Rest is a Form of Resistance
She spits antennae and legs. Spider webs
pocket her skin. Wingtips touch
arid sand. A deep bellow, primal cry.
Lightning sizzles from topsoil to the core.
Listen to the land.
Listen to herself.
At sunrise, volcanic ancestors whisper,
There is a key on the other side of the door.
Something or someone pulls her back
into a damp hollow among tree roots.
Mycelium speaks in electric language.
She senses sounds of spores. Feels her way
in the darkness. Struggles to open a door.
It does not budge. She huddles on the floor.
Stops. Slows her breath. Rests.
Asks the door, How do I claim the key?
Bells chime eight times.
She intones the vibrations.
Discovers she is on the other side
in a shallow, granite chamber. Refocuses
and spots a crystalline Lemuria stone,
smooth with small grooves. Holds it
with her feathers. Water swishes
within the mystical rock. She gasps.
A collage of sunken lands appear.
This must be Mu, a seismic place.
Sees a long tail sways. Waves move.
Water Dragon blurs. With her beak
she inserts the stone into the keyhole.
Teleports to a lotus garden in Suzhou.
Mark Time
Ursa Major in northern sky
Greater she-bear once a nymph
home in healing springs
tangle of wilderness stirs
Bear asks her to digest doubts
she sits straight spine
waning crescent of unknowing
listens waits imagines
She prays many names
of sacred mother
faces her mortality
black willow frog totem speak
Waterfall douses fire stones of fears
connects floats rests
She keeps cryptic diary
from water’s point of view
Fins to Feathers
I.
I am a woman with fins—
I think about Mu,
a sinking continent
becoming islands.
Will our son see
this last gasp?
I begged our child
continue to climb
temple steps
not burn and plunder
in a skull and
crossbones life.
A distant explosion
like undersea
volcanic eruptions.
I dodge ship's debris.
Jewels jettison
to ocean floor.
Bad luck to touch.
I race to the surface.
A small boat wavers.
He made it—this time.
Embers spark a dragon
tattoo on his brother.
My dragon lover
breathes clouds and
controls waters.
In human form
will you guard
and guide our son?
II.
My scales drift as fins
become claws and a flowing
tail of vermilion feathers.
Fire Bird tears as I leave
behind a glowing
remiges. A memorial
to our daughter,
carried within
for a brief period.
I rise from water
at home with the sun.
I outlive nine ravens.
Dear Snowy Owl
I saw your yellow eyes same size as mine
scanning the horizon. A thick coat of
feathers, regal as ancient cave paintings.
Windswept fields snow-chilled the bones of me.
You spot a small fire near the sea.
Turn toward the waves. I join you.
We sat with a woman Elder.
Four shells on the ground represent:
EARTH FIRE WATER AIR
(ground) (plants) (sea) (flight)
She cast herbs into the flame—
a ring of women danced above our heads.
Pulsations of shallow caribou skin
stretched one-side drum.
What is your name?
She takes a long time to answer.
Eons, like the wisdom of Sedna.
Your dark beak opens. Shouts
a rough cry. Back home, I place secrets
of what matters in a cedar bark bowl.
Cindy Rinne creates fiber art and writes in San Bernardino, CA. A Pushcart nominee. She was Poet in Residence for the Neutra Institute Gallery and Museum, Los Angeles, CA. Cindy engages in Performance Poetry using her own costume creations based on her books. Her poems have appeared in literary journals, anthologies, art exhibits, and dance performances. She is the author of several books: The Feather Ladder (Picture Show Press), Words Become Ashes: An Offering (Bamboo Dart Press), Today in the Forest with Toti O’Brien (Moonrise Press), silence between drumbeats (Four Feathers Press), Knife Me Split Memories (Cholla Needles Press), Letters Under Rock with Bory Thach, (Elyssar Press), and others. Her poetry appeared in: The Journal of Radical Wonder, Mythos Magazine, A Moon of One’s Own, Verse-Virtual, and others. www.fiberverse.com
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