THE POETRY, PROSE AND PAINTINGS OF EDWINA PETERSON CROSS
MINING THE JUNGIAN ARCHETYPES
~ A Study and Collection ~
INTRODUCTION
I have had deep, paralyzing claustrophobia as long as I can remember. Even the thought of a small, narrow space is enough to start my heart hammering, my blood jumping sickly and trigger a full blown panic attack. There are things I can not think about. And yet . . .
In a sort of inside out, yin/yang magnetism, I am fascinated by the idea of underground labyrinths, secret passage ways, hidden staircases, sequestered lands. One of my favorite stories is the tale of The Seven Dancing Princesses who go each night down a dark, secret stair to dance the night away and wear out their shoes. One of my favorite books is the second of Ursula LeGuin’s “Earthsea Trilogy,” The Tombs of Atuan which tells of the High Priestess Arha, the eaten one and the rituals and traditions of the Darkness in a phenomenal underground labyrinth. My favorite Narnian book is The Silver Chair, much of which takes place underground and Oh! I am mesmerized by the land of Bism where salamanders dance in the fire and you can squeeze yourself some fresh juice from a ruby or a diamond. This upside down fascination seems strange and mystifying, but perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps we are always a little fascinated by our own fears.
My Great-grandfather was a miner, one who was said to have the ‘Golden Touch’ and be able to intuit where minerals ran below the surface. He was very successful and struck gold several times. If he hadn’t happen to own all the banks in the city when the Great Depression struck, I might have grown up a lot more spoiled than I did. As it was, my family still owned a mine when I was young and it became a sort of familial Wishing-rock when I was a little girl. “When we sell the mine . . .” was something we said when wishing for those things that there is no use wishing for because they are too far out of reach. In the same way I hear people say, “When I win the lottery . . .” There was always plenty of room in our lives for wishes of all dimensions and stratifications of wildness because somewhere over the crest of Cedar Mountain, up past Navajo Lake there existed: “The Mine.” Obviously, I never went even a little ways down into the mine, though my brother and sister did. I didn’t need to go inside the mine, I knew what was in there. I knew it was an endless cave of stunning wonders. It held everything material I had ever wanted and a good deal more. It was filled with the scintillating magic of possibility, the enticing enchantment of potential. It held ‘The Wish’ and was brim full of dreams. We were gifted with the ability to make that wish again and again in a million different ways all because a dark hole in the side of the mountain was ours and ‘someday’ we were going to sell it.
They are powerful words: Possibility. Potential. The inherent capacity for coming into being. Capability of existing or happening or being true. Opportunity. Choice. Opening. Expectation. This study and collection begins with possibility and potential; where two other synonyms meet at a cross roads: Prospect and Theory. It began when I saw the opening to the Alluvial mine at Soul Food Café and began to wonder about prospecting with a theory.
I had already begun the mining. Before the opening of this Alluvial mine, I had already begun to dig. In the beginning I didn’t know what I was digging for. Though I would not call it a “Golden-touch,” like my Great-grandfather, I sometimes have the ability to put my hand down and intuit when and where something is running below the surface. In this instance I put my hand against my own heart and knew that despite my claustrophobia, my panic and my fear, the time had come for me to go down into the mine, because there was work down there that had to be done.
At the opening of the mine shaft I would build a Descansos. http://www.dailywriting.net/Descansos.htm
brought me to the Descansos process as described by Jungian writer Clarissa Pinkola Estés. She writes that there is a time in a woman’s life, usually in midlife, when she has to make a decision - possibly the most the important psychic decision of her future life - about whether to be bitter or not. Estés goes on to explain that women reach the point where they are full up to their ears with everything and they've had it. Dreams of the twenties may be lying in a crumple. There are broken hearts, broken marriages, broken promises. To cleanse oneself Estés suggests making descansos. To make descansos means taking a look at your life and marking where the small deaths and the big deaths have taken place. There were places in that dark, terror filled mine where old wounds were spewing out toxic poison gases, doors I had slammed shut on pain and tried to forget that were now leaking black, acrid fumes that were beginning to choke me. Bitter indeed. Dr. Estés had been describing me. This is where I began. This is where I entered the mine and went down into the dark.
For roughly the last sixteen months, as a person with acute claustrophobia, both real and psychic, I have gone deep into the darkest mines of my soul and fought suffocating fears, terrors of the dark, panic at what I might find there, horror at what I might not find. I have moved a lot of slag and downed brace-timber, cracked open long sealed shafts until my fingernails bled and walked into breathless, choked tunnels amid the specter of ghosts.
