Advent Austerity

 

That which we seek may not show forth today
—perhaps this is a hidden blessing.

 

Moon and stars light the night skies,
making way for bright sun / cold morning.

 

Masked faces pass one another silently,
like quiet and distant ghosts.

 

Solitary cyclists ply their courses,
weaving between pedestrians with care.

 

Fisherfolk, in shorebird form,
bide their time, lying in wait for canny nourishment.

 

People prepare humble meals at home,
created with simple ingredients to hand.

 

Come nightfall, all creatures
retire to their respective nesting places.

 

Thoughtful quiet descends.

 

There is a measure of,
if not peace,
acquiescent composure.

 

The tension between oppression and freedom
is bridged by self-control,
wherein this condition apart 
is allowed to uphold fragile integral nature,
very like the deliverance depicted in any miracle play.

 

If we were not so self-conscious
within our self-regulated austerity,
we might yet hear the song
of the hummingbird's dream,
might feel the earth’s hum in our bones,
might awaken to the nascent answer
of the riddle of our existence,
then tattoo it, as a reminder,
on our opened-ever-outward palms, 
ready to accept and to give blessing,

as the journey rolls on.

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

photo by Rick Lewis for Bay Nature magazine, April - June 2016

Teary Balm

The rains return,
a blessing and a communion
for all that is parched and scarred,
for the cracked and dry rotted;
the rains return, a teary balm.

Soft sprinkles gather
to dance on leaf and blade,
to explore forming buds and
unfurling fronds of fern,
reaching deeply into
and encouraging
the dormant
mosses.

Any accumulation
pours forth where it can,
settling accounts with roots,
pooling intimately and deeply,
rolling in ever widening waves,
with a depth of touch
and seeming awareness
of that most real commingling
that lies at the heart of being.

The rains return as teary balm
—for the earth and all dwelling thereon;
Holy rains, heal our parched and scarred,
heal our cracked and dry rotted,
heal us from the very roots
to the tips of each branch,
flow into the budding flowers,
and fill the wellspring of our awareness;
Oh, beautiful teary balm,
bring blessing and communion
to full bloom and being
in us.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

On The Beach

for H.M., my birthday twin

Footprints in the sand,
cool air in the lungs,
could you let it all go as a song
and just be done?

Breezes fly in your face,

Zephyr gently teasing
—not to challenge or confuse,
but to brighten with a kiss.

Sand, beneath your feet,
falls away, unstable;
waves take care to undermine,
and you sink deeper.

From here to where?
All seems so unclear;
how much can we bear
of fog and rolling tear?

When you look back,
your trail is wiped away, gone,
as if it have never been;
it is time to move on.

You take a cautionary step;
the sand molds to your foot,
the sand holds you up,
yet is flexible about you.

And as a gentle rain comes,
to bless and receive you,
a light dawns within:
I am the way forward.

The shifting sands,
the flowing waters and winds,
they work with you, for you,
O Mother of Invention.

© 2012 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

At the River

For the healing of the nations,
and for the gifts of trees, spirits of the air,
and birds that take to flight.

Join us here,
join us at the river,
the river of life
that flows through our veins
and out into our words
in the music of language
in the geometry of thought
in the beauty of color
in the mystery of dimension
over endless expanse of possibility
of thought and imagining
of fixity, flexity and fluid infinity.

Join us here,
join us at the river,
the river of life;
step in and submerge and subsume,
surrender and substantiate,
be blessed and filled
of heavenly Being,
the being, the life, the light
that is indivisible from your being and God’s.

Join us here,
join us at the river,
at the river of life,
for you, yourself, are and ever shall be
the music.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

The Gift So Worn

Weariness,
weariness walks on my soul.

The doing that can never be done
tolls in my mind, a dissonant bell,
for there is no rest.

The sun rises,
yet there is no rising,
though the shining sun
blesses
even the most feeble flower.

That blessing,
birthing hope
over the multiscapes of being
—that light caresses the soft flower petal.

Would that I were the flower!

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen