Poetry – Page 9 – Feminism and Religion

Woman of the Isle of Women by Annelinde Metzner

Gratitude to the FAR community for welcoming my poems as of April of this year. Various earlier poems have been my way of introducing myself.

My work as a poet and composer has been centered around welcoming the reemergence of the Goddess in all Her forms. So this time I’ve submitted two poems referring to two of the many Goddesses who have influenced my life so profoundly.

Ix Chel is a Mayan Goddess of childbirth, midwifery, medicine and the moon. She has been especially honored and featured in artwork and sculpture on the Isle of Women (Isla Mujeres) in Mexico. She appeared to me in Her aspect as a young woman, the Jaguar Woman. In my mind’s eye, I associated Ix Chel with my beautiful son Peter who passed away in 2004, imagining them living joyously together in the Otherworld. Thanks to Deb Pollard for showing all aspects of the Moon above our heads as we sleep.

My second poem was born on a trip through the just-blooming peach orchards of South Carolina. A vision came to me of the Peach Maidens reaching out over millennia to the young priestesses of ancient Crete, dancing in celebration of each other’s beauty. And also sharing of their truth-telling and hard-earned wisdom.

“Guns: The Sanctity of Life” by Marie Cartier

What can I say about guns?

I want to be like Gabby Giffords and survive

I want to be Emma Gonzalez and fight back

I want to be

I want to talk about how GUNS are less regulated

than my body

Guns can leave any state and travel to another state

and kill someone

I hate talking about guns

Three poems by Sara Wright

Spirits of the Forest

In Forest Presence

I listen,

leaves

and needles rustle

Voices

Hum inside

Hemlock bark

sounding

if only humans

would listen

Incantations

erupt beneath

the forest floor

wrapped

in a tapestry of threads

millions of miles

of white

cottony intentions

interevntions?

made manifest

by Raven and

Owl

Butterfly Wounding by Sara Wright

Bittersweet orange

invokes wounding

past torment endured

at the hands of those

who would harm.

Air is lightened,

cleansed by absence

Trees rejoice

Slaughter shifts perspective

Despair presses Diamond.

Fritillary seeks

her flower

lover in waiting

Tongue seeking.

From the Archives: And No Religion Too by Elizabeth Cunningham

This was originally posted on January 17, 2016

Religion. As a species we can’t seem to live with it or without it. There is dispute about the derivation of the word, but some scholars believe it has the same root as the word ligament, ligare, to bind or tie, to reinforce the bonds between human and divine, or perhaps the bonds between believers. The words bond and bind also have a variety of meanings and connotations. A bond can be used to tie someone up; it can be a bond of kinship, or bond given as surety.

Religion’s impulses and manifestations are just as ambiguous. Did religion arise because the world seemed so beyond human control (weather, health of crops, availability of game)? Perhaps there were gods or spirits to appeal to or propitiate? Or did it arise equally from a sense of gratitude for the earth and seas that feed us, for a sky that dazzles us, for the life that flows through us and surrounds us. Song, dance, storytelling, drama, art likely began as religious or ritual expression. No aspect of life was beyond the sacred. And so religion also went into the business of law, social control. Religion has a long, bloody, ongoing history of occasioning and/or justifying war, oppression, persecution, torture, genocide.

SNAPSHOTS FROM SUMMER by Esther Nelson

I’ve been told that most children in the United States learn to write haiku in third grade. At the very least they learn that haiku is a traditional poetic art form using seventeen syllables divided into lines of 5 – 7 – 5. The idea is to capture a moment in time. The famous Japanese poet/priest, Issa (1763-1828), focused on creating haiku using his love for nature in the process.

I did not grow up in the American school system, so it wasn’t until I took an undergraduate Zen Buddhism course that I learned to appreciate and have fun with creating this particular kind of poetry.

In the following haiku, I try to capture the moment I experienced the natural scene in front of me. Taking a photograph and then writing an accompanying haiku can be a meditative exercise. I keep striving to make that exercise a daily happening.