A Great Horned Owl and “The Long-Night Moon”
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From my nature journal, December 4: Before going to bed I close down the house and walk outside for a few minutes to stand and listen, to hear the evening hush of the dark December hills. I breathe deep and smell the night. The air is mild for this time of year, cool and moist with the musk of fallen leaves and loamy earth—thawed again, after hard November frosts.
The vast bowl of sky is full of slow clouds, curdled milky opalescent blue. Wisps of smoky rust stain the tall moon. From the west drift shadowy vapors, not thick enough for rain, nor dense enough to completely darken the ancient stone face of light. In winter months, when the sun rolls low across the sky, the moon rides high.
From deep past beyond all remembering, native peoples called this the Long-Night Moon. The time in the earth year we’ve squared into a grid of numbered boxes and named “December” has always known the shortest days, the longest nights. Can we imagine living by a “calendar” closely tuned with the moments and silences of natural cycles? —a “clock” that ticks with spring’s first exuberant fluting of the Wood Thrush; the raspy summer night-music of Katydids; silky ears of corn sweetened in the husk; moonlit wolves crying across the milk-blue crust of snow. So the indigenous tribes named the thirteen moons of the turning year. The round rock satellite rolling above us always reflects the light from the buried sun. The moon’s soft or sharpened radiance, whether the color of ripe melons or of icicles, sketches the shadows of plants, of animals and the transitory movements of man wandering, warring and loving in his brief seasons upon the earth.
This particular night is quiet, and still. Only one sound haunts the deep woods, the night meadows and the grey-faced moon: a Great Horned Owl hoots somewhere on the black wooded hill. The large owl’s booming notes drum muffled echoes across the deep hollows. I stand still several minutes, listening to his throbbing song, over and over, every twenty seconds. (And I wonder how he knows when twenty seconds is up?) The fearful imaginations of native peoples conjured forebodings from such ominous night-words. The dark sound stirs something in us primal and wild, living beneath the level of language.
Tonight I do not hear the female owl answering with her higher-pitched staccato tones. Suddenly the male stops calling. All is quiet but the faint river sighing in the distance. I wait and listen, but the great owl has gone silent. From somewhere in the pastures of night, a horse snuffles.
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–Quilla
September Night
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September Night/Psalm 139
Day’s last lights have fallen, faded
lost in the forest.
Beside the lamp, the black window
is open: hosts of dying crickets sing
into the deepening autumn silence,
the dry and windless trees.
Day’s last words blur and flutter
on the page. Papery moth wings
bump against the window screen.
Uncaged dreams follow the soft wild drums.
Down into the sloping hollow of old oaks
I listen: two Horned Owls talking.
Like rusted blood-moon light
dark songs walk the shadowy woods.
“Even the darkness is not dark to You”.
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–Quilla
“The Hungering Dark”
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“The Hungering Dark”
For Frederick Buechner
Your honest hungering spirit
nourished me through the long darkness—
a hundred winter nights.
Now the warm Spring dusk: a thin blue haze
lays across the greening hills—old farmers
burning the ancestral fields of stubble
and dead weeds again, as every year.
This day’s sun retreats into the stalks
of bare trees,
silent accolades of smoky gold.
Trilling from lowland creeks, Spring Peepers
(tiny frogs) ring out such wild celebrations:
amphibian throngs, like tocsin bells,
swell up from winter mud.
One Robin pours out lyrics of evening songs.
Gnarled black limbs glow with the snow
of wild plum blooms.The rising moon
shines white as a broken piece of shell, washed up
on a shore of black sand, reflecting
our tumbled human loneliness.
The moon, flickering pieces of light
through new leaves of the tall bamboo.
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–Quilla
For all the Shamen (revisited)
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For All the Shamen
As much as we wish it were,
this brief human life
is not about cultivating personal power:
as if we hold in the hand of our mind
the jaw of a jaguar bone;
or chanting an ice-wind song
with a blood-stained walrus tusk;
or trusting the runes of toner ink
scribbled in our investment book ;
or that sort of theologian, who loves to feel
his doctrine ever tightening
like a braided hanging rope;
or the preacher who loves to gloat
over the growing numbers in “his” church—
—All these powers draw the same low awe
from the masses, the simpler ones, scrabbling
desperately around for something, someone
to worship, somewhere to bow down.
As promised, that path leads straight down
dark stairs into the Hell of Self, fast away
from the fragrant meadows of merciful
Christlike Love.
These fleeting days are given us
like a handful of flowers, a fragile breath
for finding depths of sacrificial love
in our own hearts: for all the hurting
needy ones—they keep holding up a broken mirror
to us, like a wounded river, always flowing
before our face.
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“Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire
which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;
for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat,
I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink;
I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in;
naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison
and you did not visit Me—
—-Truly, I say to you, to the extent that you did not
do it to the least one of these, you did not do it
to Me. These will go away into eternal punishment,
but the righteous will go into eternal Life”. Jesus, Matthew 25
–Quilla
Antares
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Antares
For a long time I stand in the sparkling darkness
of fireflies and late spring stars.
The night air is cool, as if wrapping
my bare shoulders with a thin shawl of snowflakes.
There is no moon.
Skeins of blue mist rise and move
across the far meadows.
Antares, the red heart of the ancient Scorpion,
twinkles scarlet through young birch leaves.
The glittering rose light
shining into my eyes tonight
left that great red star in the year 1689.
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—Quilla
October 12.13
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(10.12.13, 4 a.m.):
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deep autumn stars
sparkling distant silences….
