T

Blessed be the Creator
and all creative hands
which plant and harvest,
pack and haul and hand
over sustenance—
Blessed be carrot and cow,
potato and mushroom,
tomato and bean,
parsley and peas,
onion and thyme,
garlic and baby leaf,
pepper and water,
marjoram and oil,
and blessed be fire—
and blessed be the enjoyment
of nose and eye,
and blessed be color—
and blessed be the Creator
for the miracle of red potato,
for the miracle of green bean,
for the miracle of fawn mushrooms,
and blessed be God
for the miracle of earth:
ancestors, grass, bird,
deer and all gone,
wild creatures
whose bodies become
carrots, peas, and wild
flowers, who
give sustenance
to human hands, whose
agile dance of music
nourishes the ear
and  soul of the dog
resting under the stove
and the woman working over
the stove and the geese
out the open window
strolling in the backyard.
And blessed be God
for all, all, all.

The small plot of ground
on which you were born
 cannot be expected

to stay the same.
 Earth changes,
and home becomes different places.

You took flesh
 from clay
 but the clay
did not come
 from just one
 place.

To feel alive,
 important, and safe,
 know your own waters
 and hills, but know
 more.

You have stars in your bones
 and oceans
in blood.

You have opposing
 terrain in each eye.
You belong to the land
and sky of your first cry,
 you belong to infinity.

Alla Renee Bozarth

Bakerwoman God,
I am your living bread,
Strong, brown Bakerwoman God.
I am your low, soft, and being-shaped loaf
I am your rising bread, well-kneaded
by some divine and notty
pair of knuckles, by your warm earth hands,
I am bread well-kneaded.

Put me in fire, Bakerwoman God,
 put me in your own bright fire.

I am warm, warm as you from fire.
I am white and gold, soft and hard,
 brown and round.
I am so warm from fire.

Break me, Bakerwoman God.
I am broken under your caring Word.
Drop me in your special juice in pieces.
Drop me in your blood.
Drunken me in the great red flood.
Self-giving chalice swallow me.
My skin shines in the divine wine.
My face is cup-covered and I drown.

I fall up
in a red pool
 in a gold world
where your warm
 sunskin hand is there
to catch and hold me.
Bakerwoman God, remake.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Listen—

There is no difference between
healing your body and healing the Earth
or helping another to heal.
It is all the same Body.

There is no difference between
healing Earth’s body and healing your own
or helping another to heal. 
We are all the One Body.

Begin anywhere.
Begin with one tree,
or a bird.
Begin with your own heart
or skin, clean out your liver,
clear your mind.
Begin with the growth of a child,
your family’s food.
Then continue to include one small part at a time.
You will be healing the Whole.

            Alla Bozarth

Before Jesus

Before Jesus
was his mother.

Before supper
in the upper room,
breakfast in the barn.

Before the Passover Feast,
a feeding tough,
And here, the altar
of Earth, fair linens
of hay and seed.

Before his cry,
her cry.
Before his sweat
of blood,
her bleeding
and tears. 
Before his offering,
hers.

Before the breaking
of bread and death,
The breaking of her
body in birth.

Before the offering
of the cup,
the offering of her
breast.
Before his blood,
her blood.

And by her body and blood
alone, his body and blood
and whole human being.

The wise ones knelt
to hear the woman’s word
in wonder.
Holding up her sacred child,
her God in the form of a babe,
she said, “Receive and let
your hearts be healed
and your lives be filled
with love, for
This is my body.
This is my blood.”

            Alla Bozarth

Biodance

            everything bears the property of Love

                        Sitting on a rock in the Salmon River watching the first leaves fall.

From sunhigh mountain treetops
upstream the rapids carry
old branches to the sea,
their leaves landlocked already.

Why so soon?
Not soon at all—your time is complete.
And so is mine.

You rest in sunlight
before transforming
into earth and air.

You dissolve your leafy form
and recompose into a thousand bodies.

Nothing ever ends.
Everything is always beginning.

Shall I find myself tomorrow
shining in a waterdrop
on a piece of moss
on the bark of a tree
that once was you?

Green into burntred,
old leaf, our biodance began
millennia ago, but today
I am glad to see you clearly
for the first time
with just these eyes,
my changing
partner!

Your bronze body
turns
to power
with a crack
beneath my foot.

Part of you has already become me.
You are on your new way.

You will be back.
And so will I.
            So will I.

            Alla Bozarth

O Earth, Wrap Me

O Earth, wrap me
in your leaves—
heal me.

Let me fall
on your Earthbreast—
feed me.

Sing to me
under the round nests
in your cedar trees.

Embrace me
when I sleep
in your shade.

Let your eye keep me
protected and cool—
hide me.

Warm me
with naked summer
kisses and

Cloister me
around
with wildflowers.

Refresh me
with springs
and living waters.

Draw me down
into your well
of rebirth and

Let my wounds
open
and empty

Into your wonderful
compost
heap.

Then fill me
with your fruit
and bread, start over,

Let my wounds
become fertile
gardens and

Let me be.
Let me live
again.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

God Is a Verb

God
 is
a
verb

God is one
mighty
roaring
verb

God is
One

God is
Mighty

God is
Roaring

God is
a Verb
roaring

God is.

This verb named God
we now name New Being
solar lunar sideral
motion soaring
breathing burning lightning
ultrasonic
SOUND

God is in us
we know,
being new, stretch, strike, light-
ning soar-sound.

