Mary's Magic Garden

 

 

 

Mary in her Garden

Step into Mary's magic garden-
it has everything!
In July, new-blooming red lilies, scented queens.
Perennial roses.
Tall jewelweed, to protect us!
Butterfly bush, tall mullein for your breathing,
a million fig trees!
Lush ferns, nasturtiums for salad,
and in the back, the tallest sunflowers
turn to honor the goddess Saule throughout the day.
You are blessed by Mary's garden,
we are all blessed...
for each week she gathers a bouquet of astonishment,
this and that, flowers and ferns,
fronds and fruits,
for all of us to honor each other
and the thank the Goddess for this bountiful, beautiful life.
There is a mirror in the birdbath!
For you,
for you and for me.

Annelinde Metzner
Black Mountain, NC
July 21, 2025 

Fig trees

Never Gone

 

 

 

Star Magnolia

 

"Did you think I was gone," She asked,
"just because the whirlwind tore through here?"
On the road to the quiet, quiet lake,
Star Magnolias line the way,
welcoming me like a queen coming home.
As I arrive, a choir of vireos and wood thrushes
rejoices, returned to nest,
here again, year after year.
Just enough breeze to pattern the water
in intricate ripple designs.
The clouds still, so still,
not a breeze,
and the sun playing Hide and Seek.
A catbird nearby tries out some new tunes.
"Have faith, woman," I hear Her chide.
"Don't forget, I've seen it all."
New-mown grass enlivens my senses,
the silence like a balm.
She was never gone.

Annelinde Metzner

May 8, 2025

 

Lake Julian on the Parkway

Rhododendron

Lake Julian ripples on the water

I Sat with the Bees

 

 

At the foot of my Grandmother Mountain
with my walking sticks I walked
up through fields of silent green and gold.
I found an old stone and sat
gazing out to Her pointed peaks,
Her Grandfather side.
Bees sang to me, continuing
their endless, ageless song
from yellow to yellow, full of pollen.
I sat in peace and gratitude.
Gathering chi from this sacred place,
giving the chi to my heart,
I sat with the bees
until meditation took me over.
Opening my eyes,
again and again I gave thanks.

Annelinde Metzner

August 16, 2024
(at Grandmother Mountain) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Returning

 

Azalea in my front yard

Each year more precious,
the rebirth of Spring!
As if now, at my age, I have my doubts,
mired down in tasks and obligations,
living just day-to-day, sunrise to sunset.
But this! The joy of brand-new life,
a quickening in the brown Earth,
and in my soul.
The lilac is back,
each bud bursting into four-petalled sweetness.
Deep in the dry leaf mold,
bloodroot arises from the forest floor,
its sap vermillion, exploding with life energy
into unique white variegated wonder.
Dandelions resume their relentless growth
with a yowl!
Trillium emerges, complete,
ready to live a miracle of grace.
And I too burst forth.
Spring flowers gorgeously in my chest,
silencing my fears,
pulling me back, whee!
into my place in the wonder of living.


Annelinde Metzner
April 8, 2016

Trillium

Bloodroot

Chickweed

Baby jewelweed

Metaphor

 

 

 

 

It's a March day, not warm yet-
The chill breeze has me in sweaters still.
But in my little flower bed, life stirs!
Everywhere, daffodils burst forth,
nodding their heads in orange, yellow and white.
Among last year's dry leaves,
green pushes out, bold and confident.
Lenten roses, tulip buds,
peony stalks like voluptuous red asparagus.
Here and there, a primrose,
lemon balm, anise and mint.
The perfect shapes of bleeding hearts,
my Grandmother's favorite.
Delightful after winter's long inward turning,
each green being comes forth waving,
like a long-lost friend.
Is there a metaphor here?
Everything we've planted can be reborn. 

Annelinde Metzner

March 20,2024

 

 

Lenten rose

Bleeding Heart

Peony

Grandmother's Bones

 

 

 

 

"I am showing you the beauty of Winter,"
called my Grandmother, the stark grey shapes
of Her naked trees, each one a poem.
A whiff of compost, a whiff of new-mown hay.
Why do I sense this richness,
as everywhere She withdraws,
holding energy within Her great womb?
Clean white clouds move ever so slowly
in the ceaseless November wind.
The majestic sculptures of the leafless trees
etched perfectly in the bright sun's shadow.
The ceaseless wind rumbles in my ears,
the cold, quiet beauty of brown and grey
begging me to give in. 

Annelinde Metzner

November 9, 2023

Celebration of Death

 

 

Autumn in the Blue Ridge.
A golden glow emanates
as the leaves slowly release their chlorophyll,
revealing their true selves,
their true colors.
In the soft breeze,
on this ridge-top ruled by wind,
one leaf drops, then another,
carelessly, an afterthought,
absentminded.
But in the full-force wind, it's a party!
It's a riot of release,
a bright-colored snowfall,
each leaf shouting "Whee,
let's become compost!"
In all this brilliance, lit by sun,
rose-red, pumpkin-orange, sun-yellow,
purple of asters,
brown stiff corn drying on the stalks,
my Mother, my Goddess instructs us-
"Look at Me!  Never forget,
my human sons and daughters,
I am the Queen of Death as much as Life!
Each end of life is mine, and each beginning,
the waxing and the waning,
the building up and then the letting go.
Regeneration is my watchword.
You will return!
I give you the beauty of Autumn,
to hold you,
to thrill you and warm you,
until you too pass like a bright leaf
on to the next thing."

