ABOUT WORMHOLES--AND BREADCRUMBS

Barbara Smith Stoff ABOUT WORMHOLES AND BREADCRUMB ABOUT WORMHOLES—AND BREADCRUMBS By Barbara Smith Stoff I am writing this today, July 25, 2013, upon the anniversary of what was termed in the hospital “ a massive stroke,” Now, I write my story which I have assembled from fleeting vignettes of memory from my hospital stay. Like gathering breadcrumbs in the great forest, one might say, as a necessary healing exercise for me. Each of these vignettes is, for me, truly iconic, perhaps like the small ivory cameo one might wear as a lapel pin. These memory cameos are fleeting because I was out of my body most of the time—often with a view from high up of the fields surrounding the hospital. In the hospital, in my body, I remember, not his face, but just his hand holding mine, that constant hand of my husband who, I later am told, stayed with me around the clock the entire time I was there in the hospital—except for one night when my son asked to stay with me instead. I will try to describe briefly below some of these “cameos.” Just after being admitted, I remember being handed a telephone with a call from Shel’s son on the east coast –a doctor and medical researcher—and I remember asking him to give me, from physics, the definition of a wormhole. He did that and I remember saying, “That makes sense.” Months later, I asked him if he remembered that conversation, and he said simply, “Yes.” I remember opening my eyes in the middle of the night, and there sat my son, a deep-ocean researcher, reading Moby Dick aloud to me from his I-phone. I commented on the beauty of the words and he responded that perhaps the best way to read Moby Dick is to read it aloud. These cameos from the hospital stand out as definitely luminous breadcrumbs. At home, difficult months followed. One day, a day when I so much needed encouragement, it happened that a message came to me on Facebook from Nicolya Christi. She told me of her illness and her recovery. Her message brought me hope and gave me a hand up from this deep well of discouragement. And so now, almost exactly to date a year later, after days of looking for my page- magnifying reading glass, I suddenly found find it marking a certain page in a book I had bought, but had not yet read. Page 67 of 2012: A Clarion Call by Nicolya Christi. In a bibliomancy way, my eye falls upon a certain paragraph: “Ancient prophecies speak of a “star gate” opening in 2012. They tell us that there are thirteen of these gates in our galaxy. Star gates are often described as “wormholes” or “portals” and it is prophesied that a great enlightened being or a group of enlightened beings will emerge from one that will open on the winter solstice of 2012. The Maya refer to these openings as “serpent ropes” on which enlightened beings are said to “ride in.” These ropes are linked to the kundalini energy within the human body; which, when they are fully activated, via the heart/mind connection, they open up portals and wormholes within the human system, making it possible for ourselves, as the enlightened beings that we are, to “ride in,” fully anchoring our souls into our bodies and re-aligning our consciousness to elevate our vibration to an exalted state. The profound events of 2012 make it possible for us to turn our faces to the Sun and bathe in the golden dawn of a new age.” (from 2012 A Clarion Call: Your Soul’s Purpose in Conscious Evolution by Nicolya Christi) I remember now—throughout those difficult months and recurring bouts of vertigo—the images of Yeats —and ‘gyres’ coming up in my mind a lot, and remembering also my years of study of myth and cycles of the ages, as in Hesiod, for instance, so the idea of spiraling up again toward a golden age is not new to me. One day, back in the 1980s, William Irwin Thompson’s Time Falling Bodies Take to Light literally fell off the shelf into my hands as I browsed in a bookstore. And, of course, I am fairly familiar with the writings of Arguelles on the Mayan Calendar—and so on. And, as well, my psyche is fairly well furnished, in a Jungian sense, with images from the collective deep consciousness. I have had loving help from the subtle realms. Upon hearing of my experience, I received telephone calls telling me about Jill Bolte Taylor and Eban Alexander. Then I saw them both being interviewed on television. I began to notice, also on television, reviews of new studies of brain function and repair, which I can now