Godlike, sometimes we
just have to
rise up and
ROAR.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Christ

It happens:
the Creator loves
Creation so much
and finds it so
wonderful that
like a passionate
mother or lover
desire overtakes Her—
She finds a way
to enter it,
to experience it
as completely
as possible,
limitations and all.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Five Billion Years of Bliss

Sea, sun, stars, trees,
fruit and flowers—
fur and feathered, horned and hoofed,
winged and finned and bare brown-skinned

most marvelous wondrous
bonding blessed family
of creatures all—

and I get to be
a part of it!

Alla Bozarth Renee

In the Beginning the Word was with God and the Word was God. Other and same. If we cannot live with contradiction, we cannot live. Vast as it is, the power of the human brain has not stretched to grasp the scope of Realities, and so we speak in paradoxes to tell the truth we know. The old wise ones say that a great truth can be recognized by the fact that its opposite will also be true. Chaos theory, despite the caveat of its designers, gives us permission to accept the horror and disorder of human existence with some adamant faith that it will all turn out all right in the end. Maybe a more accurate way to say it is that the whole pattern of the tapestry works together, each piece in place with beauty and purpose, but we can’t see it because we are its very threads, now and then entangled in clashing ugliness, twisted, knotted, and broken—because we are in messy process.

            Yet the process itself is the wholeness of it. Paradox!

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Are We In the Right Universe?

Allergic to ambiguity?
Pained by paradox?
Assaulted by ambivalence?
Well, yes and no.

If I have enough
of a lifetime,
maybe
I’ll get used to it.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

            We are your body, O Christ. We, all formed creation, all beasts and flowers, stars and orbs, entities unseen—all of the faces of God, each vibrating at a unique frequency with the Divine Energy.

            You were with the Beginning, O Christ. You are the Word which Divine Breath uttered to call Being forth into birth. Lady Wisdom, Mother of All Creation, let longing lead her, and from her loving heart and playful hand, the stars and microbes came. You, O Christ, are called her Firstborn, her own Light poured forth through whom all else was formed. And what are the myriad quanta of creation but the gathering of photons—all light from Light?

            Divine Wisdom in All Creation is seen—the loving essence of things. The life that knows itself and in self-knowledge is holy. So All Creation is informed by Wisdom, pregnant and overflowing to keep Love’s power going. Of this Divine Pregnancy the mystics spoke, in all times and traditions. The holy energies birthing bright immensities. And also in love with the infinitely small. Hummingbird, field mouse, and snail—plankton, lichen, and moss-amoebae, protozoa, and the floating neutrinos in space. And the Cosmic Christ is Mother Christ, Compassionate Christ, on whose ample breasts the galaxies lean and spin and feed.

            And then into human history came the Anthropos, the Child of wisdom, Christos the Anointed One, in whom worlds meet, Creation and Creator marry. And this one spoke a human tongue and lived a mortal life until death, and then broke through. But not without suffering all and feeling all as we suffer and feel—and laughing, feasting, sweating, and raging as life requires. In this one we see the mirror of our own holiness and never again can we claim our nature ungood.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

It happens sometimes gently. Sometimes in deep night, and in winter. Sometimes on summer mornings or spring afternoons, or the autumn evening of our lives. Christ comes, steals into our hearts, captures our attention, calls for all our love, irresistibly. And we must respond—by long journeys, by outrageous gifts, by transcending limitations to honor the binding of God to our lives.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Shekinah

Passover Remembered

Ten years so far
in the wilderness,
ten summers and hundreds
of spring storms since
we few ventured out
into the vast heartland.

How quickly it happened,
only a few days’ notice
for some of us:

Pack nothing.
Bring only
your determination
to serve and
your willingness
to be free.

Don’t wait for the bread to rise.
Take nourishment for the journey,
but eat standing,
be ready to move at a moment’s notice.

Do not hesitate to leave
your old ways behind—
fear, silence, submission.

Only surrender to the need
of the time—to love
justice and walk humbly
with your God.

Alla Renee Bozarth

Do not take time
to explain to the neighbors.
Tell only a few trusted
friends and family members.

Then begin quickly,
before you have time
to sink back into
the old slavery.

Set out in the dark.
I will send fire
to warm and encourage you.
I will be with you in the fire
and I will be with you in the cloud.

You will learn to eat new food
and find refuge in new places.
I will give you dreams in the desert
to guide you safely home to that place
you have not yet seen.

The stories you tell
one another around your fires
in the dark will make you
strong and wise.

Outsiders will attack you,
and some who follow you,
and at times you will weary
and turn on each other
from fear and fatigue and
blind forgetfulness.

You have been preparing
for this for hundreds of years.
I am sending you into the wilderness
to make a way and to learn my ways
more deeply.

Those who fight you will teach you.
Those who fear you will strengthen you.
Those who follow you may forget you.
            Only be faithful.
            This alone matters.

Some of you will die in the desert,
for the way is longer than anyone imagined.
Some of you will give birth.

Some will join other tribes
along the way, and some
will simply stop and create
new families in a welcoming oasis.

Some of you will be so changed
by weathers and wanderings
that even your closest friends
will have to learn your features
as though for the first time.
Some of you will not change at all.

Some will be abandoned
by your dearest loves
and misunderstood by those
who have known you since birth
and feel abandoned by you.

Some will find new friendship
in unlikely faces, and old friends
as faithful and true
as the pillar of God’s flame.

