Visit from Mantis

Back home this weekend, I was working in the garage on repairing and reinforcing a small table to become a vanity stand.  Suddenly a praying mantis landed right in front of me, on my level as I was working.  He was small, only a few centimeters, and bright green.  He was totally fearless, and walked up and looked at me, then walked around on my level.  I grabbed my phone and tried taking some pictures of him; he was very curious about me and kept peering at my sideways and weaving his head.

After admiring him for a bit, I talked with him a bit.  He didn't have much to say, he was just very curious about what I was doing.  He walked around and watched me, even when I used the power saw.

I asked him if he had any message or wisdom for me, and he told me about the importance of patience and paying attention to things; that you need to be alert and prepared to act in the moment. 

After a bit I told him I was concerned that he would be trapped inside the garage and suffer from the heat, and carried the level out to the side yard and set it under a bush.  He took the ride calmly, but was very excited by the bush, and twisted around looking up into the branches with great animation.  I wished him good hunting, and left him there.

The woods, remembering

I have started my new job in Missouri.  I like it: good people, strong company, interesting work.  I also like the city I am in now, it is smaller than where I have lived before but still big enough to have thriving businesses and lots of things going on.

A few minutes from my place is a beautiful nature center, with lovely trails and lots of wildlife: birds, squirrels, deer, turkeys, etc.  Last night after dinner I went down there and walked a little way to a nice wooden overlook where I stood and tried to open myself up to the spirit of the woods.  As I let the energy flow, and looked out over the sunlit trees, a sense built up of the woods.  It reminded me of Treebeard and the Old Forest: a sense of quiet, and a feeling like looking into a deep pool with layers of memories going back into the distant past, with the present like the gentle shimmering on the surface.  I could feel the woods remembering when it was part of a great forest that marched over all these hills, and hunters and travelers passed through.  The woods feel friendly and well-disposed towards people, and enjoy being appreciated by the hikers and joggers, but they still feel that people are just a recent invention.

As I finished, I rested my hand on the trunk of a large pine that was growing right at the side of the path at the entrance to the overlook.  I said hi, and tried to get a feel for it.  He sees himself as a sentinel, guarding the overlook, and as we talked I could feel huge waves of power flowing from him into my hand which felt warm and tingly.  I just opened my heart and let the power flow, and felt his participation in the deep memories and history of this place, and the vibrancy of the life.

I thanked him and the woods, and walked back to my car.  I love this area, and I look forward to communicating more with it.

The Ring of Trees

I.

I follow the path that my teachers showed me,
but never too closely, always a bit to this side or that.
The pines whisper hints to me,
the birches offer subtle guidance.
I pass the trees and feel the clearing open before me.

If I open my eyes too wide
the branches close, the path tumbles,
and I am back at my doorstep.
Instead, I take a breath and another step.

II.

I pass the trees and feel the clearing open before me.
How far to the other side?
It is beyond the reach of my outstretched hands;
that is all I can know.

The sun is warm.
I sit in the grass and let the boundaries of the world
be wherever they want to be.

The Silver Calling

We have heard all our lives of the other place,
the perilous realm,
where the fair folk, the good neighbors, play their music.

But where is the border of their country?
How can it be anywhere,
now that we have explored the whole globe from poles to equator?

In the blazing light of the sun, with the blinding light of reason,
we have looked everywhere.
It is not to be found.

But in the crystalline darkness, we begin to know another truth.

The silver-gray gleams of the moon reveal to us,
in the unintended moment,
when we glance without seeking,
that the borders of the perilous realm are all about us.

All we need do is to trust, without understanding,
and follow the glimmers of what we know to be there.
(We must not frighten it by trying to decide if it is real or not. 
Such certainty is its antithesis).

The light of the silver lady calls us,
pulling us away from what we think we are
into what she knows we can become.
into what we unknowingly know is our true self.

Is this not always her call?
Whether she beckons in our dreams,
rides a silver chariot in the night sky,
walks hand in hand with us in the mall,
or sleeps softly beside us,
she is always calling.

Can you not hear her music,
the plucked strings and sweet voices calling from beyond the trees?

Reveal

Argent Lady, gazing down on us with your quiet laughter—
Your silver gleams reveal the truths that light hides from us.
Our eyes strain in the night,
Mistaking explicit mysteries for shadowed facts,
Honest insubstantiality for obscured permanence.

You watch, bemused by our blindness,
And release your luminous flood
To wash the stain of certainty from the world,
And reveal its translucence.

Grasping for comfortable clarity,
We lose your visions.

What you reveal is not in the words you speak
Of light and shadow,
But in what we come to know
When we stop looking for what we expect to see.

The arc lights of the parking lot
Hide your children from us—
The strident light is harsher, crueler, falser,
Than moonlight can ever be.

You yourself seem faded, shriveled.
But still you smile,
untouched by our frantic scrambling.
Secure in your own harmony,
Changing only by your own stately cycles,
You watch, reveal, and wait for us to see.

Metastable

My heart is clothed in an electric skin of life.

    With each breath, life fills us
    Driving out and drowning the lifelessness from which we came;
    Pushing back the cold for one more moment.

    Each of us will one day be rescued from this struggle,
    Returned to the peace of stillness;
    Reclaimed by the stones.

Till then, the fire of the conflict burns within my veins.