The Poets Flow Rainbow Rivers And A New World Breathes

by Lyn Marsh,PhD on March 9, 2019

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

(Mark Twain)

Do not say, ‘It is morning,’ and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.

(Rabindranath Tagore)

When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer any more. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.

(Thich Nhat Hanh)

Einstein sleeps in his hammock, in the Between, hanging from the Grand Willow Tree’s branches which collect liquid starlight from the Cosmos. The willow branches arc, to form an umbrella… drip… dripping… on to Einstein in his hammock which gently rocks in the breezes of Love’s breath…

Einstein is not alone. The souls of poets… hang from the Willow Tree in their hammocks… surrounding him… And rainbow rivers of light flow from the hammocks… into humanity living on earth in the year 2019… as the dreaming poets whisper, speak, shout, or sing their own rhythmic beauty… to celebrate — the newborn ‘suns’ of a mythical prophecy… who have come to participate in a new world… becoming…

Pablo Neruda stirs in his hammock and speaks his story into the flowing rainbow light:

And it was at that age … Poetry arrived

in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don’t know how or when,

no they were not voices, they were not

words, nor silence,

but from a street. I was summoned,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth

had no way

with names,

my eyes were blind,

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings,

and I made my own way,

deciphering

that fire,

and I wrote the first faint line,

faint, without substance, pure

nonsense,

pure wisdom

of someone who knows nothing,

and suddenly I saw

the heavens

unfastened

and open,

planets,

palpitating plantations,

shadow perforated,

riddled

with arrows, fire, and flowers,

the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

felt myself a pure part

of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke loose on the wind.

Rabindranath Tagore follows Neruda with his whispers melting into the rivers of light:

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of
Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.

(He pauses then continues)

Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.

David Whyte’s soul drops a tear as he adds his story to the poetry in concert:

Above the mountains

the geese turn into

the light again

Painting their

black silhouettes

on an open sky.

Sometimes everything

has to be

inscribed across

the heavens

so you can find

the one line

already written

inside you.

Sometimes it takes

a great sky

to find that

first, bright

and indescribable

wedge of freedom

in your own heart.

Sometimes with

the bones of the black

sticks left when the fire

has gone out

someone has written

something new

in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving.

Even as the light fades quickly now,

you are arriving.

(The Journey)

William Wordsworth then bursts out to sing of his daffodils:

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch

I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

(Daffodils)

Rivers of rainbows begin to flow wildly free…… as the poets continue to tell their stories in the Willow Tree.

Lucille Clifton floats as a wandering cloud slipping through a horizon between the rainbow light to say:

may the tide

that is entering even now

the lip of our understanding

carry you out

beyond the face of fear

may you kiss

the wind then turn from it

certain that it will

love your back may you

open your eyes to water

water waving forever

and may you in your innocence

sail through this to that

(Blessing the Boats)

Mary Oliver follows Lucille with the earth of her love:

I thought the earth remembered me,

she took me back so tenderly,

arranging her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,

nothing between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths

among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms

breathing around me, the insects,

and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

All night I rose and fell, as if in water,

grappling with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

(Sleeping in the Forest)

Then out of the blue, Oriah Mountain Dreamer roars into the fancy-free rainbow river:

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.

I want to know what you ache for,

And if you dare to dream of meeting

Your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.

I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool

For love, for your dream,

For the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.

I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,

If you have been opened by life’s betrayals,

Or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain,

Mine or your own,

Without moving

To hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy,

Mine or your own,

If you can dance with wildness

and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes

Without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic,
or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.

I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself,

If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.

I want to know if you can be faithless and therefore be trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty

Even when it is not pretty every day,

And if you can source your life

From its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure,

Yours and mine,

And still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon,

“Yes!”

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair,

Weary and bruised to the bone,

And do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you are, how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand
In the center of the fire with me

And not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.

I want to know what sustains you

From the inside

When all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone

With yourself,

And if you truly like the company you keep

In the empty moments.

(The Invitation)

There is a hush… as Langston Hughes softly chants his story in the now muddy rich of the fertile rainbow rivers’ flow…

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy

bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

(The Negro Speaks of Rivers)

And there are a few on earth, in the year 2019, who sense that which cannot be named… as they allow their tears to weep for beauty… their souls to be found by the luminous flux of their soul’s mate – spirit… And the new dance begins… in the birth of new life… as those first nascent cries of silent and unfathomable tone… change the nature of life… forever…

References:

LAZARIS.COM

http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/maryoliver.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Wandered_Lonely_as_a_Cloud

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/246682-poetry-and-it-was-at-that-age-poetry-arrived-in

https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/rabindranath_tagore

https://exploredeeply.com/live-your-purpose/the-journey-in-david-whyte

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45521/i-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58816/blessing-the-boats

http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/poetry/oriah-mountain-dreamer.html

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/negro-speaks-rivers

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The Poets Flow Rainbow Rivers And A New World Breathes

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