Wear protection.
Your flesh will be torn
as you make a path
with your bodies
through sharp tangles.
Wear protection.

Others who follow may deride
or forget the fools who first bled
where thorns once were, carrying them
away in their own flesh.

Such urgency as you now bear
may embarrass your children
who will know little of these times.

Sing songs as you go,
and hold close together.
You may at times grow
confused and lose your way.

Continue to call each other
by the names I’ve given you,
to help remember who you are.
You will get where you are going
by remembering who you are.

Touch each other
and keep telling the stories
of old bondage and of how
I delivered you.

Tell your children lest they forget
and fall into danger—remind them
even they were not born in freedom,
but under a bondage they no longer
remember, which is still with then,
if unseen.

Or they were born
in the open desert
where no signposts are.

Make maps as you go,
remembering the way back
from before you were born.

So long ago you fell
into slavery, slipped
into it unawares,
out of hunger and need.

You left your famished country
for freedom and food in a new land,
but you fell unconscious and passive,
and slavery overtook you as you fell
asleep in the ease of your life.

You no longer told stories
of home to remember
who we were.

Do not let your children sleep
through the journey’s hardship.
Keep them awake and walking
on their own feet so that you both
remain strong and on course.

So you will be only
the first of many waves
of deliverance on these
desert seas.

It is the first of many
beginnings—your Paschaltide.
Remain true to this mystery.

Pass on the whole story.
I spared you all
by calling you forth
from your chains.

Do not go back.
I am with you now
and I am waiting for you.

In the Name of the Bee & the Bear& the Butterfly

Part One

In the beginning, Bee.
Bee of fertility, blessing of flowers,
high priest of pollination.
Bee of My Lady’s dreaming,
dressing her eyes, ears, lips, and feet
with golden honey, feeding her
with goddess food for holy milking.

Bee,Bee, lighting on her lotus hands,
kissing her lovely toes with your silken lashes,
leaving streaks of bronze and gold,
powder on your feet from her blue mantle.
Bee, beloved pet, Angel Bee, beckoner,
messenger, bestower, wonder
of the Mother of God.

            O Bee, holy Bee:
            be with us and feed us
            with high-potent sweetness
            and when we grow dead
            sting us alive.

In the Name of the Bee & the Bear& the Butterfly—Part II

In the beginning, also, the Bear.
Great Mother Bear birthing us
in your own image, you teach us
the bearness of life, unbearable
breathtaking bearness of you.
We, in your likeness, learn to survive,
learn to suckle in your furry bosom,
learn to choose within the forest
food to make us grow, growling and humming,
into the fullness of your stature;
learn to labor hard, to fight when needed,
to care for and be cared for,
to rest deep and play well
with you and one another—
we your children,
we your fierce and foolish tender cubs.

Bear, Bear, you give us teeth and claws
and make us strong with your vigor,
watch over us desiring our self-sufficiency
in healthy measure:
“Bear, I lose my way,
Bear, I fall entangled,
Bear, I feel afraid…
Food you give me of your self,
milk of your honey-feeding body,
berries colored of your blood.
Not only do I drink and chew—
Often, with the teeth you gave me,

I bite you, God.”

            Alla Renee Bozarth

In the Name of the Bee & the Bear & the Butterfly—Part III

And of the Butterfly.
Born of  life’s ending,
promised from the beginning.
All the age-old cocooning,
all the enduring of unendurable happenings,
through long beginnings and endless middle
of our worm-shaped selves:
the unborn butterfly clinging to the bark
an ugly small worm of a thing made tight,
having no way of knowing, no way of telling
from the tree or sky hope of any change to come.
But by simply being
a good and faithful worm
allowing itself to die
surprise! breaks forth
the strangest bird
from its soft, odd-shaped egg,
from graygreen into gold,
orange, yellow, blue, vermilion,
amazing lightness and freedom
with singing wings most Christly,
slipping so lightly and so largely
into the membrane of our souls
through crevices only God can know,
filling all the soft cocoon stretching
spaces of our human hearts.

            Butterfly, brave Butterfly,
            down the wormlike days
            of all our discouragement,
            give us the courage to open,
            to turn into the unimaginable,
            take color, unfold, make music and fly!

            In the beginning the Divine Energy began the labor of creation.  Jewish mystical tradition teaches that the shining brilliance of the Creator poured forth into spheres of longing that were to become the formed universe.  But the spheres, or sephirot, could not contain the Infinite.  As crystal orbs, delicate in sheer beauty from their Source, they shattered.  And so we enter a broken world.  God longed for the completion but it was not to be.  Out of the marvelous ten envisioned by God, only three were filled.  Because the next six vessels broke, the last, Shekinah, was exiled among the broken shells of Her longing.  To humankind it has been given to help heal the vessels, in accord with the mothering spirit of Hokmah—Holy Wisdom.

            Hokmah in Hebrew Scripture is called the playmate of God, but is more accurately the Playful Spirit of God.  Hokhmah is God’s radiant energy lovingly shaping creation into being.  But though this Wisdom Love flows through all being, it does not flow freely.  We mortal creatures with our power to choose can help heal the chaotic tangle of broken light.  We can choose to live lovingly and creatively, in harmony with Hokmah, and welcome again, moment by moment, Shekinah on Earth.  Our mending work is called tikkun olam—healing the universe.

