By Teresa Williams
Swans
Boethius said: The now that passes produces time,
the now that remains produces eternity.
Small ration
of eternity:
the circular web
dissolves; morning
the fog
passes over the lake
and silently hovers, while
the mother
with the child in hand
points to the white circle
forming
in the dark waters
and in a hushed tone says,
that sometimes
moons
come down from the sky
wanting
to float: the waters rise
February’s frosty waves.
The moons
circumambulate the lake
whispering
whispering and wanting
with each round
a fluency
more motion
a buoyancy
anything
to slake their thirst
anything
to carry them
beyond
the static sky
beyond
the boundaries
of the circle.
_________________________
Two Coyotes at Dawn
Blue light from the edges illuminate the street
like an aura,
like phosphorescent water, magician
of its spreading hue, of its
rise
and soft dissolve.
A moment later and another still
it touches the trees.
Its slow moving stillness
surrounds dense shapes,
wall, sidewalk, shrub,
crack;
a return
to its immanence.
Up ahead,
a flash
amber heat, wild fur. Then another,
less an apparition,
than the first. For a moment,
its green ember eyes burn. Time
falls open,
a desert floor climbs up, inverts itself
in the oasis of sky.
Thunder.
Wisp of smoke.
Standing in the street. She’s gone.
House, porch, maple tree.
Electric lights
Door.
_________________________
Tarot
I don’t know if moon sounds like an owl
Or if owls reveal anything
about the moon.
I don’t know if haunting incandescence
can roll into my room
in this way.
But I did hear the owl speak
through the moon
last night.
And I heard a profound conclusion.
The sun was not there to confirm it
or verify it or surpass
what was spoken.
And the screeching did not ascend
like the sun’s daily rising.
No, it was not like that
nothing resembling the clarity of fact.
Only this
sound
falling
from one world
into another
and I know what was heard cannot be said.
_________________________
About Teresa: Teresa Williams is a psychotherapist, poet and translator in Seattle, Washington. She has been writing and trying to live poetry for as long as she can remember. Her love for travel and the Spanish language has called her into translation work. She is also an active member of Grupo Cervantes, a bilingual writer’s group and literary community in Seattle. Teresa’s poetry has been featured at births, weddings, funerals and several talent shows held by the closest of friends.
Beautiful work Teresa! So nice to see you’ve found a cool writer’s community with which to share! Keep going!
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Teresa
I love your work – especially Two coyotes at dawn – what a moment you’ve captured so exquisitely!
thank you for sharing
Caroline
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These are beautiful, visual, elegant poems. Thanks for sharing.
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I appreciate your support. The natural world has so much to say, doesn’t it?
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I particularly love Tarot, for the sun screeching, and the owl revealing something unspoken.
As I sit day after day, heat after heat, I am baffled by how much you captured the Antalyan sun (not its owl), but definitely its sun. The sun doesn’t only screech, but it pierces and bleeds on the skin. The seagulls, stray dogs, and stray cats may wander in the sky perhaps reveling in secrets.
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Nice one about the coyotes. Seems like one is teleported from the city to the desert to the city again.
Dwayne
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Crazy to think we have coyotes running around in the city. This is when I’m thankful I don’t live in New York. Who knows, there are probably other wild animals running around there, waiting for a poem.
I don’t know about the Antalyan sun. I will have to look that up. It’s those unspoken reveleations I love. A lifetime spent deciphering them….
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Teresa, thanks so much for writing with us on red Ravine. I just read over your poems again. They bring a peacefulness inside. And it seems like you find ground in Nature. I’ve been thinking a lot about the way the state of the Earth reflects the state of our world.
Recently, we were writing on the Topic of Trees and someone commented that they were reading Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World by Bill Plotkin. I checked it out from the library. It’s about finding our place in relationship to the natural world. And about how a true maturity, in terms of life cycles, comes from figuring out what that place is. It struck me because I was recently in Ely, Minnesota at the North American Bear Center with about 300 other people, learning and celebrating black bears. Since I’ve been home, something has shifted. When I read your poetry, it resonated with that shift.
I wanted to ask a little about your process. Do you write outside, or what’s your process of writing poetry like?
Some of my fave lines are from the end of Tarot. The Owl Moon. “And I heard a profound conclusion. The sun was not there to confirm it.”
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That book by Bill Plotkin sounds like an important book to read. I am always trying to find my sense of place in the natural world. Sometimes I find it, especially when out in the wilderness. I have to work harder to be attuned during the week, living in the city. Writing poems helps me to do this and keeps me alert to the natural world that is also alive in the urban environment.
