December 2020
Bio Note: It’s tricky to reveal the journey of your life in a word, but if I had to
pick one that names the wind propelling my little boat along life’s fluctuating waters, it’s poetry.
Reading it, writing it, and teaching others the joy of soulful communication is my calling. Author of
39 Ways to Open Your Heart: An Illuminated Meditation (Conari Press) and Movie Life
(Finishing Line Press), I live with my husband in an old Tudor house tending a garden of herbs, roses and words.
Celebration
From the first flutter of dove gray light with eyes still soft from sleep mind dancing between this world and dream begin to say, like a chant heard before birth forgotten when waking here on earth, “I celebrate this day” Bless air as it rushes into lungs expanding them and consciousness Experience the kingdom: svelte hollow of lover’s neck, tangerine chill of sweet sourness, green hills transforming to gold as seasons give way only to return with the scent of rain- soaked blossoms Bless the bounty of the everyday extraordinary and say, “I celebrate this day” even as emotions deeper than sadness, fiercer than joy bombard your heart with questions never meant for answering, even as the baby cries and bombs explode recall the gift of another soul holding your eyes in a knowing beyond words and say, “I celebrate this day”
Originally published in Comfort Prayers (Andrews McMeel Publishing)
All the Names I’d Like to Give Myself
Call me what you will but I have names for myself wishes of who I want to be dreams of an open face dancing whole person able to take the heat Call me Luna, call me Sol I’ll answer to either or both because they are me in its entirety Call me resilient ground cover, murky tide pool, encouraging firmament, fiery diadem spinner and spun in the cosmic maze There is always a world for me, of me, by me from the words I chose, from the singing syllables of sound strung together into thought I imagine myself: a velvet rain forest in the Amazon at dawn with a dozen squawking lime-sherbet parrots dining on mango flesh ripe as the morning Call me crazy, call me shadow, call me the beginning of an idea stirring on the tip of your medulla oblongata as succulent as fresh bee whiskey capable of stinging senses jolting the overgrown glade of your sleepy life back into existence Call me what you will
Originally published in Movie Life (Finishing Line Press)
©2020 Arlene Gay Levine
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the
author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -JL