Allspirit Poetry
Selected Poetry of elaine maria upton
Poems
No Poem...
No poem with jeweled words
visits me now. Only the hills,
silent and black on an afternoon
of clouds in an almost-spring,
when children's laughter is swallowed
somewhere in schools, and you are away,
and the landlord's black hound
lies sleeping in the awakening grass.
There are letters scattered
as if on the floor --orders to pay
fines, or report to the Registry,
to meet the dark gavel of deadlines,
and there are prohibitions, posted
from someone without a face, without
a signature or name. Yet, if I wait
the spring leaves will write themselves,
the scripts of trees filling the hills.
And the granite and quartz will grow
ever so slowly, rising between cedar
and pine. This is the orchestra
of legato, while the daffodils play a quick
stacatto, and mosquitoes sleep at the window.
Perhaps soon the black hound will wake, bark,
run, like my heart, when you come home.
Lenox, Massachusetts
16 April 1999
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They Have Become....
word dreamer in ce*
No one lives here anymore,
and even 'here' is a word that hangs on
a memory swimming away with the westward cloud.
No one lives here anymore.
The wedding ritual is over
and the brides are gone.
They have pledged to walk 'it is true'
everywhere always 'til death.
And now, its disappointing: there is no death.
No one lives here anymore.
There is no life--there is no death.
There are no brides, no you, no me.
The leaves of bushes and trees tremble in wind
and gray clouds sleepwalk across the sky.
Still, most days the sun burns everything.
No one lives here anymore.
The sun burns everything.
This is a desert, indifferent to rain.
The saguaro drank water centuries ago.
That was how it began. They stood
horizontal, in coyote's eyes, eyes of the dream.
No one lives here anymore. No one
waters or drinks. The weather has become
what it always was: Earth, Wind, and Fire.
No one waters anymore. There is nothing
to purify, and only hunger that burns in the sun.
The corn has become what it always was:
The corn has become the servant/giver of sun.
No one lives here anymore. The brides
have turned all the Earth, have watered and drunk.
They do not live here anymore.
They have eaten the corn. They have become
the Water, the Wood, the Earth, the Wind, the Sun.
No one lives here anymore.
Listen to the buffalo ghost, the empty cornfield.
Listen to the wind in mountains, in leaves of trees.
Sail with the cloud. No one lives here anymore.
The turtle's voice is as always: less than a whisper.
Listen: it is not death! The graves are light!
Listen to the corn. Listen!
They have eaten the corn. They have become
the Water, the Moon, the Earth, the Wind, the Sun.
5 July 1998
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SILENCE ll
Silence is not a lack of words.
Silence is not a lack of music.
Silence is not a lack of curses.
Silence is not a lack of screams.
Silence is not a lack of colors
or voices or bodies or whistling wind.
Silence is not a lack of anything.
Silence is resting, nestling
in every leaf of every tree,
in every root and branch.
Silence is the flower sprouting
upon the branch.
Silence is the mother singing
to her newborn babe.
Silence is the mother crying
for her stillborn babe.
Silence is the life of all
these babes, whose breath
is a breath of God.
Silence is seeing and singing praises.
Silence is the roar of ocean waves.
Silence is the sandpiper dancing
on the shore.
Silence is the vastness of a whale.
Silence is a blade of grass.
Silence is sound
And silence is silence.
Silence is love, even
the love that hides in hate.
Silence is the pompous queen
and the harlot and the pimp
hugging his purse on a crowded street.
Silence is the healer dreaming
the plant, the drummer drumming
the dream. It is the lover's
exhausted fall into sleep.
It is the call of morning birds.
Silence is God's beat tapping all hearts.
Silence is the star kissing a flower.
Silence is a word, a hope, a candle
lighting the window of home.
Silence is everything --the renewing sleep
of Earth, the purifying dream of Water,
the purifying rage of Fire, the soaring
and spiraling flight of Air. It is all
things dissolved into no-thing--Silence
is with you always.....the Presence
of I AM
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This is the Time of Fire
There is a time of Water and a time of Wind.