One of the most important things I have learned is this: An artist cannot create with selected pieces of their being. You cannot reach inside for the power that moves and say, ‘this I cannot touch’ or ‘here I will not go.’ The seals had to be pried off the doors, the slag mined away before a vein of gold would appear or uncut diamonds burst like sparks of white fire from the dark. But more importantly the closed, choked rooms of phantoms had to be opened so the air could flow through, so the gusts could blow the dust from walls and floor, leaving me, not a deep, dark, dirty mine, but a hallowed, hollow cave of washing wind.
I am a writer. Before I walked through the doors of the Soul Food Café two and half years ago, I was a totally blocked writer; I was not writing at all. Within these walls I relearned my skill, regained my craft, recovered my art. Within these halls I called to my Muse and she came; she has never left me since that day. Now I believe that this is attributable to one of the most arcane, mystical and hidden secrets of the Soul Food Café. Within this mansion of many doors there is such a huge wealth of material that this secret could be hidden anywhere and it would be very difficult to find. The mastermind behind the operation is so clever, however, that the greatest secret of all is hidden in the place no one would ever think to look. Since you’ve made it this far with me, I will now share this secret with you. It’s hidden in plain sight.Right in the top of the front page, dead center. http://www.dailywriting.net/Zen.htm Cunning, yes?
When I went down into the dark, I knew exactly what tools that I would need. I began to write. http://www.dailywriting.net/WritingWell-Being.htm
For more than a year I worked in the darkness, with one faithful, patient witness holding a single lantern. I moved most of a mountain. I kept finding new, deeper and more intricate shafts. I began to think about supplemental tools and I began to paint as well. Then I came to that significant cross roads of Prospect and Theory. Once again it was Clarissa Pinkola Estés who pointed me down the path toward the tools. I followed her to her source and began to study the archetypes of C.G. Jung.
In a poem I have written:
I am no Jungerian scholar
I comprehend his thoughts in mist and metaphor
His concepts in analogy and image
I met him in the Dreamtime, walking
This is exactly the case. Here I have brought some of the theories of Carl Jung to my painting and my writing. I do so as an artist and not a scholar or clinician, for what has emerged is based on image and metaphor, idea and extrapolation and not the letter of his thesis. I have used Jung’s ideas as they revealed themselves to me in image and word. My goal has been development of greater self awareness, creative expression and psychological insight, both personal and in universal.
In the end, I hope to come up into the world again having passed that balance point C.P. Estés speaks of; no longer suffering from that bitterness that can rise up like black-lung from the poison vapors of unexamined wounds. The bitterness that can strangle a person’s soul and silence an artist’s voice.
I will come back into the mountain air carrying gems and precious minerals; paintings, poems, stories, as Hamlet said: “Words. Words. Words.” They will come from the bottom of the mines, they will come washed in my blood and when I hold them to the sun, some of them may be spiked with veins of gold or the milky glow of uncut crystal.
I hope to come back to the surface closer to conscious. In the end, each of us is responsible for our self and the long painful work of becoming conscious is, in truth, our only hope in a world that approaches a phase of human history where everything hangs in the balance; where the capacity for destruction may be weighed precisely against our archetypal soul’s capacity for compassion and love.
I hope to arise from the dust and find the canary in the cage is still singing.
©Edwina Peterson Cross
January 21, 2005
This collection is dedicated to Heather Blakey, who held the light unwavering, donned the blue robe with generous sensitivity, made it all possible
CONTENTS
1. THE SHADOW
2. THE ANIMAS
3. SYZYGY
4. THE CHILD
5. THE SELF
6. THE MOTHER
7. MANA - SPIRITUAL POWER
8. THE PERSONA
9. THE FAMILY
10. THE HERO
11. THE MAIDEN
12. THE GUIDE
13. THE ANIMALS
14. THE TRICKSTER
15. ADDITIONAL CONCEPTS
Unless otherwise noted, all writing and all painting
is the work of
Edwina Peterson Cross
1. THE SHADOW
2. THE ANIMAS
3. SYZYGY
4. THE CHILD
5. THE SELF
6. THE MOTHER
7. MANA - SPIRITUAL POWER
8. THE PERSONA
9. THE FAMILY
10. THE HERO
11. THE MAIDEN
12. THE GUIDE
13. THE ANIMALS
14. THE TRICKSTER
15. ADDITIONAL CONCEPTS
Unless otherwise noted, all writing and all painting
is the work of
Edwina Peterson Cross
Author's Notes
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
Those familiar with the Archetypes of CG Jung may find even my metaphors and images traveling wide. For instance, I do realize the in looking at the archetype of THE CHILD, I should be considering the child within myself. Some of the poetic selections deal with my own children rather than the child within. Or do they? That is the question of course. What do you learn about the child within, by looking at the child without? What do you discover about the nurturing of self in the way you come to nurture others? There are many of these MIRRORED METAPHORS in the poems, prose and paintings included here. Often there is more than one mirror. The subsections in THE CHILD are Jung’s and added a fascinating dimension to the subject.