research, as I continue to look for more luminous breadcrumbs. We kind of know what a breadcrumb can look like…but a wormhole? In 1935, physicists Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen used the theory of general relativity to propose the existence of “bridges” through space-time. These paths, called Einstein-Rosen bridges or wormholes, connect two different points in space-time, theoretically creating a shortcut that could reduce travelhttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png time and distance. ri And, a gyre? < http://www.yeatsvision.com/Geometry.html> See notes and images from the above link. The Diamond and the Hourglass Although the double cone dominates the diagrams found in A Vision, the more important representation of the gyres in the Automatic Script was that which was called the ‘Diamond’ and ‘Hourglass’, which is effectively a doubled form of the double cone. The Instructors objected to the term ‘Diamond’, but Yeats retained it anyway. In A Vision this form of representation is most important in the discussion of the Principles, the spiritual constituents of the human being, which come to the fore in the after-life. In this system the axes of the two shapes do not necessarily coincide, and they rotate about a common centre, within a sphere. The Diamond itself represents the original Principle of the Celestial Body, within which the Spirit moves as a single gyre. These together form the Solar element of the system of the Principles, while the Hourglass represents the Lunar element. Both the Passionate Body and the Husk move within this double gyre, one half representing life and the other half the after-life (see the Principles and the After-life). The essay “‘Everywhere that antinomy of the One and the Many’: The Foundations of A Vision,” by Neil Mann in the collection W. B. Yeats’s “A Vision”: Explications and Contexts, edited by Neil Mann, Matthew Gibson, and Claire Nally (Clemson University, 2012), provides useful further exploration of this subject. This title is available for free download from Clemson University Digital Press. Here is a poem which I wrote, sitting on the floor of my living room, one Sunday morning circa 1972: THE BALANCE TURNS ON YES My soul is balancing out there and the balance turns on yes… a light burning through black and white, press printing new patterns (this is only flat paper news) I look down from the horrors of the Sunday paper to this cat (who has become my teacher of late) here on my lap (warm ease and somehow here being) with balance here with balance here seeming on a thin thin wire silver spun from some center… is pure? will hold? the center holds (even to that mountain in the distance there) Yes. Trusting the morning hand for some graceful knot, I look up to bind… up and out and level (even to that distant mountain there) and back to this flat paper news whose power leaps quivering from points of pain dangerously shaking the gossamer line. Almost I hear the fearsome snap: a heartpulse…and the line holds. My soul comes home again from rare space and I stroke the cat and we enjoy fragrant tea with some serenity. –Barbara Smith Stoff (circa 1972) As I wrote, I was thinking of Yeats and the poem below: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) THE SECOND COMING Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? By William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) (The Second Coming was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the first World War) I have thought of that poem a lot. I remember a conversation (circa 1992) about ‘the second coming’ with an old friend as we sat having lunch in a café in San Diego. I was telling him about my take on meaning in that poem…about how individuals, one by one, would undergo transfiguration, as in Lyall Watson’s “Hundredth Monkey Story” (“Lifetide” by Lyall Watson). He looked at me with surprise on his face and said, “You mean the whole world will become messianic?” I heard myself say, “Yes.” That friend now lies in a hospital in Tel Aviv, recovering from a stroke. He is 91 years old. I think of him and send him good wishes…as I continue my own efforts to navigate the straits of what Ervin Laszlo and ‘system scientists’ call the ‘chaos point.’ I watch the world news on television, and I also think of the writings of Hesiod and William Erwin Thompson…and listen for the chord that lifts us toward the next age of gold. –Barbara Smith Stoff

