myth and poetry

Mythopoetry Scholar

Annual Reflections In Depth Perspectives
Mythopoetry Scholar Ezine vol.3 2012
FOUR POEMS
" Primavera" and "Eye of God", "Learning To Sing" and "Hidden Music"
-Laura Sentineri Harness

Primavera

How do we mend
This broken-winged bird of spring?
Learning to trust air
To hold us up again
After the bitter fall
As a newborn surrenders
Into unknown hands, knowing
That love is a force
Greater than gravity
Greater than fear and desire
Even when all seems shattered
A forgotten jewel
Shines through the mud
The unbroken essence, love
Opens a window, lifting the air
As Zephyrus
Billows skirts of passion
For the nymph of spring
Pale buds sprout from her mouth
Compassionate as a kiss
On our battered hearts.

The Graces turn inward
To roundel dance again, singing
Harmonies of awakening birds
Unfreezing the earth
Hermes points his staff upward
Towards unexpected fruit
Eros with his bandaged wing
Flies back to his beloved
Blindfolded, his arrows pierce
Like new blades of grass.

We return from the underworld
Careful not to look back, trusting
Love will carve a passage
Through dense and darkest stone
New waters springing forth
As a gentle lyre’s song
Calls the beloved back
From the cold embrace of death
With sweet melodies and beating wings
To test the luminous air of spring.


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Eye Of God


At the source of the spring
pure radiance
Underneath each thought
an estuary of silence
White cranes lift to the sky
in a moment of grace
When there are no divisions
In the ocean

Burning fire up the spine
glowing skull
Voice of clear waters
drowns monkey mind
warriors bow down
on a silent battleground 
before an empty bowl
tasting spheres of peace

This is the hidden doorway
the invisible key
unlocking the treasury
of the jeweled path
a peacock
Eats the poisons of life
the ego sacrificed
opens radiant feathers
like eyes in the night

O great Alchemist
there is nothing but You
your emptiness so full
All of creation transforming
from density to vibrating light

Stay fixed in this essence
like Polaris in the sky
until life becomes a beautiful storm
contained within God’s eye



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Learning To Sing


True singing is a different breath, about
nothing. A gust inside the god. A wind
. -Rilke

There’s a window in the heart
That opens into song
Opening to that wild orange sky
As the sun sets on the horizon
Becoming hollow as a reed
Disappearing in the immense music
Of the great sky painter
The lover of trees and wild things
Who loves us enough
To teach us how to sing.

A god is hidden in the spiral of the ear
In the temple of listening
Where animals gather and stones can hear
Orpheus plays upon his lyre
Enchanting all of creation  
With Apollo’s gift from the sun
Radiating
Down to heart and hand
Whose instrument we then become
The craft of Hermes, a tortoise shell
With seven ascending strings
Each sound, a staircase
For feet to sprout wings.

Lifting voices
Casting shadows, unveiling light
A transparent echo
Of shell to ocean
Attuning moon and tides
The muses circle
Around imagining eyes
Constellating the night
To reveal lines between stars
The wheel of the spiraling gods
Hovering above with bright wings
Radiant with singing
Bringing home the Primordial
Breath of creation, the wind
That sounds within.

To sing like this is to awaken
While dreaming, suddenly able to fly
Above the earth with clouds
Of blue butterflies
Or down beneath
To charm the beasts
Returning lost loves
To the wedding feast.

To sing like this is to unwind
The tight chords of suffering, inviting
A different breath
To flow through the Dionysian pipe
As the disciple kneels
At the foot of the Christ
Receiving the boon of bread and fish
Swallowed down with the wine of the undying gods
May we learn to sing like this!


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Hidden Music

I have heard your song
On the mountain
And long to be the hollow flute
For your breath
Becoming the sound
Within the sound.

This is the hidden music
Of the one who loves us most
Endless as the sky
Awaiting our return.

In the curve of each breath
Is the longing to be born
Pregnant with silence
Listening deep within
The sky blooms with music
Like a rose
In my Beloved’s hand.




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Laura HarnessAuthor Bio
Laura Sentineri Harness

MA, MT-BC has a Masters degree in Integral Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and a Bachelor’s degree in Music Therapy from Arizona State University. She has worked as a Board Certified Music Therapist for over 25 years, using music and expressive arts therapies in a variety of clinical settings. She is currently a Jungian oriented therapist in private practice and is the director of Sedona Music Therapy Services, a state funded agency which provides Music Therapy services to the developmentally disabled throughout northern Arizona. Laura plays the guitar, piano, harp and harmonium and writes songs and poems, many of them inspired by her dreams and inner work. She lives in Sedona, Arizona where she and her husband are co-directors of Temenos Healing Arts Center and they lead personalized, mythic retreats in the majestic beauty of Sedona’s red rock cathedrals.  



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