The archetypes are not organized in any particular order - other than the first five being the archetypes most often examined in studies of Jung. THE SHADOW, THE ANIMA/ANIMAS, SYZYGY, THE CHILD, THE SELF. This study originally began as an investigation of just these five archetypes. Then it grew. And grew!
It is perhaps unfortunate that THE SHADOW happens to be the most commonly examined of the archetypes. Since it is, it is where this collection begins, which means that the very first selections you will see are somewhat dark. I do hope you will go on, past this darkness, as there are many different dimensions, textures and degrees of illumination that follow.
Many of the images and concepts, you will find, are anything but traditional. For instance, traditional images for MANA - SPIRITUAL POWER most often revolve around phallic and lingam symbols, cultural implications that are associated with male sexuality. I have seen something different; a loosely connected collection of images which called to me. Images, which I was intrigued to note, feature, quite a bit of fire.
THE HERO is also probably not what you expect. The Hero’s quest I choose to explore is not the usual tale. There has been a cultural upheaval in women’s ‘roles’ in the last fifty years. I began to wonder where a woman looks for a mentor, a guide or a ‘hero’ now. I looked for images, listened for metaphors - and answered myself.
Archetypally, Jung considers THE ANIMALS as they interact with the human psyche. This selection features the animals that have called to me, artistically, in the last year, I think that is probably a good indication, not of the universal psyche, but of my own.
I read in several places that Jung’s identification of THE FAMILY archetype had to do with blood ties. Regardless of what the original intent was, this is a concept whose time is past. There are innumerable configurations for the word “Family” now, being related by blood is only one. The majority of this section deals with my personal shaping of the word “Family.” However, in acknowledgment of what “Family” truly means, this section begins with a painting of the Bell-Poulson family, one of the most fantastic families I know. Not one of these people is related to any other one by blood. All of them are related to each other by LOVE. Love is what makes a family.
As a note on the section titled THE MAIDEN: I consider “Maiden” to cover the period of a woman’s life between Childhood and Motherhood or taking up her Life Task and have never deemed that it had a thing to do with her sexual activity. I thought I better clarify that before some of my Maiden’s started pointing out that they didn’t think they qualified any more. Again, tradition does not reign here. You will not find these Maidens waiting helplessly for someone to come and rescue them.
The final section includes four concepts that I would like to consider in more depth at some time. Each one is represented by just one painting. They are concepts linked to Jung, but not archetypes and are therefore ADDITIONAL CONCEPTS.
The fourteen archetypes I have chosen are by no means the only ones. How did I choose which ones I would address? Yes. I listened for metaphors and looked for images. In other words: I picked those that interested me. The older I get the more I find this to be an excellent way of proceeding in life, all the way around.
I do hope you enjoy what you find here.
~ Edwina Peterson Cross
Those familiar with the Archetypes of CG Jung may find even my metaphors and images traveling wide. For instance, I do realize the in looking at the archetype of THE CHILD, I should be considering the child within myself. Some of the poetic selections deal with my own children rather than the child within. Or do they? That is the question of course. What do you learn about the child within, by looking at the child without? What do you discover about the nurturing of self in the way you come to nurture others? There are many of these MIRRORED METAPHORS in the poems, prose and paintings included here. Often there is more than one mirror. The subsections in THE CHILD are Jung’s and added a fascinating dimension to the subject.
The archetypes are not organized in any particular order - other than the first five being the archetypes most often examined in studies of Jung. THE SHADOW, THE ANIMA/ANIMAS, SYZYGY, THE CHILD, THE SELF. This study originally began as an investigation of just these five archetypes. Then it grew. And grew!
