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Dear Poetry of Nature Friends,
I take “Heart” to include our feeling hearts and how they hold our whole person, the heart of the world and the heart of Life in their beckoning depths.
The autumnal equinox falls on September 22 at 8:44 AM Eastern Standard Time, according to the 232nd annual edition of the invaluable “Farmer’s Almanac.”
Coolness is coming.
Let us see what Gifts of the Heart might precipitate from a deep somatic and poetic dive into the sacred energy of our hearts and whole bodies. As you read this letter, this dive might include your contemplation of topics/questions like:
What is the felt sense, the whole feeling, of your body right now?
Of your heart? Is there anything your heart needs you to know?
Is there anything your body or a particular part(s) of your body would like to express now? If so, how? You might write or say or sigh or dance, or symbolize or tell a trusted friend. Or simply trust to silence to sift out what wants to be expressed.
Jot down a few notes on the above if you’d like. Take your own sweet time.
A few more questions:
What in life seems to stress your body most?
What in life seems to soothe your body most?
How do you feel in and about your body right now?
Feel free to contemplate and write about one or more of these questions.
Meister Eckhart said that you can experience G-d in your hand. It is also said that, “The Divine is even closer to you than your hands and feet.”
Any conversation about American poetry and the body must begin with Walt Whitman.
Here is section 1 and a long excerpt from section 5 of Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric.” They’re so magnetically, electrically charged with embodied love and wisdom:
I Sing the Body Electric
1.
I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?
And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?
5.
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor,
All falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what was
Expected of heaven or fear'd of hell, are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response likewise ungovernable,
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all diffused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of
Love, white-blow and delirious juice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh'd day.
This the nucleus—after the child is born of woman, man is born of woman,
This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the outlet again.
Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the exit of the rest,
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.
Whitman’s celebration of the body—his insistence that the body is sacred, that all This is sacred—was echoed one-hundred years later in Allen Ginsberg's "Footnote to Howl”:
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy! Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an angel!
Whitman’s vast empathy, his body wisdom, gave him great receptivity to the physical, subtle energetic and soul energies of others. Whitman’s eight part poem “The Sleepers” presents his prolonged lucid dream experience of untold thousands of sleepers. I draw your attention to what I will call his telempathic awareness of their bodies and dispositions.
[Note: “Telempathic” is a real word— one of the many words the great Frederic W.H. Myers used, including “telepathic", “subliminal” and “superliminal,” in his posthumously published classic “Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death” (1906)].
“The Sleeper” presents an incredible visionary account that reminds me of Blake’s and Kahlil Gibran’s exquisite detailed artistic depictions of flowing interweaving streams of translucent soul-bodies. Here is section 1 and a long excerpt from section 8 of “The Sleepers:”
The Sleepers
1.
I wander all night in my vision,
Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping,
Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers,
Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory,
Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping.
How solemn they look there, stretch’d and still,
How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles.
The wretched features of ennuyes, the white features of corpses, the livid faces of drunkards, the sick-gray faces of onanists,
The gash’d bodies on battle-fields, the insane in their strong-door’d rooms, the sacred idiots, the new-born emerging
from gates, and the dying emerging from gates,
The night pervades them and infolds them.
The married couple sleep calmly in their bed, he with his palm on the hip of the wife, and she with her palm on the hip of the husband,
The sisters sleep lovingly side by side in their bed,
The men sleep lovingly side by side in theirs,
And the mother sleeps with her little child carefully wrapt.
The blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep,
The prisoner sleeps well in the prison, the runaway son sleeps,
The murderer that is to be hung next day, how does he sleep?
And the murder’d person, how does he sleep?
The female that loves unrequited sleeps,
And the male that loves unrequited sleeps,
The head of the money-maker that plotted all day sleeps,
And the enraged and treacherous dispositions, all, all sleep.
I stand in the dark with drooping eyes by the worst-suffering and the most restless,
I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from them,
The restless sink in their beds, they fitfully sleep.
Now I pierce the darkness, new beings appear,
The earth recedes from me into the night,
I saw that it was beautiful, and I see that what is not the earth is beautiful.