This is the time of Fire, and Fire eats time.
The sands of the desert are uncountable!
Let go of the reckoning! Let go of time!
Let go of rain! Let go of forgiving!
Fire eats rain and Fire eats trees. Fire eats
The leaves of corn. Fire is the grain and the husk
Of corn. Fire is the raging of Water. Fire is the roar,
the hum, the sting of Wind. Fire is the pepper pulsing
from the flower. Fire is the frenzied volcano dancing.
It is the lightning's blitz, the drumming, the singing,
The beat of tribes, telling their story all night,
Piercing the bottom of dark, birthing the light.
Fire is the Earth exhausted, folding, sleeping
from days and nights of love, til there is no counting.
When flowers bleed, when lions sleep, when angels sigh, oh bleed, oh
sleep, oh sigh then! Oh, burn with mountains!
When leaves flame and fall to the ground,
When grass grows brown then gray, grieve not.
Grieve not, but follow the eagle and follow the grass.
Weep not for the Earth. Weep not for the corn.
The Earth is the lover who gives all to love.
The Earth makes a bed of Love and the Sun knows.
The Earth makes a table of Love and the Fire knows.
The Earth feeds Fire. The Earth gives all to Love.
Follow the Earth. Look beyond your eyes as you go!
Follow the Earth to the beat of the Fire!
Open your thighs. Give all to Love!
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GIVING
(a song that comes ...)
The fruit when ripe/falls from the tree--
The fruit when ripe/falls from the tree.--
Blessings on all/ who eat of the tree.
Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!
And this is the only /giving I know--
And this is the only/ loving I know.
Blessings on all /who eat of the tree--
Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!
The seed when ripe/spirals down in the ground--
The seed when ripe/spirals down in the ground.
Blessings on all/who eat of the tree.
Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!
The ground in rain/covers the seed--
The ground in sun/opens up the seed.
Blessings on all/who eat of the tree--
Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!
And this is the only/giving I know--
And this is the only/loving I know.
Blessings on all/who eat of the tree.
Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!
The gardener breathes/on the shoots and the leaves--
The gardener waters/the roots and the leaves.
Blessings on all/who eat from the tree--
Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!
The ants weave air/through the roots in the ground--
The birds weave song/The butterflies dance round.
Blessings on all/who eat from the tree.
Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!
The giraffe and the deer/they eat from the tree.
The rivers and the wind/they eat from the tree.
Blessings on all/ who eat from the tree--
Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!
The gnomes and the moon/they eat from the tree--
The Planets and the People/they eat from the tree.
Blessings on all/who eat from the tree.
Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!
The (*apple,peach, almond, leaf...) when ripe/falls
from the tree--
The (...) when ripe/falls from the tree.
And this is the only/giving I know.
And this is the only/loving I know.
Blessings on all/who eat from the tree.
Blessings on all/Blessed Be! Blessed Be!
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DREAM POEM
Everytime you see a tree
or dream a cloud,
there is that in you of the tree
there is that in you of the cloud.
The saguaro dreams in drought
and endures. The cloud dreams
our woe --sneezes, cries.
The rain falls
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The Willow in the Bend
The willows' golden budded branches brim in the winter air.
There is fire --even in winter, even when my heart here
cannot remember the way of Love.--The road curves round
taking me to where I have been, and in the bend,
the willows' golden budded branches brim.
19 February 1999
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PENELOPE
I am Penelope and I sat here weaving
all these years, weaving and waiting.
My story may seem very dull,
the story of weaving and waiting,
unless, of course, you want to add
some Hollywood or Cannes/Riveriera intrigue
and write of all my suitors, and my temptations
to an adulterous life, and unless you want
to write that I worried about Telemachus,
my son, and his ability to endure the slander
of his father's name. But even that
seems dull beside tales of one-eyed monsters,
Scylla and Charibidis, and all that drove
my husband round the world. No, waiting
is not particularly an exciting tale to tell.