            It is work requiring a light spirit and a tender touch.  It is artist’s work—for art itself means joining.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

            In the beginning the Divine Energy began the labor of creation.  Jewish mystical tradition teaches that the shining brilliance of the Creator poured forth into spheres of longing that were to become the formed universe.  But the spheres, or sephirot, could not contain the Infinite.  As crystal orbs, delicate in sheer beauty from their Source, they shattered.  And so we enter a broken world.  God longed for the completion but it was not to be.  Out of the marvelous ten envisioned by God, only three were filled.  Because the next six vessels broke, the last, Shekinah, was exiled among the broken shells of Her longing.  To humankind it has been given to help heal the vessels, in accord with the mothering spirit of Hokmah—Holy Wisdom.

            Hokmah in Hebrew Scripture is called the playmate of God, but is more accurately the Playful Spirit of God.  Hokhmah is God’s radiant energy lovingly shaping creation into being.  But though this Wisdom Love flows through all being, it does not flow freely.  We mortal creatures with our power to choose can help heal the chaotic tangle of broken light.  We can choose to live lovingly and creatively, in harmony with Hokmah, and welcome again, moment by moment, Shekinah on Earth.  Our mending work is called tikkun olam—healing the universe.

            It is work requiring a light spirit and a tender touch.  It is artist’s work—for art itself means joining.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Invocation

All you powers
All holies,
All things come alive,
All spirits of play,
All ancient sources

Of wisdom and song,
All creatures’
Choirs invoke you

God of Living Things
God of words alive
In our flesh,

Today we call you down:
Touch us with tongues
That leap into flame.
Today we call you up:
Circle and center
Among us,
Teach us
The Dance,

Teach us the magic
Deep Reality that
Renews our spirits
Transforming the face
Of the Earth.

Come up from within us
Come out from among us
Poets of the dance
Of colors and clay
Of cloth and food
Of animal joy
And labor of bones,

All graces
All dreams
All somber
And sillinesses
We offer,

The Wisdom of Poetry,
The Playmate of God.

Alla Renee Bozarth

The Body of Christ

            “The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”

                                    The Book of Revelation

In the rain forest
each tree is a theophany,
each plant a possible savior.
Here the ant carries
cures for cancer,
here living flowers heal
souls as beautiful acts
of prayer.
Here birds sing ecstatic hymns
for the sacred dance
of feathered wings
and fur-soft feet,
and wildcats laugh
their anthems.

Here, by gray machine
and fires of greed,
a single species moves
in toxic fear, desperate
to kill.
Here humanity carries on
the act of crucifixion
over and over and over again.
Once the blood of God
spilled on the arms of a tree.
Now the blood of the trees
spills over our soul.

In killing the body of God
for profit, we are killing ourselves,
bark and bird, song and soul
going down as one.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Since my pilgrimage to Israel I have practiced the woman’s liturgy of lighting the Sabbath candles at sunset on Friday evenings. This is the time when a woman is priestess in her home, embodying the divine feminine before the very eyes of her family. She draws the holy light of the Sabbath Queen into her being and n her heartfelt intercession for the world she becomes the Sabbath Bride yearning over creation.

…I remembered the ancient Hebrew idea of the Sabbath being the time of divine procreation, when the feminine and masculine energies within God intimately unite as female and male unite in creation. It is said that these aspects of God unite as Queen and King of Heaven, celebrating an ecstatic and internal marriage union, and that on Sabbath night they make love one thousand times. This divine lovemaking keeps all creation going, providing the procreative power that gives life throughout the universe.

            Allah Renee Bozarth

SOMETHING MORE

Not the old gifts
of winter and year’s end—
last night’s communion
of old wine and flat bread
is not the common meal
we seek this morning…

Tired from late hours
the butterfly of night
comes hungry for light,
finds flame, is comsumed
by the morning star.

Consider winter loss.
The candle wavers with cold,
and warmth is gone, but light
remains, more precious than before.

Outside the windows in deep pools
the frozen lakes hold fish below;
even in deep cold beneath the waters,
movement of their play.

We yearn for light and play
below the frost in the dark hours
of our dreams.

Toward dawn the skin of thin ice
shatters into the spring thaw of ourselves,
blood melts into milk, milk into power.

We are the food as we feast upon air;
as God gives, we give, from overflow
or utter emptiness.

Trembling, touching, discerning
the deep deserving of each
minutest creature: we need
only to give up our disbelief
in the Gift inside ourselves

to free our flesh into song,
to fly, to feel the night-eclipsing
Daystar chasing at our heels,
sing Grace, greet God
in a green flower.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Nobel Woman
            For Dr. Barbara McClintock

Your winter words staggered the world: life changes before the egg!

No amount of lack of interest
or neglect stopped you
from your job of smiling over
the miracle in your yard,
the stunning erotics of poetry
hidden by sheer commonness:

the double helix surprise
of something new, an ear
of corn deciding on variation
within itself—

you listened to grain grow,
you watched, you told
what you saw over time,
you amazed us with your maize,

you spoke a new tongue
like the women who saw
the Resurrection and told
what the Angel said

and no one believed them
because no one could imagine
what had never been dreamed
before, until the news media
began to spread the Word
and a few accredited committees
verified it:  What the woman says
is true!  Maize does produce
spontaneous genetic changes
and Christ is risen indeed!