Annelinde Metzner

October 27, 2023

 

 

 

 

Autumn Samba

 

 

 

 
The bite of fresh compost,
sharp leaf mold in the wind.
Goodbye to the galax,
farewell to the creeper,
“Adios" to the chokecherry vines.
It’s the majestic farewell,
the queen’s farewell.
It’s delicious, it’s numinous, it’s forever!
This is the goodbye of no tears but the rain’s.
Goodbye as relaxed as Guernseys in the alfalfa,
as relaxed as three women in a hot tub.
It’s goodbye, never more be seen,
and it smells like Paris perfume.
It lifts the feet. It’s Fred Astaire.
It’s a lilting “adieux.” It’s bagpipes.
It’s all the cousins waving.
Orange, red, a fandango,
it’s forever, it’s the end,
and if you twirl and spin your way down,
you’ve got the idea.


Annelinde Metzner         

September 2001
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three Girls

Hawkscry clouds

In the back field above the apple orchard,
fern-scented, the pasture low-cut,
ancient boulders humming distantly at the edges,
we three girls, sixteen, giggled on our backs,
under the cloud-strewn summer sky.
They left us alone.  Who cared?
That blessed juncture when children are free,
past the need for guardians, but still not grown,
they could care less where we were, what we thought,
high on this mountaintop in early June.
We were carving ourselves a place, three girls.
The world held no leads,
“woman” meant not too much,
not a wide space, anyway,
and choices seemed so irrevocable,
not too far into our future.
But they left us alone, blessedly,
with the bulbous clouds changing shape each minute,
never remaining long with, say, an apron and a skillet,
but becoming, say, a witches broom, a magic mirror,
a scarlet dragon, or nets of silver and gold...
On a blanket in the high field,
we formulated no words,
but hourly worshipped the Queen of Change,
our future, and Hers, and maybe all women’s:
metamorphosing, shape-shifting, adjusting, changing,
altering ever so slightly and poof! a new vision,
carrying this blessing like a textbook in the sky,
the soft fern-scented lessons of nature’s giving.

Annelinde Metzner
July 16, 1995
Catskill farm

I'm posting this in honor of myself as a girl, for my Sisters of that long-ago time, and for all the world's precious young women in honor of October 11th, the "Day of the Girl."

Balsam clouds

Grandmother clouds

Grandmother clouds

 

Slow Walking

 

 

 

 

 

When the tall tree fell right across my car's path,
not five minutes from home,
the winds gusting at forty miles an hour,
the firemen directing me to turn around,
I cancelled my trip.
Trees swayed, the wind blew,
and there it was, freedom!
A day unaccounted for. I'm supposed to be away,
they're keeping the mail, and I'm gone.
A chance to follow where I'm led.
Finding a path in the woods that needed my feet,
I begin, s-l-o-w-l-y, having to be nowhere,
poking along with my walking sticks,
just here, just now.
But I needed to see this! Three lady-slippers,
then four, luxuriously pink,

like a French madam, about to expire.
I had to see this!
Going slowly, I pause for each smooth, green leaf,
little sapplings, oak, maple, poplar,
newly-unfurled Solomon's Seal,
slow enough to caress, and kiss, and welcome,
these soft green beings back from Winter's slumber.
I stop, because I am going slow.
In the distance, in that precious pause,
the first singing wood thrush of the year.

Annelinde Metzner
Ox Creek
May 3, 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red Oleander

 

 

 

Red Oleander, watercolor by Deb Pollard

 

A salamander pale green as the new leaves of May
opens its orange lung-sac, brilliant, to the sun.
Three times at every pause!
In the breeze, red Oleander bends on her long stem, celebrating.
I am drawn down a quiet lane by the scent of jasmine
beguiling my heart, a path toward joy.
The dear Earth wafts up into me,
warm as fresh-baked bread,
filling my womb with Her love.
With my feet in the sand,
I pull Her love into me,  to power my days.
Mother holds me tenderly, the mourning dove
in her palmetto-basket nest, giving, giving,
we Her babies, Her vast dream,
we Her future and Her now.
The black fin of a dolphin arises from the sea, ancient as days,
loving Her into the fathomless tomorrow.

Annelinde Metzner, June 1, 2010

Delight abounds in the month of May, moving slowly through the world, admiring each new green being.  And giving thanks for my friend Deb Pollard, whose art above, the pulsating life of May in which the dolphins rejoice, was inspired by my poem.  And many thanks to Feminism and Religion for publishing my poems, including this one today.

Red Oleander

 

Florida Masquerade

 

 

What a disguise She has!
Cars honk, interstates criss-cross,
golf courses manicure each square inch of land.
Shopping malls and theme parks, parking lots,
What a big charade!
But turn away just once,
just once turn away from the clamor
toward the quiet lanes.
Look up!  A bald eagle settles in
high in the branches of the live oak over your head.
A gopher turtle clambers on its bony legs
right across the road.
The alligator floats, seeming so gentle,
back and forth, back and forth across the lake.
The ineffable scent of orange blossom fills the air,
suspending all one’s notions of what is and what should be.
The ibis, straight as an arrow,
flies to her nest with a fish in her beak.
Good going!  You have seen beneath Her disguise,
Our Florida, our flowered land,
our fountain of ever-renewing youth,
our paradise.

Annelinde Metzner
Gainesville, Florida
March 30, 2014