It is perhaps unfortunate that THE SHADOW happens to be the most commonly examined of the archetypes. Since it is, it is where this collection begins, which means that the very first selections you will see are somewhat dark. I do hope you will go on, past this darkness, as there are many different dimensions, textures and degrees of illumination that follow.
Many of the images and concepts, you will find, are anything but traditional. For instance, traditional images for MANA - SPIRITUAL POWER most often revolve around phallic and lingam symbols, cultural implications that are associated with male sexuality. I have seen something different; a loosely connected collection of images which called to me. Images, which I was intrigued to note, feature, quite a bit of fire.
THE HERO is also probably not what you expect. The Hero’s quest I choose to explore is not the usual tale. There has been a cultural upheaval in women’s ‘roles’ in the last fifty years. I began to wonder where a woman looks for a mentor, a guide or a ‘hero’ now. I looked for images, listened for metaphors - and answered myself.
Archetypally, Jung considers THE ANIMALS as they interact with the human psyche. This selection features the animals that have called to me, artistically, in the last year, I think that is probably a good indication, not of the universal psyche, but of my own.
I read in several places that Jung’s identification of THE FAMILY archetype had to do with blood ties. Regardless of what the original intent was, this is a concept whose time is past. There are innumerable configurations for the word “Family” now, being related by blood is only one. The majority of this section deals with my personal shaping of the word “Family.” However, in acknowledgment of what “Family” truly means, this section begins with a painting of the Bell-Poulson family, one of the most fantastic families I know. Not one of these people is related to any other one by blood. All of them are related to each other by LOVE. Love is what makes a family.
As a note on the section titled THE MAIDEN: I consider “Maiden” to cover the period of a woman’s life between Childhood and Motherhood or taking up her Life Task and have never deemed that it had a thing to do with her sexual activity. I thought I better clarify that before some of my Maiden’s started pointing out that they didn’t think they qualified any more. Again, tradition does not reign here. You will not find these Maidens waiting helplessly for someone to come and rescue them.
The final section includes four concepts that I would like to consider in more depth at some time. Each one is represented by just one painting. They are concepts linked to Jung, but not archetypes and are therefore ADDITIONAL CONCEPTS.
The fourteen archetypes I have chosen are by no means the only ones. How did I choose which ones I would address? Yes. I listened for metaphors and looked for images. In other words: I picked those that interested me. The older I get the more I find this to be an excellent way of proceeding in life, all the way around.
I do hope you enjoy what you find here.
~ Edwina Peterson Cross
THE SHADOW - OF COLD
The Shadow of Cold
I.
Some find the shadow in darkness
In vine haunted forests of rot and mould
The shadow of my soul awaits
In the barren blue wraith of cold
In a world without joy or gladness
Too cold for sigh or tear
Nothing lives in the frozen waste
But the whisper of a frigid fear
A fear that unbinds all reason
Leaving nothing that I can prove
A fear that freezes every cell
And leaves me unable to move
Unable to access water or air
Or to call on the power of fire
Unable to feel dejection, delight
Bright passion or dreaming desire
Unable to laugh, unable to cry
A paralyzed, helpless disease
Curves my spine, drops my head
Numbs my muscles until they freeze
Shadow of impotence and blue ice . . .
Not what I would have chosen
Powerless, useless, immobile
Bound and locked and frozen
II.
