Upon Rising: Poems Call Out by Margot Van Sluytman

Moderator’s Note: Margot reads each of her poems aloud. They can be heard through the links in the titles.

“And what then is poetry?” We ask this time and time and time again. And poetry HERself answers. SHE needs no descriptor. Mimetic sagacity spells HER clarity.
~~~
Dreams be Fed
I am a body that remembers

The joys of falling into hues of

Brilliant blues and greens.

I am a soul that trades in
Cinnamon and spices.

Elevating chance.
Caressing mystery.
I am a will that conceives fat
Ebullient Moon as
Golden Goddess. Divine.

SHE who feeds our dreams.
SHE who teaches us

To tend our fires.
©Margot Van Sluytman

Upon daily rising, let us invoke our Muses, Mnemosyne’s daughters. Breathing their voice upon the page. Inviting them rain upon our betimes parched aridity.
~~~
Musings Reign
Siblings of journeying
Light this day. Enflesh our
Hours’ every delight
And dread with your
Raw creative-fire twinned
With our hungry, hungry
Pen’s desire. Embrace
With us these moments
wHERin words rain down
Soaking the desert of
Seeming endless drought.

©Margot Van Sluytman

Poetry is pilgrimage. Resounding with spiralling purpose. tHERin lies truth. No need of logic. Small shoots burst forth from beneath frosty, frosty ground. Freedom sighs.

~~~

Multi-Layered Mystery

We arc our backs as artist.
Need not say why words
Travel tHEiR course to come
To speak our vision. We answer
tHEiR persistent knocking, for
Multi-layered mystery bids
Us feast upon eons of
Shared-knowing, too-long
Buried. tHEiR resurrection
Erupts, uncurtailed.

Dazzling diamonds dance.
©Margot Van Sluytman

Betimes that inner-speech feels to suffocate even the most committed HEaRt. Feels to choke, diminish, deny HER voice-ing. Responding in a flash of glee and gladness, is joy’s delight-full decree.
~~~
HEaRt’s Eyes

Because our soul’s clarity
Forgets to suffer fools,
What is claimed as our
Haphazard ethic: rejecting
Social order, setting a-flame
Patriarchy’s pernicious
Posturing. We don our
Red dresses, beauty-full
Harridans we. And stakes
Hefted in rotting soil
Awaiting our emollition,
Find themselves, too, rotting.
Devoid of the HEaRt’s eyes
Of knowing HER glory.
The authentic HEaRt-fire
Of Wisdom’s call to thrive.
©Margot Van Sluytman

Because today and today and today again, we choose to be present, we are the very prayer we have been seeking. We are the tender tendrils of hope, defiance, possibility, probity, the riddle that need not be solved.
~~~

Budding Oaks

Rejoice. Rejoice. Rejoice.
Sing the stars to the tops
Of budding oaks.
Rejoice in full glory,
As do swimming leviathans and
Birds bursting into luminescent
Song. Sing. Sing. Sing.
Secure your feet upon the

Body of Godde. Dance
Dance. Dance. Wildly.
Flinging hosannas
From your crazed
Conundrums for wanting
Meaning revealed.
Surrender as your tears
And laughter commune.
And rejoicing begets
Our forever birthing.
©Margot Van Sluytman

Wild Self Siblings honeymoon in our soul’s crashing delight. Sifting, shifting, waging hope, growing sane, sane, saner still. At this. This, the very still-point of vulnerability’s untethering.

~~~
Bounty Births

Supping upon surrender
As grave limitations
Ache for sacred elixirs
To quench each shard
Of fear: Consolation,
As we are transfixed
By each season’s bounty,

Maps contours of ripe
Possibility. Vulnerable
As tiny chickadees, we
Un-learn the hideous

Habit of hiding
Of our wills’ worth.
Wounds begin to heal.
©Margot Van Sluytman

What then is this? This temptation to fall for too, too long into chasms of shame. Reviling our very own breathing. Cowering as if we are nought but another’s story, another’s narrative of our eternally unfolding self. Ever in process. As love sentences us to love. And more love.

~~~

Cedar and Spruce
Become marginalized.
Be expelled from the tribe.
Let banal baaing, sordid
Bleating have their day.

In that wasteland, burned
Calamitous with prophets
Of damning, resides
Veins of purest blessing.
And clarity. For HER gift
Of intuition is our persistent
Faithfulness to surmount.
To rise up. Writhing towards
A new land sought. Scented
With cedar, spruce sprinkled.
Joyously awaiting our arrival.
©Margot Van Sluytman

BIO: Margot Van Sluytman is an award-winning, poet, therapeutic writing mentor, and justice activist, who also teaches Global Citizenship at Centennial College in Toronto, Canada. Her books include: Birthing the Celibate Soul; Sing My Spine-A Response to the Song of Songs; Dance with Your Healing-Tears Let Me Begin to Speak; Breathe Me: Why Poetry Matters Works and, Hope is: The Pandemic Poems. She is the Poet Laureate of Roncesvalles United Church in Toronto, Canada and she was nominated for Ontario’s First Poet Laureate.