Poem - Power of Animal

At night
I open my window to the moonlight,
to hear the coyotes calling
across the divides of suburbia
from their open space.
Then I open more and can hear Birth sounds calling,
familiar echoes that our grandmothers heard too.
That indigenous power
strains against the edges of civilization,
against the measured landscape of a misogynist culture.
Some fear that wild animal
who walks in the dark
to the song of Her own breath and moans-
who freely gives life to Her child, body and soul,
by the strength of Her in-born hormonal nectar,
well-fed uterine muscles, and
untamed woman's instinct.
--by Terra Rafael

Seeking Refuge

Whenever I open my computer now, a tropical paradise appears before my eyes. It’s from Honaunau on the Big Island. The hard, black volcanic rocks are softened by the ocean waters, the palm trees that sway, and the indigenous human creations there. It’s not just beautiful. It’s a place of refuge.

This place was a royal sacred site. The fierce totems carved from trees stand guard, warning commoners to stay away. The Hawaiian society had strict kapu or taboos, enforced by a hastily dispatched death sentence. This served to maintain their social structure. It must have created a climate of fear.

Yet Honaunau was also a place of refuge. If someone who broke kapu could make it to the Kahunas, or spiritual chiefs, on this peninsula without being caught, they escaped the punishment of death, purified and forgiven through the Kahunas’ powerful rituals.

Seeing the picture of Honaunau reminds me that I, too, can seek refuge when the taboos of society or of my own mind condemn me.

Open hearted love is the sweetest place of refuge and service is its pathway. But it’s not easy to access from a place of fear or self condemnation.

It could be reached by going to a place of refuge here in Colorado: the mountains, the creek, my garden, my church, my bedroom. These places revivify my spirit with their inherent or accumulated grace. Just being there fills me with that grace, wellspring of forgiveness and peace.

I can also seek refuge in Great Beings, the super Kahunas of my spiritual world: Jesus Christ, Krishna, Our Lady of Guadelupe, Ix Chel the Maya Moon Goddess, and Archangel Rafael. I invoke their love and guidance through prayer and ritual. They protect me from the ravages of the human.

They clear the path for me to arrive at the deepest, most powerful refuge: Oneness with Mother Father God. Meditation is the path which they have cleared. It leads me to the Source, The Oneness where all is forgiven, all is released, all is renewed. Here the ravages of being human die and the spirit rises again.

The challenge is to escape the grip of fear and doubting, the voices of discouragement and the spell of distraction so that I can remember my way again to the place of refuge.

Where to you seek refuge?

--by Terra Rafael

Poem- past winters & winters there are springs & springs again

spring – my juices rise from the
sunken winter dream.
I green in the sun.
rain, a clean lover, gently
shivers me to full treehood
to some branching, budding buddhahood.
to some fragrance that is whispering softly to all
in a love that only gives & gives.

come, sip my nectar, let me slide wetly & fresh
down your throat & be a clear blue sky there
a song like the unfurling of furry buds into leaves,
a song that does not give up singing
forever again spring-

--Terra Rafael

Poem - What The Midwife Does

The midwife comes to worship at the birth, be it day or night,
leaving behind the world of her family and her own existence.
Her patient adoration has grown over the months of prenatal teachings, prayers, and caresses
that some call “exams.”
She enters the birth room,
cleansed and hushed by songs she sings on her way there.
She wonders at the power of the Mother as Her moans & movements make way
to reveal the coming soul.
She watches how the Mother is guided,
sometimes even by midwife hands or words that point to make clear Nature’s way.
She lays out her sterile scissors, clamps, & herbs for just in case,
yet her hands rest calmly,
knit baby booties,
or soothe the laboring Woman.
She listens to the rhythms of the process-
the distant bouncing of the Baby’s heart,
the Mother’s labor song of earthy sounds, prayer or curse,
the rhythmic dancing of the womb.
She smells the amniotic fluid and it whets her appetite for that common miracle to come.
When necessary her hands can have halos and her breath is divine.
Usually she needs only kneel down to catch and lift up the newborn to the breast of Life,
and attend to the placenta’s safe delivery while Mother and Child are
falling further in love.
After that climax, she dotes still, like the woman she is, coming & going for weeks,
learning the Baby’s name,
seeing that milk aplenty drips from the Mother,
and that their rhythms have synchronized into the gentle waltz of everyday
nurturance.