" NAMING THE EARTH
(a poem of light for national poetry day)

And the world will be born again
in circles of steaming breath
and beams of light
as each one of us directs
our inner eye
upon its name.

Hear the cry of wings,
the sigh of leaves and grass,
smell the new sweet mist rising
as the pathway is cleared at last.

Stones stand ready -
they have known
since ages and ages ago
that they were not alone.

Water carries the planet's energy
into skies and down
to earth and bones.

The cold parts steadily
as we come together,
bodies and hearts warm,
hands tingling.
We are silent
but our eyes are singing.

We look, we feel, we know,
we trust each other's souls,
we have no need to speak.
Not now, but later,
when the time is right,
the name will ring
within the iron core
of each other's listening -
and the very earth's being.

Every creature, every plant,
will hear it calling,
tolling like a bell -
a sound we've always felt
but never dared to hope
to hear reverberating -
true at last, at every level
of existence.

The poets come together
to open the intimate centre.
Believe
in life and air -
breathe the light itself,
for these are the energies
and rhythms that we need
to see, to touch, to reach,
to identify, to say, the NAME.

Colours on your skin
fuse and dissolve -
leave the river clean
for pure space and time
to enter and flow in.

We all become one fluid stream
of stillness and motion,
of flaring thought
pulses discovering
weird pools and twists within
where darkness hides
from the flames in our eyes
but will not snare us.

We probe deeper still,
journeying towards a unity
which will be more raw
and yet also more formed
than anything written
or spoken before.

Our fragile bodies
fall away -
and the trees,
and the roots of trees,
guide us -
lead us away
from the faces we remember
seeing each day in the mirror -

into an ocean
of dreams
seething with warmth,
love,
where the beginning
is real,
ripe, evolving.

And the world is born again
in circles of steaming breath
and beams of light.

An ache -
a signal -
a trembling moment -
and the time is right
to say the name.

We sing as one whole
voice of the universal -
all the words, the names
of every tiny thirsting thing,
and they ring out together
as one sound,
one energy, one sense,
one vibration, one breath.

And the world listens,
beats, shines, glows -
IS -
Exists! "

― Jay Woodman