[Editors’ Note: Learn about how the “Nine Poets Speak” series came to be in place here.]
There Will Always Exist Vibrations!
This poem is from my memoir, Desperately Seeking Persephone. For that, I need to provide a short backstory. Normally I would have chosen another set of poems but this one is nine parts so it felt perfect for MAGO.
I had a very violent childhood, as a young adult in 1977 I met a priest, Father Ted, who took me under his wing. He disappeared after a year. Over 40 years later, in 2021 and under otherworldy circumstances, I met two people who were looking for him. It turns out that I was the only person who they could find who knew him personally. He had disappeared from everyone’s life not just mine. I wrote this poem in his honor.
Before meeting him,I traveled to Israel where I did an Ulpan; working on a kibbutz while learning Hebrew. After the harvests came in, my kibbutz, Sha’ar HaAmakim, the Gate of the Valley, took us to Jerusalem to celebrate. We visited the Western Wall, where we were all handed tiny papers to write a request directly to God. We would then place that paper in a crevice of the wall. A request to God – where does one start?
I –
It was my time of brokenness.
The wall absorbed my pain.
It was absorbing everyone’s pain.
I was holding a wisp of paper
to carry the full weight
of my heart’s desires.
Staring at it,
Its blankness stretched to infinity.
One woman was scribbling furiously,
in the tiniest script she could muster.
I was afraid that once my pencil
touched my paper’s surface,
infinity would shrink
And I would be trapped.
Lord knows,
I wanted everything everyone else there wanted.
What does your heart know that your head does not?
The wall becomes a revealing mirror
Perhaps that is its secret, the source of its sacredness.
II –
I went to Israel to heal my wounds,
but before the wall they felt more raw and tender.
The wall’s pulsating ripples felt as sharp as a surgeon’s knife
uncoiling outwards, stirring everything.
No wonder conflict is always so close at hand.
Hate vibrations and love vibrations feel different on our skin.
Another secret of the wall.
My heart began to speak in a language all its own as it guided my hand, pencil to paper.
Finished, I folded it to place in the wall.
It was a drawing of a budding flower,
as beautiful as I could make it.
I did not feel trapped.
III –
My brokenness spread before me,
an unrelenting chasm,
absorbing all light.
What is it that our soul knows that our mind does not?
Darkness and light resonate differently in our hearts,
yet we take both in.
The more profound the depths,
the more room for light to penetrate.
Once admitted, light will seek out and
illuminate every dark corner.
If we are able to accept and withstand,
we become a veritable garden for seeds.
IV –
Fr Ted helped me to plant seeds within my soul
even when I didn’t recognize the process.
The light needed to nurture them
was too painful to tolerate.
He said, “Our time together is short,
but I will leave you trails to find me.
When your own light shines brightly enough,
each trail will appear as a blazing guide.”
Light seeks out light,
beloved to beloved,
intertwining.
Deep inside myself,
I gathered what my mind could not yet hear.
V –
My beloved was woven from the stars,
formed from the earth,
like an angel,
like a human with a flower heart.
All those he touched with his spirit were blessed.
Our bodies never touched, but
our lights pulsated in harmonious rhythm,
rippling heartbeats,
uncoiling outward,
engaging everything in their orbit with unconditional love.
In the aftermath,
I found myself taking one step at a time
in a journey of uncountable distances.
I could only allow the light in,
one skin pore at a time.
As that seeping radiance expanded,
more of me craved to partake
until slowly, ever so slowly,
but relentlessly,
I reached out
and
began
to
accept.
VI –
Once I recognized one angel, I have continued to see angels in all things.
When the sun glints off the edge of a knife, I see an angel winking even in the blade that is coming for my throat.
When a hammer whooshes with crushing speed, I hear the vibration of angel wings even in the mallet that is coming for my bones.
VII –
In our gardens of regrets and lost opportunities,
we’ve left behind seeds that are all the sweeter for being reclaimed.
What is it that the universe knows that we humans do not?
Our skin vibrates in syncopation with our hearts.
In harmony with the stars
A spine-tingling numinous luminosity
Vibrations cease in the Great Below where we hold the elements tightly within
When we rise again to the Great Above, our seeds grow ripe for sharing.
The air I just inhaled was once in the Himalayas, the depths of the ocean, the jungles of the Amazon, the African savanna, Hawaiian trade breezes, all mixed together in the cauldron of swirling winds
And come to me where I stand
nourishing those inner seeds bustling to sprout
VII –
Thresholds of time and space and opposites.
Swirl and mix and transform, within our all-too human bodies.
We witness and are witnessed.
As mirror and passageway.
And when our seeds’ tender sprouts emerge into the light
we feel the infusion of life as they continue to grow lush and erotic.
Uncoiling outward cutting through chaff to reveal the core,
which is movement that we behold as dance.
Which is vibration that we perceive as song.
IX –
Spiral up spiral down
opposites held together by thread, column, stem
a giant cauldron mixed,
and stirred with magical mists
we are each the center, core, axis mundi
around which spirals revolve
touching, creating, mixing, meshing, pulling apart, enmeshing again.
Vibrations form the seed
then inspires it toward growth.
Vibration is beauty, song, harmony. Life.
The spiral path to earth and back again
All dance, all vibration, all flow.
I am a human in process,
mystic in training,
poet in instincts,
seed that is rooting,
stem that is sprouting.
My body is
stalk, trunk, spine,
The connecting thread between
The Great Below and The Great Above.
One, whole
In constant motion
I tremble.
Sometimes holding the paradoxes within myself hurts,
Other times, ecstasy
Light and dark which once created dissonance
in my heart
now dance together in a rhythmic waltz
and . . . there will always exist seeds.
and . . . there will always exist vibrations.
(Meet Mago Contributor) Janet Rudolph – Return to Mago E*Magazine