I go from bedside to bedside, I sleep close with the other sleepers each in turn,
I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers,
And I become the other dreamers.
I am a dance—play up there! the fit is whirling me fast!
I am the ever-laughing—it is new moon and twilight,
I see the hiding of douceurs, I see nimble ghosts whichever way I look,
Cache and cache again deep in the ground and sea, and where it is neither ground nor sea.
Well do they do their jobs those journeymen divine,
Only from me can they hide nothing, and would not if they could,
I reckon I am their boss and they make me a pet besides,
And surround me and lead me and run ahead when I walk,
To lift their cunning covers to signify me with stretch’d arms, and resume the way;
Onward we move, a gay gang of blackguards! with mirth-shouting music and wild-flapping pennants of joy!
I am the actor, the actress, the voter, the politician,
The emigrant and the exile, the criminal that stood in the box,
He who has been famous and he who shall be famous after to-day,
The stammerer, the well-form’d person, the wasted or feeble person.
I am she who adorn’d herself and folded her hair expectantly,
My truant lover has come, and it is dark.
Double yourself and receive me darkness,
Receive me and my lover too, he will not let me go without him.
I roll myself upon you as upon a bed, I resign myself to the dusk.
He whom I call answers me and takes the place of my lover,
He rises with me silently from the bed.
Darkness, you are gentler than my lover, his flesh was sweaty and panting,
I feel the hot moisture yet that he left me.
My hands are spread forth, I pass them in all directions,
I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are journeying.
Be careful darkness! already what was it touch’d me?
I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he are one,
I hear the heart-beat, I follow, I fade away.
8.
The sleepers are very beautiful as they lie unclothed,
They flow hand in hand over the whole earth from east to west as they lie unclothed,
The Asiatic and African are hand in hand, the European and American are hand in hand,
Learned and unlearned are hand in hand, and male and female are hand in hand,
The bare arm of the girl crosses the bare breast of her lover, they press close without lust, his lips press her neck,
The father holds his grown or ungrown son in his arms with measureless love, and the son holds the father in his arms with measureless love,
The white hair of the mother shines on the white wrist of the daughter,
The breath of the boy goes with the breath of the man, friend is inarm’d by friend,
The scholar kisses the teacher and the teacher kisses the scholar, the wrong ’d made right,
The call of the slave is one with the master’s call, and the master salutes the slave,
The felon steps forth from the prison, the insane becomes sane, the suffering of sick persons is relieved,
The sweating's and fevers stop, the throat that was unsound is sound, the lungs of the consumptive are resumed, the poor distress’d head is free,
The joints of the rheumatic move as smoothly as ever, and smoother than ever,
Stiflings and passages open, the paralyzed become supple,
The swell’d and convuls’d and congested awake to themselves in condition,
They pass the invigoration of the night and the chemistry of the night, and awake.
~ Walt Whitman (1819-1892) , the Old Courage Teacher. Please don’t miss the joy of reading and meeting him.
Mindfulness of our “dream body” — our experience of our body in dreams such as in Whitman’s poem — can open a portal to greater awareness and wholeness. Journaling or writing poems about your dreams can help widen that portal. Try it. Here’s a song I wrote about a dream that occasioned a powerful change in my dream body that then carried over into a more embodied experience of wholeness in the days that followed. That’s why I titled it…
In The Wake Of A Dream
I dreamed I saw a star down where the cellar door was half ajar.
It flared and darted deep into my heart-- a tiny shining ark
that sailed way into me. It came to stay as I lay there asleep.
It came to stay as I lay there asleep. Ta na na na na na na na--
in the wake of a dream.
I woke taking my waking slow, untouched by thoughts that stop and go.
The traffic of my daytime mind had vanished in the night.
I felt the morning light warm wet empty streets
and fill the fields as I arrived from sleep.
It filled the fields as I arrived from sleep. Ta na na na na na na na--
in the wake of a dream.
And as I lay there fast awake the shade was shorn as light did break
into my room and met a mirror turned toward the sun.
Reflections one by one dissolved into the dawn.
I sat up straight in bed and the morning yawned.
Sat up straight in bed and the morning yawned. Ta na na na na na na na--
in the wake of a dream.