And so we are encouraged
by our elders to go on
telling in tongues of fire
what happens in secret cornfields
at night and what unheard of
wonders visit our gardens at dawn
and call our names
and tell us to weep no more.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Coasting

A boy on the beach
at moonrise plays
his flute,
a few dogs turn golden,
their fur reflected
in small rivers of light
running to the sea
and sandbathing.
Rivers run out
to the lighthouse,
the rocks of refuge
and the whole
shimmering sky,
turning and turning
from what went before
toward at last Welcome.

In bold letters
three feet high
the sandpoem
I LOVE YOU
is written
and unsigned,
left universal.
Against a sheltering
log, the sunset wind
to their backs,
three little girls
huddle in a blanket,
become a rose-rich
resonance of triangle’s
tones, belting out their
children’s song: “I love you
in the morning and in the afternoon. 
I love you at the ocean
underneath the silv’ry moon.”

Above us the twilight
rumbles grandmotherly
with pleasure.
A slender new crescent
descends over water.
The mothering wings
of night fall over us
all.

We are contained.

Alla Renee Bozarth

Hymn to Gaea

Mother Earth’s sweet green fur,
or sun-bleached bones of sand
or red-parched skin of shale,
the children swimming in her blood—
marvelous manatee in gentle hospitality
or shy-singing whale,
coral, starfish and eel,
seahorse, plankton and pearl,
and land angels of elk,
eland, ibex and deer,
giraffe and lion and the beautiful bear,
foxglove, human child, and wonderful wolf,
and into infinity of stars I sing,
and I sing of them all, enthralled,
enraptured in you, Beloved One,
in all your creation,
every molecule a miracle.

            Alla Bozarth

Flowers are the bodies

Flowers are the bodies
of music, and birds
are flowers with wings.

At dawn, the bushes
waken and shake themselves,
blooming with songs.

Alla Bozarth

It Is Enough

            “For me, it is enough to wonder at the secrets.”  Einstein

The parabola carries me around.
I feel the sweet descent of the body.
Atoms loosening, leaping, alive—

Between, a new expansion,
room for wonder—
at the strangeness of sex,
its chaos and power,
at the horrible will toward evil
in humans, at the forms of hatred
and systemic fear, at the strength
of Earth to survive our species.

But more—at beauty around me,
beauty abounding, beauty in beings
surrounding.  The full moon rises
through trees and I call
all my neighbors: “Look!
Look! A face there, and eyes,
gentle, alive and a mouth
that sings to us in the night!
The colors! Apricot, coral, rose,
and bluewhite!”
Which is more wonderful?
The eyes in the moon
or my eyes regarding them
or the eyes of God regarding
us regard each other?

Moving toward mystery
I yield, surrender to it more,
feel it take me, return into
ecstasy.  Soon I will be
elsewhere, and also at home.

No sense of destiny
as a goal in time, but only
this moment, to live in it fully,
to play it well through—
by compassion and wisdom,
by wonder and a grateful heart.
It is enough.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Blessing of the Stew Pot

Blessed be the Creator
and all creative hands
which plant and harvest,
pack and haul and hand
over sustenance—
Blessed be carrot and cow,
potato and mushroom,
tomato and bean,
parsley and peas,
onion and thyme,
garlic and bay leaf,
pepper and water,
marjoram and oil,
and blessed be fire—
and blessed be the enjoyment
of nose and of eye,
and blessed be color—
and blessed be the Creator
for the miracle of red potato,
for the miracle of green bean,
for the miracle of fawn mushrooms,
and blessed be God
for the miracle of earth:
ancestors, grass, bird,
deer and all gone,
wild creatures
whose bodies become
carrots, peas, and wild
flowers, whose bodies
give sustenance
to human hands, whose
agile dance of music
nourishes the ear
and soul of the dog
resting under the stove
and the woman working over
the stove and the geese
out the open window
strolling in the backyard. 
And blessed be God
for all, all, all.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

When the Well Runs Dry

    “Gaia shows that our actions affect all other life and always come back to us.
…If you want to worship mystery, studying the global metabolism is a great way to go.” Dr. Tyler Volk

“I feel like I’m being
pickled in misery,” said
the dying woman’s
husband.

“I feel like I’m being
jerked around by
mystery,” said
the alcoholic’s
long-suffering
friend.

Admittedly, we are
such prisoners
of our points
of view. 
Too many of us
are throwing
each other 
away, or
ourselves.

This morning watering
the August dry lawn
my hose began to rumba
with itself.  Pipes
beneath the house
made tympanic rumbles
underfoot.

To my shock,
from out the shower
tap as I stepped in
rushed rocks and mud
and sediment and air.

Even in summers
of drought years past
the wellspring gave
and gave.  Today
the random event
at last occurred.
Without warning,
blasting its way
through my ignorant
complacency,
the well went dry.

Time to dig deeper
in another place
and wait
on the gift
of finite
water.

Next time,
remember:
Everything
generous
also has
its limits.
Yin into Yang—
wet become dry.
Here becomes gone.

So this—
the ultimate
well epistemology—
Don’t let your tap
run mindlessly.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

            She [the neighbor cow] also helps me to overcome my sentimentality concerning the fact that violence is part of life and we not only eat each other, we kill each other for food. I have to forgive the Creator for setting it up like this, and trust that it is all, in the long run (in the whole pattern of things), good. In the long run, even evil can be incorporated into the goodness—the Godness—of all that is. In the tradition of Hebrew scripture and other ancient traditions, evil is not outside of God or the opposite of God, but a part of the awe-full mystery of God. This is a complex monism that depends on the integrity of infinite pluralities working together into a unity, a cosmic order, a uni-verse (turning-into-one). God is the God of All That Is, darkness and light, evil and good, and everything serves its purpose, ultimately. Taking on this idea is more than my mind and heart can manage, and the reason that I need faith.

