Beltane Festival

Remembering

JEHANAH

(1941-2010)

Beltane Festival

MONARCH BEAR GROVE

Sunday, May 8^th, 10:00 to 12:00

bring yourself, bring a friend, bring poems, stories, and songs

dance again, laugh again, sing again, feed the ravens again

wear your finest fae frock in honor of the Fairie Queene

bring a colorful ribbon and take a whirl around the Maypole

come out and play again, and share your memories of Jehanah

mother, grandmother, aunt, poet, and druid grove mother

Heading West into Golden Gate Park, follow Middle Drive E. On the South side of the street, across from the Academy of Sciences, between the AIDS Memorial Grove and the Handball Courts, there is a grassy clearing leading up the hill to a path on the right. Monarch Bear Grove is situated at the top of the knoll,

and there you will find the stones.

RSVP IN BLOG COMMENT SPACE

Poetry In The Temple

Jehanah at the Sacred Grounds

Poetry is my doctor.

Poetry is my priest.

Poetry will fight for me when no one else will.

Poetry will hold me and cradle me, and

Poetry will rock me softly like my mother ocean.

Poetry will love me and poetry will forgive me

And curse me and contend with me.

Poetry will read me my rights

And take them away, and laugh

And cry.  Poetry will remember my friends to me...

The long-dead ghosts the most.

Poetry will come to me like family

To teach me thy family ways.

Poetry will birth me and run with me, and

Lie with me on my deathbed,

Holding my hands in perfect peace.

Poetry will bring me the Meaning.

Poetry will forget everything

In one blinding flash of light.

Poetry will be everywhere in

The You-n-Eye Verse Past/Present/Future

Simultaneously at once

Forever and ever and ever.

Amen.

(New words of poetry always come)

Poetry is the Temple.

I cannot find a way out.

Poetry is.

Alone In The Desert (Sort Of)

Jenna & Dennis

I'm a recluse, I was raised in the desert.

I remember only sand twinkling through my toes,

And stars there were only stars

     dancing me around

A lively place,

Quiet, silent with the shout of tarantulas,

Reverberating, with snake calls,

With the acrid love/death-call of the vinegaroon,

With the swishes of horned toads,

     between stone-silent meditations...

Mirroring the surround in convex eyeballs

Concaving into reality within/out.

I'm a recluse.  I was raised in the desert.

The mountain means to me I go on forever.

The endless sky taunts me

     with again and again and again.

With the nearest kid five miles away,

Me and my stone barn in the desert.

Me and my fifty chickens.

Me and my five great danes to protect from the wolves

And my mother to protect me from my wickedness.

I went barefoot without her permission

since she locked me out.

Dare I tell all?  yet the desert protected me in warmth.

I found I could talk to wolves and explain to them

How to behave with decorum

And not eat great dane puppies, since they are of a race

     like men I have seen.

And one wolf marked me with a nip...

Just to let me know he knew I was right

And he'd leave the pups alone,

But that eh could still kick my ass if he wanted.

But I was only a puppy.

Wolves and great danes and tarantulas

We lived together and protected my mother

   from our wickedness

I went barefoot without her permission

since she locked me out.

The Ancestors

The ancestors are with us tonight.
They sit laughing on the mountains.
They swing through silent forests on midnight wings.
They come in the form of bears.
Long-dead, extinct, alive in our totem heart of hearts.
They whisper when we need counsel,
Wondering at our fears.
The ancestors are after all, here.

They are with us tonight.
They bring old forms of poetry.
Writing it in wings of birds, leaves of trees beckoning
They show us how to call up memory.
they help us to forget what we cannot contain,
Knowing full well all memory will never die
In the subtle heart of the glorious beast.

We must remember, lest we forget:
We are the ancestors reborn.
The ancestors are here tonight.
Lest we forget, we are here.
The ancestors are alive and well.

-Jehanah-

70 Years

To A Priestly Friend

There are no cloisters for pagans
Save the magic grove and secret stream,
For an altar, my heart in stillness
For sacrament, the violet that grows unseen
In woods blessed by silence
     and rushing of wind
     and gurgling of water
     and energy that mingles in separateness
With light that separates in shadows
I dwell in patterns of darkness
Rehearsing structures of light
With winged angels buzzing around me
To aid my soul in flight.

-Jehanah-

What a mystery, life

What a mystery, life
One day there is utmost contentment
While the next – a heavy heart
And nothing seems right.


Why is it that sometimes
We are like on a mountain top
Believing that we will never be the same?
We will not get lost
We will hold onto our vision
And grow such vast possibilities . . .


Why are we cast down
From the heights of heaven
Wherein we’ve come
To painful, confusing places?


Life, when you are ready to tell us
Or perhaps when we are ready
To hear your answer
There will no longer be just opposites
Just far apart realms
Of attraction and aversion;
And we will understand
That all is really One.


Perhaps by then we might glimpse
To understand
That all these scenes
Are part of a vast inner self
Looking like this and that, for awhile.


-Wendy Wolters-