Sometimes I write outside, but most of the time I find that I don’t want to write when I am experiencing nature. I don’t want anything that will remove me too far from the immediate presence of it. When I come home from being out, this is when I try to call it up again and see what I learned, heard, tasted, remembered.
The last line of the poem Tarot is an important one for me. For this poem I was thinking of the sun as a more masculine, rational, ego type energy that likes facts and clear knowledge. But the message came from the night, the moon, the owl and is an intuitive knowing, not so easy to put into words.
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It’s not an easy read, at least for me. A little like the way you describe the Sun in your last comment. 😎 But it makes you think. It’s a lot about archetypes and the psychology of what makes us mature, not just as adults, but as humans in service to fellow humans and to the Earth. On his wheel, East would be the Sun, West would be the Moon. (According to the book, a diagram of the 8 Stages of Eco-SoulCentric Human Development can be downloaded at http://www.natureandthehumansoul.com for anyone who is interested.)
I just started reading it last weekend. It relates to myth and Tarot but in a more psychological sense. The book also talks about how we, in this country, are a nation of adolescents, in terms of our archetypal growth. We’ve taken a few steps back from previous generations who lived closer to the land. There is a shift going on to try to help us regain some of that lost ground. I can feel it
BTW, Norma, if you come back to this post, I’d be curious to know what the Antalyan sun is as well. Had not heard of it. Sounds made of the stuff of myth.
Teresa, I like how you describe your process. I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes, I won’t take my camera with me because I simply want to experience where I am, be grounded in the moment. Maybe the messages do come from the Night. And they can look a little harsher in the light of the Sun. I’ve recently been having deep dreams. And I am at a point of forming new goals, a new vision for the next phase of my life. I look to the darkness for that. It’s a place I can reflect.
I have a few other questions. Do you ever write poetry in Spanish? And where do you like to travel?
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I think messages come from many places and different ways of knowing, the light and dark, sun and moon. Our culture has become too one-sided and we have developed certain aspects of our being to the detriment of others.
I was reading something about how much consciousness has changed since the mass availability of books. Before reading and the subsequent over development of sight, sound ruled the world. This is our challenge–to find ways to reconnect with older forms of knowing (dreams, ancestral wisdom, nature) and to also bring our particular strengths as modern humans with a neocortex. And generally, most of us don’t like to look to the darkness for answers–so primitive and scary! Nevertheless, incredibly instructive.
I do write poetry in Spanish, but much less than in English.
Right now, I’ve been traveling a lot to a lovely town in Mexico called Guanajuato. I have been there that last three years to enjoy the spring like weather during the fall months when it becomes rainy and dark in Seattle. I also love Spain. Mostly, spent time in the south, Andalucia region, but have dreams of living there some day and seeing the entire country. I’m still exploring South America, so far, I’ve visited Venezuela and Ecuador.
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My favorite line from all the poems was
“Only this
sound
falling
from one world
into another
and I know what was heard cannot be said.
That made me chill when I read it and struck me as so true. Thanks for sharing your work with us. Beautiful poems.
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Today I particularly enjoyed Tarot, right from the opening line….”I don’t know if moon sounds like an owl…”. I find it engaging and accessible and like a little puzzle, drawing me down the page, I want to know what you know, what you heard and what you saw. As others have commented, I also find the closing of the poem quite powerful – like you shared the answer to a koan or a secret the reveals nothing and everything.
thank you for sharing your vision, work and secrets.
Mark
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I’m happy to hear this line made you curious. This poem came to me after waking up in the night and hearing an owl. I looked out and saw the full moon staring at me. I was in such a dreamy state, I immediately thought…the the moon is hooing like an owl.
t
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Teresa, Spain must be an amazing place. So many people seem to love it there. I don’t know how people handle the dark and rainy months in Seattle. Granted, it does get pretty cold and dark here in Minnesota. But there is something about that dampness that would get to my bones. I’ve really enjoyed your comments on red Ravine this week. Calm sensibility. Still thinking about the mass distribution of books and how sound used to rule the world. I am so visual. But I have friends who are totally auditory. I used to think the auditory was newer. Rethinking that. When we sat in meditation in Taos, we’d sometimes focus on a sound rather than the breath. I really liked that form of meditation.
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Ah, yes. In many ways, the Antalyan sun is mythical ın that varıous (Lycıans, Hıttıtes, Roman, Greek, Ottoman, Seljuks) cıvılızatıons have created legends under the sun as ıt appears off the Medıterranean ın Turkey. Luckıly, though, the sun ıs one and ınfınıte sımultaneously.
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For some reason I thought you were living in New Mexico. Perhaps it was the Natalie Goldberg at Mabel Dodge that made me think that.