            The implications of this intricate monism allow me an ease with my own unpleasant bodily processes, including all the inconveniences and pains of physical aging. The healthy young woman who thrives inside of me, the precious eternal child, is the permanent part of me. The physical house I live in is subject to breakdown and repairs, replacements and irreversible decay, and that is all right because it is so temporary, after all. It does not keep me from celebrating how beautifully the system of creation works. With full knowledge that my body will in some sense feed the children and grandchildren of the creatures whose bodies are food for me, I seek to move about my daily tasks of simply living, which take up so much time in themselves, with as much dignity and grace in my kitchen as my friends in the pastures. And I bless us all.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

            Whenever I find something or some being in an unexpected place or situation, I stop to meditate on the possibility for a lesson.  Something as joy-making as a bright red flower growing out of a city compost heap, or an ant on the dashboard of my car.  These remind me to stretch my imagination beyond my boundaries of skin and see and feel the world from another point of view.  This is a useful exercise, most informative and refreshing.  And it changes the way I move through the world!  It makes me slow down and pay attention and be a little kinder in my manner.  I need many reminders!  For the Body of Christ is everywhere around me and every move I make touches it.  O let my moves be gentle.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

O let my moves be aware.  Let my presence on the Earth be a well-wishing presence and not inimical.  May those creatures whose encounter with my body will mean the death of theirs without my even knowing it also return to the embrace of the Earth in peace, and be re-incorporated back into her gracious body, precious.

            When I walk on the Earth let it be with breath and step in harmony.  May I wear an inner smile to calm and bless myself, and an outer smile to bless all beings through whose presences I pass.  May I be a conduit of calm and grace when I move through my daily tasks, and not be overcome by speed and frustration.  May I not be a victim of my own irritation.

            In praying this prayer, I remember the grace of the larger animals, the wild animals, and the way they move through their world, in full possession of themselves and at home on the Earth, glorious in their natural harmony, in life and in death.

            I remember Christ as bear, and Christ as coyote.  I remember the Christ of the wilderness, the wild Christ, howling in the desert, and laughing.  Dying and returning and howling and laughing.  And giving all.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Nobody Owns the Land

Earth’s body is not for sale
or rent.  She is real and we are her estate.
But no body is property.
Not even God owns any of it,
but delights in its being its own.

An ancient forest is always
in a dynamic state, half
of its body actively growing,
half of it actively dying—
these are the same half!

The other half is always
eating and being eaten.
Trees live for two thousand years
and then are food for just as long.
This is perpetual and holy communion.

Nobody owns the sacred.
Every body is sacred.
Pray for the future:
become an animal spirited
and glorious in your Earthbody.
Offer thanks when you lie down
with the trees.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Volcano

You blow yourself up
to nurture your children,
to draw attention

to a larger reality
than human history,
to teach us

that destruction is
part of creation,
to remind us

that the Earth is alive
and every day of bearable
light is a gift.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

I AM

You are

            I mmortal

            A stonishing

            M ore

You have no need for a name—
            You are.
But we need to know You,
we need to be able to call on You,
greet You, invite You, entreat You,
wish You Good Morning and
thank You for a good day and
all the stars.

            And so we ask
            Who are You?
            meaning, What
            is Your name?

The only time You spoke
You spoke in fire.
Did the prophet hear
crackles of your laughter
coming out of the glowing
green boughs?
“I have no name but
you want to call Me
something, Friend, and
I agree.

“You cannot call Me No Name, so call me what—I Am.
            Essence of flame
            Breath of sky
            Being of light
            Sound of the dark
                        I Am

“And remember, Beloved,
                        You are
“My image.
To give Me worth and praise
you must simply be yourself,
claiming all complexity and
infinitude, for you are
I Am.

“We are relatives,
Essence and essence,
Mystery and mystery,
                        We are.”

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Burning Bush

Ascend the high regions
of the body, seek out
its mystery steadfastly,
become prophet in your own
desert, enter the narrow
vault and refine your sight
to its shimmering darkness.

Ride out the corpus callosum,
dark red against gray,
riverborne, cross over, enter
the sparkling cave downward,
descend to the blood source,
marrowstone.
It floods over itself,
darkly radiant, blinding.

Tell no one.
Bow low, humble yourself
before the burning bush
at the center where
brainstem hums, ganglia
enter and extend—
flames short forth in longing
to transform each thought
with fire no light or darkness
dare extinguish.

Here, deep and hidden
like a dear danger
within you,
speaks God.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Be

Reality is intricate and vast.
            You are real.
Life is cosmically generous.
            You are gifted, alive.
The Universe holds.
            You are embraced,
             you belong.
It is enough.
You are enough.

Do not be centered in
your self or the world,
but be a Self centered in God.

Love and let Love.

Listen—Life is in love with you!
Your life longs for your trust.

Your life holds
and graciously
carries you through.

Every breath is an act
of faith and courage.

Your body believes.

Breathe.

Be inspired and let go.
Be faithful.
Be brave.

Be.

Soul Covenant

For all that is
wild and free—
bless it, love it
and let it be.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Summary

The one
becomes
many and
the many are
One.

