There was a star danced, and under that was I born” William Shakespeare.

5. "Being with real people who warm us, who endorse and exalt our creativity, is essential to the flow of creative life. Otherwise we freeze. Nurture is a chorus of voices both from within and without that notices the state of a woman's being, takes care to encourage it, and if necessary, gives comfort as well. I'm not certain how many friends one needs, but definitely one or two who think your gift, whatever it may be, is pan de cielo, the bread of heaven. Every woman is entitled to an Allelujia Chorus" Clarissa Pinkola Estes

6. "Alles Verganglich ist nur ein Gleichnis" - "Everything that is is but a metaphor." Goethe

7. “There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
Red (Walter Wellesley) Smith

8. If my virtue be a dancers virtue
And If I have often sprung with both feet
into golden-emerald rapture
And if it be my alpha and Omega
that everything heavy shall become light
Every body a dancer
and every spirit a bird:
Verily, that is my Alpha and Omega

- Nietzsche

9. “Oh it is easy for the one who stands outside the prison wall of pain to exhort and teach the one who suffers.” The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

10. “Go that way real fast, if something gets in your way . . . turn.” Savage Steve Holland.

2005-02-27T06:20:00.000-08:00

THE SELF

2005-02-27T06:12:00.000-08:00

The View From My Desk

Perspective altered
Prospect canted
Outlook shifting
Vista transfigured and strange

She sees things, this poet,
Beveled, oblique
Neither parallel nor perpendicular
But peculiar

A world built of bubbled words
Coagulating iridescence, expanding opalescence
Deliciously joining to form astonishing wholes
Dissolving and changing, transforming and becoming

Thoughts fall on paintings piled on poems piled on notes on scraps of paper piled on photographs piled on envelopes and empty teacups, piled on music piled on notebooks piled on piles of paper and glitter pens piled on reference books piled on novels and candles piled on piles of paper piled on poetry piled on paintings . . . there is no use looking at the desk
The universe is happening on the monitor screen

© Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-27T05:47:00.000-08:00

THE SELF - As Brigid

THE SELF - NAMES

2005-02-27T05:29:00.000-08:00

What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet . . .” Romeo and Juliet: II, ii

I am not my name
Names are other people’s perceptions
My essence is my own
I am a metaphor
that I found in the mirror

“Name” is a dress I wear, a different one today than
yesterday. Hang them carefully in the closet,
Silk. Satin. Velvet. Linen. Leather. Lace.
Cambric. Cotton. Satin. Suede
I will wear one again
Tomorrow
Take down the soft and scented folds
Lift my arms and slide it over my head
Become
I am . . .

I am my Grandy’s Girl With the Golden Eyes
I am my Mother’s Pooh and Schmoo
I am my Daddy’s Button Nose,
His Dansk Pige,
Sovanoka, his little owl
With eyes full of moon

I am Edwina Peterson - on blue paper, certificate of live birth, tiny blue ink foot print; daughter of Edwin Loose Peterson (37) and Zetta Benson (37); I am Cedar City, Iron County, Utah, USA; early on September Morn, Tuesday, Full of Grace. Third girl, I am named for my father, who could see only that there was a silver sliver of new moon in the desert sky and that my eyes were “so big.”

I am Little Sister to Leita and Lizette, Big Sister to Eddie, who was very soon bigger. I am Granddaughter, Daughter, Sister, Cousin, Playmate, Friend, Barefoot Dancing Child of the Wild Summer, Priestess of the Redgold Rites of Autumn, Enchantress of Snow-fire Yule Dreams; the Eternal Spring Maiden, forever born in the scent of new cut grass and blooming lilacs. I am Lily of the Valley, held like digitalis between the teeth, to jump-start a sensitive, perceptive heart. I walk the edge of the wheel, carefully balanced, with my arms held out to my sides.