You'd have to be here, to live
where narrative is swallowed up
in the turns of a spinning wheel,
and a particular herb tossed
in the noon meal soup. The herb
would make you drunk with sleep
and you'd dream of spinning and
of looms where names and forms
are woven while the sun falls slowly
in the long Mediterranean afternoon.
And you'd wake to a tapestry
that your fingers followed into being,
a tapestry of names, colors, shapes
to hang on a wall, or to drape
the backs of children, old women,
and returning kings. This woven
thing--this tapestry--would remind us
that history and time, like distant horizons
elude us forever, and this body,
this adventure, these wars, these seas,
are but the densest measure of a dream.
Wait, then, upon the fuller dream, the one
woven in the loom, lent us by the weaving stars.
23 February 1999
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HOW GOD LOOKS HERE
In this place, where ever it is,
God looks different.
I need new glasses or new ears.
God sounds different.
God says "New Yawh-k" here
and God likes Deli's on every corner
and God does business with Pizzeria's
on every other corner, and with names
like Caprianni and Giovannni
or Bagels and Loxs.
God does all this amid the winding roads
along the Hudson River, amid the trees
that reveal white tailed deer behind the houses.
God is multiplying in white-tailed deer
behind the houses and crossing the roads.
Here God married her cousin--Rose-velt
married Roose-e-velt, and all those folk
with money and means, like Vanderbilt
and Jones and Astor, have their names
on lavish stone gates, where God enters.
Here, God loves those gray gates.
Here God loves the curves of things, and
no road is straight.--The slaves
on the underground railroad
took to these curves in the road.
The Dutch rode up the winding river,
and spun their tales of the life
they created here in these dark hills.
Here God sees me waking at night
asking, 'where am i?' and God
answers in a language i cannot yet
speak, but I listen to God's accent here,
and ask, which syllable is my name.
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HOW TO TALK WITH A MOUNTAIN
Anthropomorphism has its place. It's
a starting point, at least. So, I'll say
if i have eyes, then a mountain has eyes,
and whatever happens after that
is poetry, where i become lost,
and there are no conditions, no
consequences. There's only the mountain,
Mother, inside, around, leaping, plunging down.
The hips of the mountain where wombs
curl inside wombs, generations of granite, coal,
and sequoyah, woodpeckers and eagles
and sparrows. Cedar and pine plunge
their roots into the Mountain Mother.
They cannot escape her. They are her,
and in their knotted wrestling in the ground,
through ages, they return, return, return......
She rains from inside, and curls to clouds.
The clouds embrace her. She is clouds.
She is the light of birch bark, carved to sail
on her soothing rivers. The nimble, nibbling deer.
She is King, Queen, priest, choirs and silence.
Always she reigns, with absolute rule,
and her rule is bounty and blessing.
She is the daughter of Sun, the son
of Moon, and waxes, heaves, cries, folds,
sings. She sings and there is silence. I AM
the Mountain. I go into these hills
as into mySelf. Ground hogs, moles,
mushroom, moss, hawk, and helix-
spiral of flower and cone, cicadas
are my messengers. Leaves fallen
from trees are my skin. Gray wolves
are my solitude. Brown bears, my wisdom,
Buffalo rising from my bowls, rushing
through Air of plains, urging the sleeping
Earth, are my Fire. Unearthed, Everest,
Blanc, Kilimanjaro, Shasta, Shambala,
I climb to clouds, copulate in crystal bed
of snow, promiscuous with all the stars,
am the clouds, the Star, am what is beyond,
unseen, unseen, Un/Seen, un/Born
before the blossom and chatter of Spring.
Watery springs gossip sweet news, gurgling
falling from my throat, calling,
calling, calling: come, always, I Am
here; I Am/Mountain all around, above,
below, within. Come, there is nowhere to go....
I AM/singing , the Sound that is always here...
2 March 1999
Hyde Park, everywhere
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