Horses neighed in nearby stalls. A breeze eased round the farmhouse walls.
the air was full of sweet bird calls and softly melting bells
from steeples in the hills. The neighboring houses stirred.
I sat there being every sound I heard.
Sat there being every sound I heard. Ta na na na na na na na--
in the wake of a dream.
~ Geoff Oelsner
I have long loved a story called the Old Taoist Rainmaker. It resonates with my understanding of one expression of one possible kind of right relationship with Gaia. I shared this story and commentary on it in my August, 2021 Poetry of Nature letter and want to offer it again now:
What are some of the possibilities of loving attunement to the natural world?
C.J. Jung often shared a story his friend the Chinese scholar and translator Richard Wilhelm experienced firsthand. It’s about our essential oneness with all of Nature, and the nurturing power of being in tune with the natural order of things, the Tao.
One of Jung’s students made this transcription of his retelling of Wilhelm’s story:
I will quote again the story which I have told you repeatedly of the rain maker of Kiao Tchou, that gives you the idea [of Life’s essential oneness] in a nutshell. Professor Wilhelm told it to me himself:
There was a great drought where Wilhelm lived; for months there had been not a drop of rain and the situation became catastrophic. The Catholics made processions, the protestants made prayers, and the Chinese burned joss sticks and shot off guns to frighten away the demons of the drought, but with no result. Finally the Chinese said: “We will fetch the rain maker.” And from another province, a dried up old man appeared. The only thing he asked for was a quiet little house somewhere, and there he locked himself in for three days.
On the fourth day clouds gathered and there was a great snowstorm at the time of the year when no snow was expected, an unusual amount, and the town was so full of rumors about the wonderful rain maker that Wilhelm went to ask the man how he did it. In true European fashion he said: “They call you the rain maker, will you tell me how you made the snow?” “Oh, I can explain that:
"I come from another country where things are in order. Here they are out of order, they are not as they should be by the ordnance of heaven. Therefore, the whole country is not in Tao, and I am also not in the natural order of things because I am in a discorded country. So I had to wait three days until I was back in Tao, and then naturally the rain came.”
The old fellow’s body was very alive and aware and he felt viscerally, vibrationally uncomfortable in this disharmonious place. He took some time to chill out—what an interesting twist that the drought was finally broken by snow! His loving attunement to the natural world began with his close attention to messages his body was receiving.
In his commentary about the Rainmaker story, Jung speaks of the rainmaker’s ability to create rain:
“If one has the right attitude then the right things happen. One doesn’t make it right, it is just right, and one feels it has to happen in this way. It is just as if one were inside of things. If one feels right, that thing must turn up, it fits in. It is only when one has a wrong attitude that one feels that things do not fit.”
From pp. 419-420 “Mysterium Coniunctionis: an Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy,” vol 14 Bollingen Series XX: “The Collected Works of C. G. Jung,” 2d edition, trans by R.F.C. Hull, Princeton University Press 1976.
Awakened people (or as the inland Salish of the Pacific Northwest say, “come-alive people”) like the old Taoist Rainmaker live in harmony with their total environment, never using their personal will to resist the “natural order of things,” because they ARE the natural order of things. We are.
You may have experienced being deeply in tune with the Tao of Nature at times like dawn or dusk, or in certain places like a beach or on a mountain. That could be beautiful and ‘attuneful’ to write about!
The last line of this autumn poem by Wendell Berry conveys a message similar to that of the Taoist Rainmaker story, although in this case Nature is in harmony in the Kentucky woods Berry loves:
Grace
for Gurney Norman, quoting him
The woods is shining this morning.
Red, gold and green, the leaves
lie on the ground, or fall,
or hang full of light in the air still.
Perfect in its rise and in its fall, it takes
the place it has been coming to forever.
It has not hastened here, or lagged.
See how surely it has sought itself,
its roots passing lordly through the earth.
See how without confusion it is
all that it is, and how flawless
its grace is. Running or walking, the way
is the same. Be still. Be still.
“He moves your bones, and the way is clear.”
~ Wendell Berry
May Grace move you brightly this autumn,
Geoff O
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