I am Wina. I am Pooh. I am Pooey, Poobaugh, Pooeth and any number of other variations. I am Logan, Utah, Cache Valley, ‘neath the crest of Wasatch Mountains. I am an Edith Bowenite; child of humanitarian, experimental learning. I am Laughter. I am Play. I am Hopscotch and Jump Rope and intricate games of Make Believe. I am Going, Going . . . Gone to Narnia, to Middle Earth, with my eyes unfocused, into a swirl of words. I am Questioner, Wonderer, Dreamer. I am looking out the window thinking of rhymes when I am called on.

I am Winnie. I am a Dancer. I am DANCER. I am a Cheerleader. I am a Frenetic Roller-Coaster Search for the Marrow of Life. I am a Logan High School Grizzly, in love with a tradition of Red and Gold. I am a third generation Utah State University Aggie. I am a Kappa Delta. I am Fred, Win, Eddy, Sis, Winnifred, Twinkle Toes; the One in the Center Who Kicks Above Her Head; the Girl Who Writes Poetry. I am Big Eyes, Long Blonde Hair and a Short, Short Skirt. I am Eternally Sweaty in a black leotard and pink leg warmers. I am a Joyous Performer. I am a surprising good Teacher of Dance. I am a Hot 1967 Gold Firebird. I am Counselor, Confidant, Best Friend. I am a light filled Princess to a boy lost on the dark side of the moon.

I am Winnie Cross. I am Wife. I am half of a whole. I am Lover, I am Listener, I am Support, I am Sounding Board, I am Fluid, I am Malleable, I am Mobile, I am Migratory.

I am teacher, I am TEACHER! I am Facilitator, Advocate, Surrogate Parent, Referee, Nurse, Psychologist, Lesson Planner. I am Information Source, Concept Contributor, Idea Donor, Knowledge Grantor. I am Teacher of Reading, Giver of Language, Maker of Magic. I am Graduate Student, PhD candidate, I am Teacher of Teachers, I am Mentor, I am Instructor, I am Associate Professor, I am Dance Teacher, I am Movement Specialist, I am Children’s Lit Specialist, I am Deaf Ed. and Sign Language Specialist. I am very, very Tired.

I am the oppressive word “Infertility.” I am the ugly word “Barren.” I am a Twenty-eight Day Heartbreak. I am Impossible Statistics. I am NOT a Believer.

I am Mother.

I am Mother.

I am Mother.

I am Joy-filled Statistics Squasher.

I am Mama, Mummy, Mommie, Mom, sometimes even Bomb to a boy with a stuffed up nose. I am a Weaver of Names . . . I run threads through my fingers, warp the loom and with careful, glistening thread, produce: Lezlie Celia. April Laurel. Taran Robert. Gifted with miracles, I produce a person to wear each one.

I am Hestia, keeping the Hearth, Demeter in Summer, full of plenty; I am Milk Provider, Diaper Changer, Back Patter, Floor Walker, Constant Cuddler, Midnight-Rocker, Lullabye Singer, Love Pourer. Soon I become Kisser of Hurts, Taker of Temperatures, Fixer of Toys, Puller Out'er of Slivers, Putter On'er of Shoes, Chauffeur, Cook, Dishwasher, House keeper, Coach, Cheerleader, Planner. On a non-stop, twenty-four hour shift, I become Teacher-in-Earnest, Full Time Concept Contributor, Information Source, Idea Donor, Knowledge Grantor, Giver of Language, Maker of Magic. The wheel turns and I become Homework Helper, Night-Waiter, Stage Parent, Counselor, Confidant, Advisor, Friend. I am Maker of Connections and Builder of Circuits, they click and hum and the love I have been pouring for years comes flowing back to me. Too soon, I am watching tail lights disappear and becoming E-mail Mother, Care Package Maker, 2 a.m. Telephone Queen, Demeter in Winter with Persephone gone.

And so. I remind myself that I am many things and I open my closet to look for names. Yes! I will wear these! I am Weaver of Words; Minstrel of a Later Day; Bard of Imagery and Imagination. I am Dancer of Dreams; Illusionist of Air Castles; Reaper of Rainbows; Pilot of Myth; Scribe of Memory; Aspirant of Inspiration; Inventor; Imaginer; Stareyed Child of the Muse. Yes, here is a dress that fits. I am a Poet. I am Edwina Peterson Cross.

