Meditation at the Church of Earth

Begin at the highest summit and think downward.

Above: light to dark and back. Within you, your animal-sized land

and sea. Life moves in your body in sentient streams.

 

Thank each plant for the treasure of oxygen.  Feel

the gifts of plants in the yielding corners of your lungs.

Thank each animal for the lessons it teaches.

Remember wildness rocking in the soul of the tamed.

Ease your attention to the workings of your heart.

Red springs of life-force whip through your blood;

you recognize life as belonging to all who inherit its alchemy.

Invisible birds move in your body carrying in their beaks

strands of connection between all things that cannot be cut.

 

Your feet send movable roots into the ground everywhere you step.

Down through each layer of the planet, time’s signature speaks.

You enter the ultimate deepness in Earth’s core, the bass roar of magma

shifting like a fiery herd of mastodons.

 

You know yourself to be as fragile as a filament of silk.

 

Jennifer Pratt-Walter, © 2024

Garden of Beltane

 

Early morning, the fertile daylight blooms

       as song sparrows praise the sun, these hours

       teeming with the Making-Magic of Earth.

 

Again cottonwood buds fill the air

with wild perfume. Their scent is a breath

of honey-sweet potential and no matter my age,

my heart skips and sings.

 

Amid Spring’s swelling promise, the substance

of my soul fills with unspeakable longing.

       Beloved Mother Earth, so many Springs

have smiled on my face, asking, angling, softening.

 

Beltane’s garden sprouts in the shimmering soil,

opening me again into possibility’s womb, a young Medusa

singing among her awakened serpents, Aphrodite

lifting her gown of flowers with a smile, Artemis

stroking the newborn fawn she will later hunt.

 

J. Pratt-Walter © 2023