God is in
each heart’s core
and each is in God’s
Heart.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Eden Revisited

            Toward a compassionate partnership—

We’ve been reading it wrong.
It’s a story of how we took
Nature down with us all right,
but not because we’re such
important hot shots that what
we decide goes for everybody,
or the Creator is such an abusive
s.o.b. that he punishes the innocent
for the crimes of the guilty if
the guilty are godly enough.
We are a twisted species.
We bend our view of the universe
around ourselves as center cog.
By our distortion we have
injured Eden.  We haven’t a clue.

Complexity grants that the least
significant events or choices
affect everything to infinity—
microbes on pear trees,
and the honey bee as well as
human beings.

Our infant species dreamed it was
above its elders, beyond its betters,
the high chair tyrant entitled to rule
the rest, and worse—granted this
by a god.  We named the others and
proclaimed them Other, ourselves
what counts, holier than them.

We threw ourselves out of Eden.
Injured by us but alive,
its’s still here all around us.
We have only to return to our senses,
wake from our hubris, sit down
with our creature kin and humbly ask
by what name each knows itself,
and listen, without denial or defense,
for the names they have been saving up
to call us.

Once that’s over we can negotiate
everything and start again
with what’s left.
Then—

            In the beginning….

                        Alla Renee Bozarth

My Summa Theologica

Moral Summary

Commit your life
to the ultimate
well-being
of all beings

including
yourself
including
the slug
including
the angels

Mystical Summary

Practice passionate love
toward your Creator
and co-creatures

toward
your beloved
intimate others
and soulkin
of all kinds
toward
your own body

Every day
as much as
you can, give
freely to them

attention
affection
admiration
appreciation
and delighted,
enthusiastic
acceptance
on these, all beings
thrive, even God.

Alla Renee Bozarth

How Can We Survive Our Choices?

The main thing is
to lead one’s life,
not let it happen.

Life’s a choice
and also a gift
to be enjoyed.

Experience experience!
Immerse ourself in it!
Revel in the breathing
bubbles of it!

To go in the path
of one’s innermost choice,
the essential thing is
to listen to one’s dreams
a little more than
to one’s friends.

Otherwise, the ghosts
of friends may leave us
alone when we are dead,
to face without solace
the ghosts of our murdered dreams!

            Alla Bozarth

New Depth

The soul
when left
out in
the cold
tends
to lose
its voice
which
once
it returns
speaks
from a new
depth.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Time Traveler

My nemesis-no Greek goddess
but some medieval monk who first
conceived that clocks
were needed to call
men to prayer—and so
the beginning of dissociation
from the natural rhythms
of the heart toward God.

Ah, the mechanical hours,
then rude mechanicals,
the village clock towers
and the rule of the upright:
Be On Time!
But whose time?
Which long face to obey?
Two hundred to choose from
on the American frontier,
and chaos until the train
and telephone ushered in
the cuirrent system of splits:
time zones.

Benedictine time or Tellurian?
Cronos or Gaea?
From clock to computer
the commute’s a disaster.
I’m back with the farmers
and free—from dawn to dusk
to live and work in the world,
then sleep and dream
with the moon and stars
and be always in time
with Earth’s turn.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Chrysalis

I find myself in the time between selves.  Transition

old leaf, our biodance began
millennia ago, but today
I am glad to see you clearly
for the first time
with just these eyes,
my changing
partner!

Your bronze body
turns
to powder
with a crack
beneath my foot.

Part of you has already become me.
You are on your new way.

You will be back.
And so will I.
            So will I.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Sometimes I Feel the Sky

Sometimes I feel the sky
bending down over my body
and then suddenly a cry
of wild swans eerily
out of the deep silence
of night, in dreamflight
when the world sleeps
its sorrows down,

and on the ridge
from among the fir trees
the silver howling
of coyote or wolf
going on for long
antiphonal moments
together, the wild songs
of heaven and earth.

I feel the arousal
of ancient millennia
of longing, the four thousand
years of advent’s yearning
for Birth.  I leap up,
throw open the door, step
over the threshold
into that wonderful wail,
invite myself to participate,
all ears, in the souldeep sound,

Then settle in again
to wait in sleep
for the great return,
the pre-dawn birth
of the dream
that will create
a future and change
everything,
the earthquake
in my bed.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

In fields of fern
and blue lupine
a sliver fox stretches
under the blackberry bush.
There are small cities there,
an arboretum for whole
populations.

A fitting place
for this grown child
of parents who were
children of the Great
Depression and Russian
Revolution—the double
child abuse of poverty
and war.

They taught me not
to live by deprivation
but rather share
exquisitely any bounty
offered me.  Indeed, what lack
can there be when one is
surrounded by fields of blue
lupine where white foxglove
spires stretch toward heaven?

Alla Renee Bozarth

Just the Right Tilt

On a planet with
just the right tilt
of 23.5 degrees,
there is infinite
possibility for
variation.

On a planet where ice
floats, life sleeps
in winter to live
another spring.

Dancing in a young
universe, stars still
bump into each other
and star parts into us,
and the night sky
has not yet filled
with unbearable
light.

We can be entertained
by the flicker of humming
alive galaxies nearby.