OH! STAND TOGETHER! THE GREATEST CONSENSUS IS TO LOVE

OH! STAND TOGETHER! THE GREATEST CONSENSUS IS TO LOVE I think of O’Toole and Mandela the amazing roles they played with their very lives here in our planetary drama as if I am watching Loren Eiseley’s “The Judgement of the Birds” —their choosing love and singing together, even in the face of darkness—I ask them to stand with puny little me now, as I try to overcome my own surprising dread of Christmas gathering and pageantry this year, trying to overcome grief and, yes, transform mourning, so as not to shade the light from those I love so much. I think of “writing my way home” I think of “poetry therapy” I think of “saved by a poem” I think of the words of Chekhov: “We shall find peace. We shall hear the angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.” --Barbara Smith Stoff December 16, 20

UNICORN RISING

UNICORN RISING

grazing on green violets in spring

we hear with gentle hearts

the soft sounds

of new music

from green gold reeds

as the sun warms a new Dayrose

on slender vines

strong enough to weave new clothes

for the Emperor

born from the breath of the Unicorn.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

CAMP CEDAR GLEN

CAMP CEDAR GLEN

The children find me here on the rock—
four girls and one boy, they climb up,
and spread out their towels to sunbathe.
Jenny, April, Autumn, Holly, and Sean.
April says everyone else has gone to chapel.
I tell them Indians used to sit here…
that this is a sacred place.

O Great Rock, balanced here
between setting moon and rising sun,
tell me your name!

I am Grandfather Rock,
grandfather to modern poets too,
young bards who come to dream their dream
in the woods…you hear that jazzbird?
He’s tapping out the base pattern.
jazzbeat on wood
bird chorus swells up
bless you my children
I bequeath you my stone savings
base pattern bones earth bones
marrow of the mother Mother Marrow Mother Mary
Great Goddess come dance on the bones of our good mother
O mother love how can we dance on your bones?
Make us know that we are free
in the trees in the greening

Youngbird flutters joyous wings to waning moon
achieves air and sails into birdsong
turns on homing wind and calls, Jazzbird!
finds his throat liquid warbling riverhood
manheart splits through throatcry, Prometheus!
You old fire lover man lover,
earth water fire earth water fire,
you brought air too, didn’t you
Prometheus?

Wind blow gently on liquid heartfire,
Motherbones dance to the base pattern,
Jazzbird, God, blow gently on heartfire.

The children have left, having found and taken
what they needed from this place
quickly and surely as children do.
I am alone on the rock in the trees
in the blue circle of Time,
Grandfather Rock, Open Sky,
Golden Sun, Silver Moon, Myriad Birdcall.
I bow. I offer thanks, and promise to come here again.
--Barbara Smith Stoff

O HENRY’S LAST LEAF

O HENRY’S LAST LEAF

In this classroom.
I wish to compete!
I wish to compete
with what is going on
out there!
Last night…
In color
and in black and white,
you watched
and you listened
as television reassembled
beatings and rapes and…
and murders.

This morning
I want to read to you
a simple story. O Henry,
O! teach us to listen.
Teach us to hear
this small quiet voice.

In this room
there are no guns.
There are no cries
of pain and horror
to snare your attention…
only this small quiet voice
that says, look,
there is this much good
…in one old man…
who is drunk…
most of the time.
(So the teacher said
one last leaf for O Henry)
And I believe…
the students…
Listened.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

TRANSFORMATION

TRANSFORMATION

At birthing time

one is asked to be a bearer of life—

seeing beyond the shrouds

which cloud clear vision—

carrying seed and symbol

toward and toward…

the birth of the Dayrose

whose power knows

and distills golden fragrance

from mudsludge and dungeon breath—

rendering the pure essence

of all seeing

now then here being

now then here being…

made to live

as long as God lives.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

POETRY IS THE RICH CONSERVE

POETRY IS THE RICH CONSERVE

Ultimately the voice in the whirlwind says
I am this love
which drips like honey through earthly caverns
…to the high altar…
poetry is the rich conserve—
the talisman for transit
through all comings and goings
moment to moment
aeon to aeon
music from the great organ
always othering to itself
but yet comes home.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

HIGH WITNESS

Meister Eckhart

"The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love."