. . . a lone dog barks
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July 17.13
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Midsummer Night:
Fireflies rising
from dark fields, twinkle
among the stars
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Andromeda rises
in the east, sparkles
through bamboo leaves
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March 3.13
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I walk out of the warm noisy room
into cold darkness,
look up to the latewinter stars.
But there are no stars.
Tall black trees rattle with wind.
Invisible crystals tickle my face.
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–Quilla
January 16.13
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Release
A storm-wet sparrow lilting, lifts
the somber morning above itself.
Every thing—each winter twig,
bent weed-stem, sparkling thorn—
glistens silver globes of fallen rain
this torn, misty gauze
of sparrow-singing light.
Draining every secret mountain vein
the roiling river runs heavy, dark
and full, three days of winter rain,
the run-off clashes worn boulders,
brown froth rolls and breaks, crashing
over the flooded shoals.
Into cool mist I lift these hands
with quiet release: fingers opened
reaching for light, for Life itself,
like white wings longing to rise
into the air—yet feeling from below
always, the pulling shadows of soft earth
and heavy stone, the long river
flowing past me to the sea
as if I were not there.
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“Give them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes, the oil of gladness
instead of mourning, a garment
of praise, instead of a spirit of despair”
–Isaiah 61: 3
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–Quilla
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Treasures in Darkness
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Treasures of Darkness
Brilliant winter sun, the early frost
is gone. Still, the shadow places steam—
rays of light keep rising, finding,
giving the hidden places warmth.
So it is with cold blue spaces in me.
I stand what seems a long time, watching
the windless sunlight glisten
a million silky needles in the pine.
These shining green threads of luminescence
are lifted, gleaming in the winter air
by heavy black limbs
living in cold shadows, underneath.
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“I will give you the treasures of darkness
and hidden wealth of secret places,
so that you may know that it is I,
the LORD, the God of Israel
Who calls you by your name”
–Isaiah, chapter 45 verse 3
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“The true Light, which enlightens
every man, came into the world.
In Him was life, and the life
was the Light of men.
The Light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.”
–John, chapter 1, verses 9 & 1
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Missing. . . .(revised 10.4.12)
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Missing
We like to think we like ‘mystery’—
those clever conundrums, resolved
by pretty actors, fifty minutes on tv.
But true Mystery—sometimes God gives us
real and pain-filled drama,
scant and reticent clues.
We’re caused to stoop and crawl
our musty closets, face our blue mirrors
more deeply, perhaps find a trace
of something true among the rubble,
what’s been taken, lost.
But only precious clutter—
theater tickets, dried petals, empty shells
and dried seaweed, heartfelt cards
and messages left like footsteps in the sand.
The walls still hold the echoes of her voice.
Images on the refrigerator door
haunt us, twenty times a day.
They tell us nothing now.
The one we love has packed her things,
left her home, and gone.
We can not find her now: the one
who promised faithfulness and truth.
By her own choosing, a hard refusal
of those she loved, the words are gone
as summer flowers turn to autumn mist.
Still, those of us she left behind:
we’d like somehow to win the one we’ve lost,
replace the ravaged board of life, redeem
our broken pieces, pay what cost.
Yes. We’d like to think the force of wrong,
the Queen of Self, and her chosen pawn—
the easy lies She tells, so easily believed;
—that somehow She’s relented, given
a reprieve, let our dear one’s heart return;
that our earnest little pawns of prayer,
Love’s true words of searching light
with all the unseen might of faith
break through, depose the shadow Queen.
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–Quilla
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“We are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers
and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world,
and against evil spirits in heavenly places.” —Ephesians 6: 12 (NLT)
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” –Romans 12: 21
September Night
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September Night
Waking, far into the night,
windows open—
the cool fragrance and music
of rain, falling softly
on dry, new-fallen leaves
in the endless darkness
—falling back asleep.
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A brief look at Black
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Meditations on Black
Winter trees splinter the sharp morning light.
Stark silhouettes of living black
make abstract blue mosaics on the frost.
Crows and their shadows scatter like harsh words.
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The child in us is thrilled, yet afraid:
the wide black lake transformed, overnight.
Those white blades of ice pierce us through
like the evil of absence, of separation.
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Out of the low night land, mountain rims are risen
snowy and resplendent, exalted
like the old cathedrals wanted to be.
They forgot the glory came from Light.
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Out of sordid darkness, our human streets
lift their summits: steeples rise to the crimson dawn.
Their pointed brilliance inspires, yet frightens us:
like an evil god too steep to reach, or love.
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In the streets we keep our visage safe, and low.
Rummage the shadowy markets muttering
cliches, purchasing things. In vain we look to see
our true faces in the black windows.
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As young men, Renoir and Monet
walked out together to the sunlit meadows.
Among the first to paint plein air
right there in the field, not drawing first;
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Quick pastel impressions
leaped onto their thirsty boards,
parasols and water-lilies
danced happy on the watery light.
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After a century of calendars
the shimmering still dazzles us.
If we could live each day in Giverny, perhaps
the shadows would not haunt us so.
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But much later: to capture the pain
he’d felt and seen;
to uncover the hard bright masks
hiding our broken human beauty,
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With talons of pain gripping his old fingers
Renoir returned to the dark.
Unlike the Impressionists
he chose to use black paint again.
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I am the Lord, and there is no other. I create light, and I make the darkness.
-Isaiah 45, verse 7
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The Word gave life to everything that was created, and His life brought light to everyone.
The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.
–John chapter 1, verses 4 and 5
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Ruach 333, by Quilla 