I am Writer. I am Editor. I am Poet. By virtue of virtual wizardry, I am newborn Painter.

I am Artist.
I am surprised.

I am Crone. New come to my shawl, I am Gathering. I am Learning. I am Experiencing. I am Emerging. I am East, South, West, North I am Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter I am Child, Maiden, Mother, Crone.

I am Woman

I am Student, I am Searcher, I am Seeker, I am Learner, I am Minor-Goggle-Master in awe of the amount of information, knowledge and wisdom in the world.

I am a Hollow Vessel waiting for words; a Sifter of Sand, a Finder of Diamonds. I am a Dedicate of William Shakespeare, a Disciple of Joseph Campbell, an Heir of Isadora Duncan and Edna St. Vincent Millay, a Believer in J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, Terri Windling and Patricia McKillip, a Devotee of Clarissa Pinkola Estes; an Emissary of Virginia Woolf; an unabashed fan of Dr. Seuss. I am part of hundreds of others, their myriad of names sing through my blood until my veins are flowing with ink. In a luscious forty-six year long feast, I am what I have read.

I am Otter. I am otterandivy. I am Oread. I am Dryad. I am the Aspen Tree and the winding life-green Ivy. I am Swan. I am learning to walk with the bear.

I am Julia, the Explorer; Elysia the Muse; Amelia Emily the Editor; Fernando the slightly stoned Warrior. I am, alas, also Hugh, the Oppressive Judge. I am an inch high mud colored dragon; a bitter woman who finds lilacs in the desert; an unscrupulous Master of Mirrors; a unearthly Blue Girl singing by the sea; a curly haired child tumbling into the Castalian Spring; a women who can’t stop mourning and cutting her hair; a Circle of Dryads dancing in the wood; a Warrior battling with words. There are endless empty hangers in this closet, I can be anyone I want to be.

I am Edwina. I am Wina. I am Pooh. I am Winnie. I am Mom. I am Winnie Cross. I am Mommie. I am Edwina Peterson Cross. Antique-lace, polished-cotton, soft-flannel, supple-suede, rose-petals, unbleached cambric, spun-silk, milk-satin, richest-velvet. Hang them in the closet, choose a new one tomorrow.

and I
Without “I am”
Go to dance naked Under the moon

~Edwina Peterson Cross~ (or someone)

THE SELF

2005-02-27T05:25:00.000-08:00

Solo

Do you ever wish
There were someone else in the wings
To hand you your wig?
Another soul waiting on stage?
Someone to ‘play off of?’
Cast, crew, ensemble, corps de anyone?
Is it lonely in the deep stretches of morning?
Or is that the exact WHY of where we are?

At four a.m., I’m a solitary player in endless monologue;
Eternal soliloquy; an unaccompanied soloist with no choir,
Dancing alone on a wind of words;
Who never wanted to be anywhere else in the world.
I choose the silence,
The hush,
The glorious,
Golden sound
Of no applause . . . .

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-27T05:18:00.000-08:00

THE SELF - Solo

THE SELF

2005-02-27T04:45:00.000-08:00

Song

Sing me a song of never
I’ll twist you a sprig of rhyme
Break open the box of forever
And smooth on the salve of time

I’ll sing you a song that’s disjointed
You’ll bring me a promise unbound
From fingers with salt tears anointed
Where yesterday’s loss may be found

We’ll dance to the song of a thistle
A cormorant’s call ‘cross the sea
I’ll send you a silent epistle
Read out in the leaves of your tea

You’ll ask for a song that is solid
With a clear money back guarantee
Impassive, uncluttered and stolid
You’re surely not talking to me?