HIGH WITNESS

as we are camped out here

on this more often and indeed very darkling plain

Djwhal Khul tell us to be the high witness

we have our electronic campfire

we sit facing the television

we move through the ceremonies of Kennedy funerals

through the ceremonies upon the death of a princess

we bear high witness

we bear high witness to war after war

there is Desert Storm

the Towers fall

oil explodes in oceans

earthquakes come

tornadoes come

and then the fires



Netanyahu speaks to Congress

Obama speaks to Parliament



in 1939, a ten year old boy writes

of the terrible scar of war

and pleads for leaders to sit down together

sit down together and talk things out

work together

this scar is a terrible thing

these wars…



long deceased now,

that ten year old yet watches

still keeps watch for these children



we sit facing the screen

we watch and listen

all the world speaks now

cries out in pictures



the grandson of a Kenyan cook in the British Army

stands before the British Parliament

as President of the United States

and says “It will be years before

these revolutions will reach

their conclusions”…

and says, “We have a say in how this story ends.”

he quotes Churchill: “…wherever the bird of freedom

chirps in the human heart…”

there is the eye that sees

--Barbara Smith Stoff

THE SUNDAY TIMES MUSEUM OF FINE ART

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, is now seen as a good early copy of Bruegel's original.
 
THE SUNDAY TIMES MUSEUM OF FINE ART

I see too,
remembering Auden's Icarus,
that when it comes to suffering
they are seldom wrong
these reporters and their cameras,
the way they catch tragedy on the human face,
and yet sometimes they fix for us
in their instants and afterimages
...something achingly beautiful, incandescent...
so human, so human rising up.

Take this picture of Redgrave for example.
I have kept it here on my desk,
for weeks now, have studied her expression...
hand gesturing for some ideal, tender,
perhaps clear only to her.
I have met those eyes, the lips
pursed to appeal from her side.
I know little of sides and battles,
but I know that face.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

Here is the poem which inspired me and my students:
MUSEE DES BEAUX ARTS
By W.H. Auden
 
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
 
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Copyright © 1976 by Edward Mendelson, William Meredith and Monroe K. Spears,
Executors of the Estate of W. H. Auden.
 
Pasted from

 
Here is another poem...this one from DOORS INTO POETRY, by Chad Walsh (Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1962)...
 
THE FALL OF ICARUS (From Brueghel's painting)
by Charles F. Madden
 
The bulging sails by a riotous wind caught
pull the ships and their rigging nets toward shore
to be emptied.  The sailors quickly will calm their floors
and their houses in the evening light will melt into the mountains.
 
And on the hill with one foot planted in the earth
his plowing almost done; his eyes cast down and fully shielded
from the sun which now is growing shadow, the farmer 
turns in soil and toil the final circles of the day.
 
Below him a quiet pastoral: on lichen bearing rocks
the feeding sheep, the quiet watching dog, the silent shepherd
so stalking with his eyes the homing flights of birds
that neither he nor the intent fisherman closer to the shore,
 
none has seen the silent fall of Icarus
through the riotous wind and the shadows of the coming evening light,
nor do they hear his sigh, both of pity and delight
of his remembrd waxed and winged flight.
 
--Charles F. Madden
 

ELIJAH'S CUP

ELIJAH'S CUP

Dear ‘Elijah Rising’…I was just going to post this poem today, and as I come to the blog, I see your comment…so this is for you...what beautiful synchronicity! I wrote the poem several years ago as my night time reflection after being invited to a large Seder service at a temple. The Haggadah explained the fifth cup and how only the children in the room notice that indeed Elijah has come and sipped the wine. There was a small ‘post script’ which said it’s now okay to drink from that fifth cup during the service. I raised my glass with deliberate thought and real joy.
--bss

ELIJAH’S CUP

That fifth cup is Elijah’s cup.
Be reverent
with the shards
that remain
of that perfection
which was childness.
Turn them carefully
against your callouses,
or listen, as with a shell
to the ear, for secrets saved
toward wholeness.
All these years…
kept in the keep of the heart,
the secret stirs, and Elijah
begins again to whisper.
--Barbara Smith Stoff

FOR WORDSWORTH: DAFFODILS

FOR WORDSWORTH: DAFFODILS

Through a long winter
my feet have traced a new path
through unpatterned shadows
from ice-laden limbs of bare trees.
Bare trees cannot shelter,
even sparrows,
yet they do offer themselves
as cold crystal prisms,
as pale sun warms the waiting
for some sound of spring. There!
Yellow chalice-faces,
green-stemmed hope,
daffodils breaking through—offering—
There!
--Barbara Smith Stoff

THE HEART

THE HEART

Having inquired too much

of too many lessons and too many books

now I lay me down on this good earth

to mound the leaves like words--

piles and piles of yarrow words.