I have found the shadow secreted
I have found the power to tame it
I have called it from the blue ice fields
Because I am able to name it
I know the fear of freezing
I know from where it came
I know the fear of fear itself
I have given it a name
I know of crippling shame
I know of ice cold dread
I broke the back of the shadow
When I learned to lift my head
I couldn’t have tracked the shadow
If I hadn’t have known it
I couldn’t have swallowed the shadow
If I hadn’t come to own it
©Edwina Peterson Cross
Nightwoods
While we walk
In the wilderness of the shadow woods
All we know is it’s twining darkness the
Sense of the unknowable exhaling wildness
Lacing the next reaching root, the next
Whipping branch that reaches out to slice
Our face with unexpected purpose
The smell of something breathing on the neck,
The touch of panic threading through the blood
The raw, panting, single note of
Fear
We could walk those woods by daylight
And note that the path is clear and wide
That there is nothing menacing anywhere
And laugh at ourselves for the our way our blood
Had beat in our throat or the way our knees had felt
Each rustle in the underbrush when the world
was painted with ink and omen,
We could walk the same path with a huge, bright
Lantern, washing away the night, showing the same
Clear path, and we could laugh at ourselves again, but
That would be foolish
A lighted wood and
A wood of darkness
Are not the same place
At all
We hope to learn to walk the dark
To breath the blackness with even calm
To intuit reaching roots and whipping boughs
And learn to dance around, moving through the dimness
With the eyes of a hunting cat, the balance of a deer
To come to still the jump of panic in the blood
Smooth the raw, panting, strangled note of
Fear
We come to learn to face the night
Not turn the
Darkness
To Day
©Edwina Peterson Cross
THE SHADOW - OF PAIN
onion, apricot, adagio, a face turned to the light
so the shadows fall like sighs against the
cracked pavement
candles, chocolate, fingers placing spoons against
rose colored napkins in the shade of an oak tree
such things can be
for beauty’s sake alone
water
still through the rainbows of cut crystal
harp strings
fog settling into the bottom of the valley
I try to remember
Each piece that isn’t pain
Each piece whose average, unexceptional perfection
Might spell salvation
Pink satin slippers
A rosewood pen
The thick wool of a well made hat
Blood on my fingers the color of
Rain
©Edwina Peterson Cross
so the shadows fall like sighs against the
cracked pavement
candles, chocolate, fingers placing spoons against
rose colored napkins in the shade of an oak tree
such things can be
for beauty’s sake alone
water
still through the rainbows of cut crystal
harp strings
fog settling into the bottom of the valley
I try to remember
Each piece that isn’t pain
Each piece whose average, unexceptional perfection
Might spell salvation
Pink satin slippers
A rosewood pen
The thick wool of a well made hat
Blood on my fingers the color of
Rain
©Edwina Peterson Cross
THE SHADOW - OF PAIN
Shadow Sonnet V
Darkness black like polished rain
Licks the sides of night
Breaks the fragile back of pain
Broken wings of flight
Waiting still for something hollow
To echo from the void
There is nothing left to follow
No remains to be destroyed
Absent even loss, and sorrow
From this vacuum slick and black
Forfeit up a sold tomorrow
You cannot buy it back
Cold as a missing midnight stone
An empty echo of the word ‘alone’
©Edwina Peterson Cross
Darkness black like polished rain
Licks the sides of night
Breaks the fragile back of pain
Broken wings of flight
Waiting still for something hollow
To echo from the void
There is nothing left to follow
No remains to be destroyed
Absent even loss, and sorrow
From this vacuum slick and black
Forfeit up a sold tomorrow
You cannot buy it back
Cold as a missing midnight stone
An empty echo of the word ‘alone’
©Edwina Peterson Cross
THE SHADOW - OF PAIN
Shadow Song IV
Sing a song of something taken
A song that echo’s twice
Slumbering heart that will not waken
Frozen like a vice
Moths will fry against the moon light
Songs will break at dawn
In the stuttered, staggered numb night
All will soon be gone
It takes back what can’t be given
What is split and railed
Darkness, broken can’t shriven
The cold black coffin’s nailed
Daylight that will not be breaking
Leaks like tears through rain
A body frozen is not aching
Death knows no song of pain
© Edwina Peterson Cross
THE SHADOW - OF PAIN
Shadow Sonnet XI
The roses wither, droop and dry
Their color grows intense
A sagging sunset colored sigh
Rot sweetened, dusty scents
The candles melt and sputter
Wax grows transparent, warm
Runs like melting butter
Assumes a different form
I danced on polished hardwood floors
I danced on breaths of air
Swallowed the sound of closing doors
And came to this stock-still chair
Pooled wax hardens without thought or sound
Rose petals scatter like poems on the ground
©Edwina Peterson Cross
THE SHADOW - OF PAIN
Paradox
I feel a wry piece of a legacy
Sylvia Plath's head in the oven
Rocks in Virginia Woolf's pockets
Hamlet's oh so omnipresent consummation
Devoutly to be wished
The pain whispers endlessly
Flatly, prosaically:
"What is the point?"
And what has poetry to do with this?