I sing to the wind of gossamer wings
Of opening air and sweet hollow bone
I plait a crossed pattern of star flowing strings
For I’ve learned I can sing all alone

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-27T04:43:00.000-08:00

LightDancing
(How I Came to Paint)

I dreamed of painting my mind
Image and infinity vast intertwined
I dreamed of painting my heart
But the powers that be denied me art
They said I couldn’t and so I couldn’t
Which turned to wouldn’t and soon to shouldn’t
Until I grew to odd to hear “forbid”
One day, unbidden, I just went and did

Not pigment, ink, clay or rhyme
Unbound by words or walls or time
Ideas bloom open to reveal
Conceptions whose dreaming flow is real
My pictured poems with rainbows write
And I’m dancing with a voice of light

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-27T04:35:00.000-08:00

THE SELF - Dancing in the Light

2005-02-27T04:33:00.000-08:00

THE SELF - The Sacred Mountain

THE SELF

2005-02-27T04:23:00.000-08:00

Within the Sacred Mountains

Unseen,

Unnamed,
Unknown
Are slender, silent
Shafts of gold

Every second
Rock is being wrought
Worn away by wind and water
Layered and pressed,
Earth is pressured into stone
Ceaselessly, in a constant, slow dripping
Adagio
Magma bubbles, shapes, cools
Simmering, smoldering, seeping, slow
Beneath the twining roots of trees,
The wordless feet of animals,
Beneath the unquestioning crust
Secluded, sequestered
Slowly
Secretly
Gravity enfolds the mass
In an embrace of eternity
And the mountain continues to
Become

Self:
Here beneath this thin, susceptible skin
Beyond bone and blood and brain
Is a question
Eternally asked
By poets,
Mystics and fools
Called by many names,
This transcendent query
Is, like mountain,
In a timeless tide of transformation
Stratified and squeezed
By senses
Hollowed and shaped by the wind
Of words Lava of image, vision, concept, thought,
Bubbles, shapes, and cools into a structure
Called
Self

If the mind could be mined . . .
Its sensitive skin split,
Shafts sunk
And core samples taken,
When they had been analyzed,
Anatomized, augured
Would I know the
Minerals from the motivations?
The pyrite from the perceptions?
The obsidian from oblivion?

I have begun
To begin

Begun to learn the difference
Between diamonds and dross
To define the source of
My own gravity
To choose the energy
That will effect my change

Where my soul has been seamed with slag
And my spirit strip mined
I am learning to seal the excavation
Resurface, replant
Tree roots will learn their labyrinth dance anew
And the ground will heal

And some core samples yield up
Gold
An abundance of spirit, a wealth of soul

See . . . in this shaft shines understanding
And delving deeper,
Care, healing, trust
Glittering from this one, gilded nuggets of laughter
Below simmers celebration, merriment and revels
Down at the core, bubbling with delight,
Is the glowing, bright, liquid glass of joy
And Here

Here is a well of light and warmth,
A profusion of comfort, loyalty and giving
All resting,
Deep at the mountains heart,
On a solid bedrock of
Love

It is here I will invest my thoughts
My precepts, my concepts, my visions,
My words
My transcendent query
Called Self
For it is built on this bedrock
That becoming
Becomes
Belief

2005-02-27T04:20:00.000-08:00

THE SELF - "Expect Some Changes"

2005-02-27T03:47:00.000-08:00

THE MOTHER - Light of Love

THE MOTHER

2005-02-27T03:42:00.000-08:00

Mothers
(For Leita)

See how we build
My wise greathearted friend

Ours are not the rewards
Of dollars or praise
A babies sated milk deep sigh
A toddlers sticky kisses
Fleeting moments like butterflies wings
That touch between our fingers
Brush bright against our lips
And then are gone
Into the sunmist of time

The ribbons of our teaching
They will gather and weave into themselves
To be claimed as their own
In the end
The production of our lives
Will stand alone
And we will silently sit the shadows

For it is the nature of things
That open hands
At last
Are empty

And yet
We work on
In some strange way fulfilled
From the glittering pain of beginning
Towards a harvest we will never see
Vital links
In the mystery chain
Of creation

Artisans of solid dreams
Oh See!
See how we build

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-27T03:41:00.000-08:00

THE MOTHER - GAIA

THE MOTHER

2005-02-27T03:36:00.000-08:00

“Mother”