Silent and dark, I stir and stir

until the question bows,

until the question stirs.

Where does "I want" arise?

In the mind.

Where does "I need" arise?

In the body.

Where does "I have" arise?

In the heart.

The heart can never be cut down.

The heart can never be used up.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

THE BALANCE TURNS ON YES

THE BALANCE TURNS ON YES

My soul is balancing out there
and the balance turns on yes...
a light burning through black and white,
press printing new patterns
(this is only flat paper news)
I look down from the horrors
of the Sunday paper
to this cat
(who has become my teacher of late)
here on my lap
(warm ease and somehow here being)
with balance here
with balance here seeming
on a thin thin wire
silver spun from some center...
is pure? will hold?
the center holds
(even to that mountain in the distance there)
Yes.

Trusting the morning hand
for some graceful knot,
I look up to bind...
up and out and level
(even to that distant mountain there)
and back to this flat paper news
whose power leaps quivering from points of pain
dangerously shaking the gossamer line.
Almost I hear the fearsome snap:
a heartpulse...and the line holds.
My soul comes comes home again
from rare space
and I stroke the cat
and we enjoy fragrant tea
with some serenity.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

DRAGONS FROM THE DEEP LOCH

DRAGONS FROM THE DEEP LOCH

Up from the deep waters
The deep unconscious
The unreflected upon waters of the oceans
Which hold together this striving planet
Up and out in the open
From these deep waters
The old patriot rejection of old world parentals…
Are we afraid of old European ideologies which suckled
Throughout centuries...and aeons...? even learning all the while
to winnow out some poisons..
...An old-new idea
Is born and in Boston the tea boxes go into the sea
That sea of consciousness
(they sometimes call the marrow in our bones the sea of consciousness)
…that sea of consciousness which ultimately touches all shores on this planet.

“And what is the ocean doing?”

And like the unclean knives buried for centuries on the ocean floor,
The creations in the deep loch come up to walk our modern streets
And populate our screens…for better or worse…we must decide.
The old subterranean dragons in the edens of our ideas…
How to integrate them into our dimly dreamed benevolent humanity?

The patriot’s cry…”from my cold dead hands”…pry this weapon.
And the nation which says it’s “Christian” forgets that the man Jesus
Urged the giving up of weapons…even suggested they be made into
Plows for growing fields of food to feed the hungry.
So we have the rebirth of the tea party…
Rather than leaning shoulders to wheel to actually build
That more perfect union, that more perfect government
Which ultimately leads to the laying down of the weapon
Before we have to deal with that “cold dead hand”…


Fear? Well, bombs, swords…
Those who make them tend to reject
The idea of benevolent evolution for humankind.
Jesus said those who live by the sword will die by the sword.


Do not let us be that ever adolescent culture
Continually rebelling against motherfather countries
In order to discover the “new” identity within….
Let us put down the weapon
Before we are that cold dead hand…

Rather be the hand that signed a declaration of the benevolent
Future for humankind…that promised to be example…
A living walking example…into being.
We must not become that cold dead hand.
We create ourselves each day
According to our idea of ourselves.
Let us welcome the future with warm hands.

--Barbara Smith Stoff
March 24, 2010

AEONS AND SAGES

AEONS AND SAGES

I can give you no children this time.
Yet I am pregnant with your love.
Our gift to life
is nurtured in warmth
of winter evenings and lamplit pages…
history distilled here in rooms
safe for a time of growing.
You read of brave visionaries
and watch modern day news…
and come to the question between.