Syphilis took both Mozart and Schubert
One damp, late night binge and it's following fever
Lifted Shakespeare from this world
Like an errant piece of cambric in the wind
So much for reason
To go with your rhyme
I wanted my children
With a rock deep, earth splitting passion
And now, in a silken sort of irony
They hold me here
A quivering butterfly stiff pinned to a card
Not with malice, but with love
And a need that, while diminishing,
I still must listen to
I still must hear
Despite the ceaseless, seductive, sibilant whispers of the
Pain
Now I know
I will never fly again
Never the freedom of the bright blue wind
Never the rush of a blazing, liquid sky
But there will be no euthanasia
No kindly bottle filled with desensitizing fumes
No easing oven, no numbing stream
I will continue
I will tremor and flutter
Wobble and twitch
Pinned within this
Pain
Trapped
Within this
Paradox
©Edwina Peterson Cross
THE SHADOW - OF PAIN
Taking Xanax for Pain
Given shrieking pain or bone gnawing fatigue, I'll take fatigue in a second and this
hot sharp pain has wound me up like a toy until my springs shudder and shake
and I think they will recoil, snap, sending me wild, an explosion that will
Not explode, a collapse that will not give, a break down that just winds tighter until I rupture scatter into a million pieces, but even that won’t be allowed
But then
the panic begins to recede like a syrup tide, taking the tightness taunt
tense frozen taking the fright, alarm, shuddering recoil, trepidation
that was closing in double fists over the already
Insufferable intolerable unbearable that must be suffered tolerated born
The graphic twisting pain may dim, not depart but may be muffled
pushed down with a damper that presses hard for the pain may become pressure and ache
No. The bright piercing pain hasn't gone at all, it just
Doesn't matter
the exhaustion is close on the footsteps of the fierce pain
now running together, pacing one another, running through over throughout
Up and down down and up up and down
All those clear overlays in the encyclopedia H
For "Human"
clear pages laid one by one over a still very silent man that
Dale Jackson and I used to look at in kindergarten, the huge book on both of our laps our feet sticking straight out from the couch turning translucent pages with fascination
Pain has run shrieking up and down each and every transparent page
each and every system over and over eternally forever and now again this
wearing exhaustion paired with the suddenly unimportant pain
Goes burning up and down skeletal muscular respiratory reproductive
vascular excretory digestive circulatory nervous nervous nervous
Nerves and my head wants to keep dropping forward, but the fire doesn't seem to matter anymore because the panic is gone
and Dale is gone. He faced the virus, plague of a new century, viralpoison screaming up and Down over and through all those translucent pages, he fought
for skeletal muscular respiratory reproductive vascular excretory digestive circulatory nervous and lost
Somewhere in time, two little children sit with the H encyclopedia on their laps
feet sticking straight out from the couch turning transparent pages with
fascination, but not knowing
not knowing at all what it
Means
©Edwina Peterson Cross
THE SHADOW - OF PAIN
LEGACY
To whom can I leave my rosewood pen
Soaked with starshine and with blood?
To whom can I will my veins of ink
That pulse with ebb and flood?
I’m circled by people who love
But few who understand
That I build this world of words and light
On a plain of pain and sand
Who will know the exquisite agony
Of questing the perfect word?
Of feeling your heart thrown open
When you know that your words are heard?
Who will feel the strength of the mountain top?
And the panicked black canyons between?
Who will taste that behind the laughter
Runs a river of tears unseen?
Who will know that being strung on a wire
Is a curse, but a blessing as well
For I do wring the power of words from pain
And mine beauty from the dark depths of hell
Who will walk the path my pain has cleared,
Though the way is still narrow and rough?
Who will know that deep in the darkest despair
The light and the words are enough?
~ For Laurence Estlin Walsh ~
©Edwina Peterson Cross
April 3, 2004
To whom can I leave my rosewood pen
Soaked with starshine and with blood?
To whom can I will my veins of ink
That pulse with ebb and flood?
I’m circled by people who love
But few who understand
That I build this world of words and light
On a plain of pain and sand
Who will know the exquisite agony
Of questing the perfect word?
Of feeling your heart thrown open
When you know that your words are heard?
Who will feel the strength of the mountain top?
And the panicked black canyons between?
Who will taste that behind the laughter
Runs a river of tears unseen?
Who will know that being strung on a wire
Is a curse, but a blessing as well
For I do wring the power of words from pain
And mine beauty from the dark depths of hell
Who will walk the path my pain has cleared,
Though the way is still narrow and rough?
Who will know that deep in the darkest despair
The light and the words are enough?
~ For Laurence Estlin Walsh ~
©Edwina Peterson Cross
April 3, 2004
THE SHADOW - OF LOSS
What is the sound when Art dies?
As magic melts into mundane?
Is a miracle something that cries?