A word is spoken
and I become

A paradox
of giving and receiving
nurturing and waiting
holding tight and letting go

An eternal vessel
waiting to be filled
with unimaginable
unfanathable
love

A word is spoken
ancient
much used
but, this time it is
mine
and will become
my name
my future
my heartbeat
my life

A word is spoken
and the pathway of my life
is forever colored
by this prisim
All experiences now refracted
through its light

Life stretches out before me
washed with rainbows
and I begin
my
journey
into love

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-27T03:31:00.001-08:00

Mocking Bird
(For My Mother)

There is an mocking bird singing in my dogwood tree
Liquid beads of song trickling down the full May air
Filling my thoughts with its wet round sound
I note it's sweetness
Breathe it's song
Thumb through my mind for metaphors
And, as always,
Mark a thought to tell you of it

And if you go
Blooming dancing into some great white light
Moving intelligence into some further sphere
Hungrily, happily gleaning knowledge from books unopened here

Shall I know that you will wait for me there?
The always haven home of my heart?
Shall I someday walk into that light
Reaching forward for your hand?

Or will I just be here
All alone
Cradling a mockingbirds midnight song
That no one else will understand?

That no one else can understand

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-27T03:31:00.000-08:00

THE MOTHER - Legacy

THE MOTHER

2005-02-27T03:12:00.000-08:00

Artist

Her sketches were my paper dolls
Her music my lullaby
I swallowed her songs and stories
Like sweet sips of dew
Tasted the round rich words
And took them for my own
Her poems went unwritten
As she listened to mine
"Watch!" I said
And twirled and spun
And the dancer sat still
And smiled

Some artists create by
Being
Their works are not tangible
For who can hold wisdom?
Who can touch joy?
What arpeggios ever reached
The sound of love?

Her medium is giving
Her canvas is care
A sculptor without clay
Molding memories
Shaping hopes
Enriching the world around her
With the joy that is herself
Minstrel of harmony
Dancer of dreams
Woman...
Mother...

Artist...
Of life

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-27T03:11:00.000-08:00

THE MOTHER - Napping

THE MOTHER

2005-02-27T03:03:00.000-08:00

Phone Call to My Mother

Oh, marvelous magic
Mystical box
Powerful tiny enchanted thing
Cradled in my hand
My fingers brush its surface
Dancing out a secret code
Drumming out a private incantation
Drawing forth the magic
Delivering unseen glamours into the thin bright air
And suddenly...
From out of nothingness...
I conjure you
Invoke your voice from far away
Just by the tappings of my sapient secret spell
I have captured you in the palm of my hand!
And here I will spellbound hold you
And pour out upon you all the happenings of my day
Wrap you in the pages of each book I have read
Bathe you in the sparkles of my children's laughter
Into the tiny box around you I will pack all my loneliness
The sharp jagged pieces of my pain
And you will sing me all smooth again
Disembodied beloved voice
Summoned genie in a box
Marvelous magical mystery box
Powerful tiny enchanted thing
Cradled in my hand

©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE MOTHER

2005-02-27T03:02:00.000-08:00

Dancing Heart

They asked me...
How long have you been dancing?
When did you begin to learn?
Were you four?
Were you five?
Who did you learn from?
What lessons did you take?

I danced
I said . . .
Before I drew my first breath
For my dancing soul learned joy
Before my mortal body was complete
I danced
I said . . .
From the beginning
I learned
I said . . .
From the heart that beat around me then
A halcyon heart full of sunshine and peace
In the safety of the dark and warm
I first felt the promise of a world of love
And I danced . . .
For joy

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-27T03:01:00.000-08:00

THE MOTHER - Dancing Heart

2005-02-27T02:59:00.000-08:00

Mana - Spiritual Power

2005-02-26T23:49:00.000-08:00

Deep Winter Affirmation Prayer

The year ends in darkness, with absence of light
Days shortened and shadow enshrouded
Long, still, ebony hours of night
Silent and dimly cold clouded

