Waking Wonder, Outer Places, Inner Songs (An Introductory Ode)

Ode to Place

ours is a
rustic place,
cold in the hallway, toasty in the library room, sunlighted and wood fire warm
upstairs in the common room stretching across to the great room of gentle alchemy and
contemplation on a wheel of meditation fragrant with frank incense and lavender loves;
downstairs all up and down the shelves,
books everywhere to read,
gentle pastures outside beckon to another sight near where alcovy river goes flowing slowly by,
and the horse Lancelot
and donkeys Moose and San Juan,
and frail aging Black Kitty,
and the birds---the woodpeckers and hawks and crows,
and I saw an opossum out by the road as I was returning
from the store this evening, eyes ablaze with road crossing hopes;
safe crossing hopes
we all have
as we look at the stars twinkling in the winter night, and pull our jackets tighter around our shoulders,
and when the wind gusts hard, we hold even closer
to the one we love,
in our dreams
or in our hearts, we pray our prayers as if the lips of Jesus were pressed against our own,
and we hope for the light at the end of the tunnel,
shining . . . marine and green and blue with silver eyed clouds,
all coming with us on the journey as if it was all along about
bringing us out of the closets and caves and dungeons into a dawning day,
like
the way sunrise yawns and rises, then hesitates, then decides it is all right after all,
to be herself unfettered sailing through the hollow oaks and caressing the spine.

I. Gloria Gracias Mere
She opens the doors
and moves gently across the frost twinkling like stars,
melting into tears,
the dew
the hue
of aqua
the taste of agua to drink,
in the rustic place
called hazelbrand farm
a monastery of hermits,
travelers, artists,
and priests,
on warmer winter days frogs sing in choruses of hundreds
their voices one choir comforting and soothing,
and then when the temperatures drop, suddenly, the voices are silent as stones in the river,
and only the singing gusts in the pines and the oddly placed bird cry and the donkey's bray at breakfast and suppertime
and familiar bushy snort of a hungry happy horse chime in to all that beats where we live
in heart's home
under the feathered roof of
forest hermitage and sanctuary
in a barn,
where
the water
flows by
where the coffee is brewed every morning
and fills the air
with
waking
wonder as wonderful as rising mists, where sho nuff the young willow bends into more
slanting falling rain,
and slender rays of sunlight stretching across the hands of fields at dusk
reflect shimmering sounding out as tiny ripples dance in time with the fish shewed waters below
deep and cool with sweet tasting rye wheat air rising up along
shadowy green leaf grassy pond bank shores.
II. Selah

Here is home. Here is sanctuary. Here is holy ground.

III. Terra Firma, Holy Water, Healing Soup, Cleansing Soap

fragrant, rough, smooth-skinned, hollowed out with joyful croaking framed in
the turning wheels, the boiling potatoes, baked biscuits,
the soups
piping
a
delicious
song,
the bird woman soap
bubbling up
a lathery
ode.

chaz hill
2013 feb 20 (after midnight, we gonna let it all hang out, set our worries free, dream of everlasting things)