ARIZONA HABOOB / Feathered Gods

The walker came down from Tucson last night just after seven
striding the horizon in phainein form; the strider appeared
an occurrence extraordinaire as if a god from out a cloud
ten thousand feet tall had just arrived for dinner.

I was out grilling salmon when the feathered one swallowed
the mountains on the horizon at the edge of town and not quite
done, I snatched the foil pan from the fire and ran before the
great one began shedding its skin all over my supper.


Some folks I know call the walker “old man”; some call him
the storm serpent and some just say “Avanyu Sendo comes hither”
and mean something biblical and primordial, a tall strider
big as god moves like a serpent behind a wall of dust.


When Avanyu walks the sun fades; Avanyu is hungry and it is
the dinner hour. The serpent is no invited guest and so I hide
indoors and eat my fish watching as he swallows Phoenix
on TV. I can just as easily watch it from the front window.


Considering it’s a storm god, I hospitably relent and agree to share
repast by the window. Avanyu’s tongue is made of barbed
lightening and dining with the serpent god can be more
than a spectacle should there be dinner conversation.

Avanyu is no good in his youth the story goes; folk gossip in dread
P’o anyu is a monster who threatens to flood because he, nearly one
hundred miles wide, is a big boy is all; he means well folk say
into the swollen street swallowed earlier in a wall of dust.


Tonight he’s more polite in watching what comes out of his mouth
although, a diminished flood of sorts pours out when he opens it
and this is true because dining with any god is one wild party; the
cleaning up afterward takes all next day and requires a hose.

I can’t help thinking TallStrider a kind of benevolent serpent, too
while the hose, what comes out of its mouth, descends like a river
onto the patio floor to rid the way my dinner guest could chew and
how, the way Avanyu left last night in a hurry, made his clothes fall off.




©2011 Feathered Gods stephanie pope Bugs & Monsters mythopoetry.com

A FEN AGAIN

laced or not, her shoes
words flow like swords making
new cuttings from old sounds
shoshannahs stream in soft
meadows releasing an ah-part
from a fresh source


& from Lily’s winter residence
sapling sounds flow again honey-sweet
as if voices of older men in the fen of
sixies repeat the sun pouring down
like honey the lily-worn
traveler


yet the traveler who fed them
did so in under sense and with
her own sense of matter
living the ah-part apart from
the material world; she
fed them and their old voices carried


& Lily’s men bring something hospitable here
but whether laced or not, their fen-sensing
is made lacey with age; sit down
listen to it thickening in greenery
the scenery around you a fen for U-R
gathered around you, the soul-making you are



©2011 A Fen Again stephanie pope mythopoetry.com
photoshop pencil sketch panorama, Lily In Fen ©2011

The Individuation Process

I attended a workshop on the individuation process in California over Mother’s Day this year. The workshop took place on the Ladera campus of Pacifica Graduate Institute with senior core faculty, Dr Robert Romanyshyn.

Professor Romanyshyn is a gifted teacher and masterful storyteller. The workshop is laced with story and spiced with poetry, visuals and music. Its alchemical opus circumnavigates the image, homecoming.

The essence of individuation, a term and image carefully amplified through the arts by Dr. Romanyshyn, is original to the writings of C.G. Jung. Individuation is a journey home thinks Robert, and what it is not is shadow work or integration, a term associated with ego soul. The journey which is taken is not to do something external in the world. It unites one to something intimately carried central to the core of self, imaginal life, creativity and the emerging reflections of the soul showing each of us how we make sense and carry meaning fullnesses in an individual manner of inner making. One’s journey is a movement down and in to recover or uncover or discover who waits for us by the side of the road. Jung calls this way of seeing the world in conspectu mortis. One must look to the past so that life is not frozen in the past. Life is to be lived forward. My own sense for the workshop experience is one of reverie and this journey of reverie is the manner by which one will “dis” and “un” to “re” cover the meaning sense one carries in one’s own heart.
There are five guided meditations and should this workshop be offered again and you have the chance to participate, take it. In this brief essay I won’t share with you my entire experience of this weekend workshop, I will simply share with you one of my favorite reverie moments.

Read more of this essay now.