Yet, the voice of a dream affirms meaning in night
With purpose the darkness is rife
It whispers the chill, stark absence of light
Is a metaphor searching for life

In the deep cold of winter, in the length of the night
Nine candles glow bright from afar
The sun returns with briefbright Solstice light
Earth is lit by the hope of one star

Each soul, as the seasons, turns like a wheel
A sacred cycle each of us make
When things seem the darkest, the circles reveal
That the light may be ready to break

And so we believe that the darkness will end
That a warm wind will swallow the cold
That the world will be something we can comprehend
As the seasons expand and unfold

Once a heart understands the nature of change
It is free to wait for the dawn
To know warmth is not rare, affection not strange
In total darkness; the light is not gone

The heart speaks a promise the mind cannot break
That there is nothing that cannot be mended
Never a nightmare from which you can't wake
Nor a hurt that cannot be transcended

Darkness can be washed away by the light
Disillusion by laughter undone
Depression can be replaced by delight
Despair bleached to hope by the sun

Even bone-cracking winter ends with new birth
As the world is rekindled with green
There isn't a stain on the heart or the earth
That cannot be finally washed clean

Though our world is still threatened by darkness and pain
And we sometimes feel frightened and small
The light is still stronger, it's strength will remain
And love is the strongest of all

©Edwina Peterson Cross

2005-02-26T23:48:00.000-08:00

MANA - SPIRITUAL POWER

2005-02-26T23:46:00.000-08:00

MANA - SPIRITUAL POWER

Mana - Spiritual Power

2005-02-26T23:40:00.000-08:00

Building

There in your fullsnow moon
The lucent light
Will glide on silent snow
Gold-dust on diamonds
Sweet cream on pearls
Build a Snow Goddess there
With the cold, dry powder
And your bare, dreaming hands
Mold round her milkwhite, resonant breasts
Mellow, full of moon;
To nurture a starving world

My garden
Glows moist with the same moonlight
Here it is deep and damp
Serene and saturated
Kneeling in the wet black earth
I ask blessing for a land that is dry
Slake the thirst, quench what is parched
Renew the seared, regenerate the withered
Kneeling in the calm tranquility of night
I ask peace for a world infected with war

My fingers form eyes deep with wisdom
My hands shape a face of clear compassion
Kneeling in the wet black earth, here in the dark
I will build a Goddess
Of violets and of rain
My cupped hands fill with sacred moonlight
I will build
A Goddess
Of Love

©Edwina Peterson Cross
February 16, 2003

2005-02-26T23:38:00.000-08:00

Quan Yin - Compassion

Mana - Spiritual Power

2005-02-26T23:30:00.000-08:00

God’s Country

The night is sweet with welcome
The sharp freshwashed resin
Of sagebrush after a mountain rain
Incisive, pungent, clean
The cool wet breath
Of silken silver witch wood
Fills the night
A coyote answers

I have
Come
Home

The sky
Is wider than all the knowledge of man
Peaceful as sleep
Black against the mountains
The dawn here doesn't break
But whispers...
Fine like still silver music
Whirling down satin wires
And this hushed waking
Shakes the stars from the dark streaming sky
And stirs them into my heart

Day
The quiet stills me inside
Turning my mind like a spade
Leaving bare understanding lying easy in the sun
The very air fills me with hope
A clear crystal transfusion
Giving me the peace and power
To walk upright
Into another day

I am a question
These strong red hills my answer

~

Seven days the mythology tells us:

And the first five days He labored Here
Here, where the great Rocky Mountains
Flush crimson and dip to kiss the desert
Mukuntuweap, Arrow of Roaring Water
From the Mountain of the Sun
To the Temple of Sinawava
Kayenta of the lost Anasazzi
This refuge, this haven,
Of strength and peace, this
Zion
"the place where God dwells,"

And the first five days He labored Here
Painting with glory
Shaping wonder with His hands
Pouring splendor on the mountains
Singing joy into the air...
And He saw that it was good and He said:
"My best is done"
And on the sixth day He finished the world
And on the seventh day He rested

And they call this
God's Country

©Edwina Peterson Cross