As it rusts in a workaday rain?
Do creative sparks rip the sky,
If they fall to the cold ground unused?
Do dreams scream when they die,
When the dreaming’s been bruised and abused?
What is the sound when Art dies?
Can you hear a soul wasting disease?
Can you hear breath and bone turn slowly to stone?
Can you hear when a heart starts to freeze?
What is the sound when Art dies?
Can’t we hear with a pin-point acumen
The sound of a massive demise
If humanity kills what is human?
©Edwina Peterson Cross
FUNDAMENTALIST GROUP TRIES TO SILENCE SMALL THEATRE COMPANY
Monday, February 7, 2005, Grants Pass, OR - Connect the Dots Theatre Company, a small community theatre organization, has been targeted in recent days by a small group of local fundamentalists who are using letters, phone calls and e-mails to harass the theatre company and attempt to erode their financial support from local businesses.
This poem was written in response to this crisis near my own home town. The crisis continues all around us from direct attacks like this to attacks on funding for the Arts on every front. Please help humanity retain that which makes us human - PLEASE SUPPORT THE ARTS.
As magic melts into mundane?
Is a miracle something that cries?
As it rusts in a workaday rain?
Do creative sparks rip the sky,
If they fall to the cold ground unused?
Do dreams scream when they die,
When the dreaming’s been bruised and abused?
What is the sound when Art dies?
Can you hear a soul wasting disease?
Can you hear breath and bone turn slowly to stone?
Can you hear when a heart starts to freeze?
What is the sound when Art dies?
Can’t we hear with a pin-point acumen
The sound of a massive demise
If humanity kills what is human?
©Edwina Peterson Cross
FUNDAMENTALIST GROUP TRIES TO SILENCE SMALL THEATRE COMPANY
Monday, February 7, 2005, Grants Pass, OR - Connect the Dots Theatre Company, a small community theatre organization, has been targeted in recent days by a small group of local fundamentalists who are using letters, phone calls and e-mails to harass the theatre company and attempt to erode their financial support from local businesses.
This poem was written in response to this crisis near my own home town. The crisis continues all around us from direct attacks like this to attacks on funding for the Arts on every front. Please help humanity retain that which makes us human - PLEASE SUPPORT THE ARTS.
THE SHADOW - OF LOSS
I like irony
It’s rather full bodied and rich, with a smoky note
It swirls ruby in the cup and smells of humor,
Albeit a little sour,
Kirsh/licorice, fruity and incongruous
There they stood this morning
Having nothing whatsoever to do with each other
Two words, two concepts,
Too universal, too pandemic
To relate in any sentient way
“Truth is Beauty, Beauty truth.”
Ponderous. Pedantic.
Then there was a sensual touch of thought
Breath on my skin; tangible and clear
Once again your woven words
Have brought everything
To a piercing point
Of recognition
Ah, Mr. Yeats, reach your hand through time
And join me in a cup of rich ironic red
Your words have lit and mapped my heart
Let us drink to the black beauty of this pale truth you tell
The sheer white truth of beauty’s deep, dark spell
It’s rather full bodied and rich, with a smoky note
It swirls ruby in the cup and smells of humor,
Albeit a little sour,
Kirsh/licorice, fruity and incongruous
There they stood this morning
Having nothing whatsoever to do with each other
Two words, two concepts,
Too universal, too pandemic
To relate in any sentient way
“Truth is Beauty, Beauty truth.”
Ponderous. Pedantic.
Then there was a sensual touch of thought
Breath on my skin; tangible and clear
Once again your woven words
Have brought everything
To a piercing point
Of recognition
Ah, Mr. Yeats, reach your hand through time
And join me in a cup of rich ironic red
Your words have lit and mapped my heart
Let us drink to the black beauty of this pale truth you tell
The sheer white truth of beauty’s deep, dark spell
Earth in beauty dressed
Awaits returning spring.
All true love must die,
Alter at the best
Into some lesser thing.
Prove that I lie.
Such body lovers have,
Such exacting breath,
That they touch or sigh.
Every touch they give,
Love is nearer death.
Prove that I lie.
W. B. Yeats
©Edwina Peterson Cross
Awaits returning spring.
All true love must die,
Alter at the best
Into some lesser thing.
Prove that I lie.
Such body lovers have,
Such exacting breath,
That they touch or sigh.
Every touch they give,
Love is nearer death.
Prove that I lie.
W. B. Yeats