Sunday, 11 September 2022

Four Poems by Cindy Rinne

 


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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