Dimly we know, we two,
that in me your trust, so carefully tendered,
finds answer and soft shelter
as we walk through the days
of this our morningtime…
noontime…
eveningtime…
toward such bright birthing.

How far we can see…
through suns and moons
as the earth keeps turning
from love to love, aeons and sages:
As we are here to warm ourselves,
Again we eat our bread together.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

FACING WEST

FACING WEST

Wild persimmons, red cardinals...
Heart aches for the beauty of the place
To stay and stir among the wintering roots
Tufting through to spring. To Spring? Oh.
The heart caves and whispers
Not, in such deep silence.
Eye watches autumn
Surely sifting summer seeding
For winter's cold keeping
And spring ever calling.
Already I long for spring...
Or fear white winter's dying...
What dies in winter?
Only the summer's dreaming.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

O HENRY'S LAST LEAF

O HENRY'S LAST LEAF

In this classroom,
I wish to compete!
I wish to compete
with whatever
is going on out there!
Last night
in color
and in black and white,
you watched
and you listened
as television reassembled
beatings and rapes and...
and murders.

This morning
I want to read to you
a simple story. O Henry,
teach us to listen
O! teach us to hear
this small quiet voice.

In this room
there are no guns
there are no cries
of pain and horror
to snare your attention...
only this small quiet voice
that says, look,
there is this much good
...in one old man
who is drunk...
most of the time,
so the teacher said,
(one last leaf for O Henry)
and I believe...
the students...
listened.


--Barbara Smith Stoff

BLACK HOLE (space in time?)

BLACK HOLE (space in time?)

Hard words from retreating faces
are cold fingers groping
spreading chill covering
over warm and pulsing life
unveiling self as monad,
an ultimate lonely unit
cooling and cooling into cold compression
falling toward frozen death below degree:
Dante's deepest center emits no light.

Energy is stilled
in cold pressure condensing
past the point of transformation,
isolation bursts from its own intensity
and cold becomes heat expanding
radial reaching, starburst giving
full circle reconciliation...
polar arcs in myriad hue.
Clear-eyed faces, behold!
Such transfiguration.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

SEA CHANGES

SEA CHANGES

I
By the sea the wind
blowing from green white froth
onto a small cache
of live embers in sun warmed sand
whispers old secrets,
restoring old hopes.
So we come back to the sea
for a gift of vision
and we believe…
as the wind turns gray embers
into living fire.

II
And you,
I hold you with my hands
and I sit with you
on the windward shore
the wind carries our words
and twists them chocking
as we gasp for air
we turn and lean into the wind
and glaciers move…
the wind in us and around us
etches lines
forming our faces,
(we must have faces!)
and glaciers move…

III
Tonight there are only cold rocks
and dry brittle bones
upon this beach. The wind
spews out little child cries
and old men’s moans. I cradle
myself against this wind
which gives me no peace—
rises to a shriek, roars and mocks.
The roots are torn.
I crouch with my back to the wind
and feel in my bones
the pain of coming birth…
Will be, Is, is now, is born now
wailing and keening,
the roots…the roots…
Form draws itself up
and walks into the wild beauty,
knowing pain,
knowing the wind.

IV
Sandy beach…
little waves washing
washing pains past hurts
the woundtide recedes
and comes less often…
sunny sandy beach
solitude sun and warm sand
I am
I am warm here
I hear singing.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

THE SOUL TO KEEP

THE SOUL TO KEEP

In a green glade
wherein the deepest pool,
I have carved a cedar box
and lined it well with pearl.
I have cast it all around
with silver fleur de lys
and made a latch from finest gold,
then laced it through with dream.
In it I have kept
the song of the meadowlark,
the call of the nightingale,
and crystal mirrored tears
from the breast of the mourning dove.
All the jewels of heaven
on tufts of velvet green...
the starflung wonder
of red satin summer,
the whisper of autumn leaves
in the splendid melon sun,
the silken petal saved
through silent sifting snow...
And the sweet chalice of spring.
Whoever shall find this store,
I have hidden the key
in the roots of the willow tree
that bends to trace the door.

--Barbara Smith Stoff