I’ve enjoyed talking with you and everyone else as well. I think I like this blog form of sharing work–it is so much more participatory and community based than a journal or other print media. I am slow to accepting new forms of technology, but as of now, I’m hooked! (at least with Red Ravine)
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I currently live in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Though much of my family lives in Pennsylvania, I grew up in Georgia, and lived out my twenties in Missoula, Montana. However, my blog partner, ybonesy, was born and raised in New Mexico. We actually met at a Natalie Goldberg workshop in Taos and took a year long Writing Intensive with Natalie from which the seed for red Ravine was planted. I think it came directly (and indirectly) out of that practice.
I started studying with Natalie when she used to teach in St. Paul, Minnesota. I guess my first workshop with her was about 10 years ago. I can’t believe that when I say it out loud. Anyway, I traveled to Taos many times after that to continue study with her. It was a great gift. And that’s how I met ybonesy. I was also in New Mexico during the Harmonic Convergence in the1980’s, in Chaco Canyon specifically. And when I did about a three week camping/photo trip to the Four Corners area with some students from RIT in the early 90’s. I fell in love with it then.
I really do love it out West. And I miss the mountains. But I’ve come to love Minnesota now. I’m not sure I’ll live anywhere else. But one never knows. When I lived in Missoula, we’d travel to Seattle and Portland about once or twice a year to get our fix of the “big city.” I’d love to get back there in the next few years. I love the Oregon Coast.
I’m so glad you have enjoyed red Ravine. It’s great to meet new people through their work. And to share that with other writers and artists. I was talking to a friend today about the nature of social media because I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the Summer. This blog is so different from other ways that I am online. For me, things slow down here and I can settle in to a conversation. I like the depth of it. Other social media have their place, too. It can be tricky finding a good mix. Thanks again.
And Norma, thank you for coming back to explain about the Antalyan sun.
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Felcitaciones por el debut de tus poemas, llenos de vida animal (como de Esopo) y de paisajes tranquilos y envolventes.
También a veces, parecen como una hamaca porque invitan al vaivén.
De pronto nos compartes otros poemas futuros también en español.
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Hi teresa. I’m Roma, aka ybonesy, presently sitting in the Sheraton Saigon in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Your poems have brought a bit of calm into this buzzing place for me. I can still hear hammers and horns, the muffled sound of music 19 floors below. Traffic.
Quite the contrast to coyote apparitions or owls hooting under a bright moon. I feel like I’ve been momentarily transported back to my writing room late at night. Thanks. 8)
And I have so many questions about you. Where are you from originally? Curious as to how old you are, what took you to Seattle, what do you do, that kind of thing. Only share what you wish.
I lived in Granada in about 1986-87, and I’ve gone back but not for 12 years. I’m a Latin Americanist by education, traveled a lot to different parts Mexico and Central America mostly, Cuba. But that’s been a while. Now I travel to Vietnam a lot. I think this must be my ninth or tenth trip.
Seems as though you are a kindred spirit. Really glad you found us and vice versa. Thanks so much for sharing your poetry and participating. I look forward to reading more of your writing.
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Javier,
Gracias por tus comentarios. Cuando empiezo a soñar en español, voy a escribir más poemas en español! Ojala.
Roma,
I’ve been enjoying all your photos and writing from Vietnam. It must be a special place for you with 10 visits! I hope to get there some day as well.
As for me, I am originally from Seattle area, but grew up in a small rural town in Idaho, called Meridian (near Boise). I am 41 years old (cough cough) I’m still working at accepting this reality. I left Idaho the day after I graduated from high school. Couldn’t wait to leave for a wider world.
I work as a social worker in a hospital in Seattle, mostly with pregnant women. I also have a small private psychotherapy practice, working primarily with women’s issues, some couples work too.
I love the outdoors. Am very active as a backcountry skier, mountaineer, runner, mountain biker, you name it, anything that gets me moving and flowing around trees, mountains, rivers, lakes, etc.
And I love travel. You already heard about some of that.
Granada is a wonderful place no? Cuba is definately on my list.
Well, thanks for checking in. We’ll chat more soon.
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[…] funerals and several talent shows held by the closest of friends. Her first piece on red Ravine, Sound Falling From One World Into Another, was published in August 2010 and featured the poems: Swans, Two Coyotes at Dawn, and […]
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[…] funerals and several talent shows held by the closest of friends. Her first piece on red Ravine, Sound Falling From One World Into Another, was published in August 2010 and featured the poems: Swans, Two Coyotes at Dawn, and Tarot. Her […]
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[…] funerals and several talent shows held by the closest of friends. Her first piece on red Ravine, Sound Falling From One World Into Another, was published in August 2010 and featured the poems: Swans, Two Coyotes at Dawn, and Tarot. It was […]
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