On this planet of changing
seasons we wobble along
in amazement, awkward
and graceful at once,

The Elements Are in Charge

We live in
a place where
only the elements
are really
in charge,

and we are
all subject
to change,
and

the truth is,
we are in need
of comfort.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Not an Ordinary Craziness but Reality

Awakened by this poem
I have decided to tell you

There are spaces between atoms
And my neighbor the scientist

Wears snowshoes in his living room
To keep from falling through them.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

The Way Things Are

Who’s in charge here?
Not us!
Imagine deluding ourselves into a dominant role—

It’s the mitochondria & chloroplasts
who’ve organized us, their offspring,
into whole societies—they keep us
running & and we serve.

We don’t need to search out
space for company or kin.
Just look inside your nose
or pick a toe!  or the root of a rose!
One eyelash is a colony
of worthy guests.

Understanding this in the presence
of the crab apple tree I do
a little dance to celebrate the true state of things:
Hallelujah!  I’m a neighborhood!

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Literary Ecology

Read poetry—
            Save a tree.

Alla Renee Bozarth

Christ

It happens:
the Creator loves
Creation so much
and finds it so
wonderful that
like a passionate
mother or lover
desire overtakes Her—
She finds a way
to enter it,
to experience it
as completely
as possible,
limitations and all.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Redemption

So many millennia ago
You leapt up
from the bloody tree—
are You not now
weary

of the blood
of Your saints,

longing for them
also to discover
the secret

of the Great Dance?

            Alla Renee Bozarth

My Body the Earth

Grass, sand, rock and earth
for a floor, water for all
that cleans and refreshes;
mountains are altars,
the canopy of sky
our vaulted cathedral’s
sound roof, and the planets
and stars are our votive candles.

For me, our Mother the Earth
is the House of God.
Her music and walls are breathing,
alive,
Her rainbows are stained glass windows
that sing.

To live here in this body
is to be summoned to worship,
mindfully be part of the sacred
story.

And when Earth rages and groans
in self-sustenance and birth,
she demands our attention.
She requires our response:
Love, Thanks, and Amen!

            Alla Renee Bozarth

And I Walk Among Them

Around here animals
are allowed to be
themselves, at home
utterly in the cradle
of creation.

Come Spring
and the mama cows
walk up into the forest
bordering their pasture
to give birth
under the cedar trees,
and the midwifing birds
sing encouraging songs
to them.

Down the road
and around the bend
at sundown hens
and roosters fly
into the low tree
branches and prepare
for avian dreams.

And I walk among them,
at last an animal
happy in her whole being,
singing and greeting
and blessing and being
blessed and thanking God.

            Renee Alla Bozarth

“Do You Live Alone?”

Impossible!
Think of it!
Inside the walls
and joints of my house
are trillions of creatures,
some so small the ant and mouse
and solitary bee seem giants—
not to mention those who cuddle
close for warmth and crumbs
outside—thousands of species
of birds and insects,
rabbits, moles, creepy-crawlers
of all sorts, the neighbors’
cats and dogs and cows and geese
and sheep and horses.

Then inside are
the heavenly hosts
who welcome me to my table,
and earth angels in food and flower,
so open to intimacy and even union
with eye, nose, hand, lips,
organs words, dreams and poems.

Besides these,
all human colleagues
represented by each object;
the artists, laborers, crafters,
ancestors and friends behind
the presence of every beautiful
or useful or meaningful object
here.

And the forest of trees
that live on as furniture,
picture frames, and the very
structure that is home. 
I share my tree house
with millions of unmet mates
gratefully.

Mealtime meditation
brings in even more, transient
guests—those myriad beings
who have been part of my food’s
journey here.

I neither live alone nor eat alone.
Sometimes I need to step outside
to taste a moment of relative
solitude, and even then
it’s an illusion: the stars are
as with me and alive
as the sleeping bugs in the ground
beneath my feet.

I can stretch in any direction
and bless it, knowing a companion
is there within touch.
And because I know that every bush
is a burning bush,
I ask the roses not to burn my lips
when I bend to kiss them.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Hymn to Gaea

Mother Earth’s sweet green fur,
or sun-beached bones of sand
or red-parched skin of shale,
the children swimming in her blood—
marvelous manatee in gentle hospitality
or shy-singing whale,
coral, starfish and eel,
seahorses, plankton and pearl,
and land angels of elk,
eland, ibex and deer,
giraffe and lion and the beautiful bear,
foxglove, human child, and wonderful wolf,
and into infinity of stars I sing,
and I sing of them all, enthralled,
enraptured in you, Beloved One,
in all your creation,
every molecule a miracle!

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Dinner at the Alexis Esplanade

Waterfront dusk,
scallops on my plate
resting on spinach
and citron, crisp,
I bite into flesh,
feel the crunch of sand,
envision swallowing
the ancient mountain
whose quartz crystal bones
I am eating,
devouring my ancestors
for an appetizer
to spring lamb,
waiting to become young
by what I eat, becoming
instead a hundred million
years old—suddenly
ecstatic to find
so much more life
in me, grateful and so
glad to have lived!

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Piston’s Suite from The Incredible Flutist

Long past the age of innocence
some of us still wear feathers
and sequins at midnight and open
our hearts to enchantment again,
past brutalities and cruelty,
past all stupidities
that make me wonder
if God is out of Her mind
to let us go on.
If I were She I would have ended
the human experiment millennia ago,
a sad failure, a bad quirk of Nature:
Not content with the steady effort
of spiritual suicide, our species
in its place as organelle in the One Body
became macrophages autoimmunely
attacking ourselves and the Whole
cosmic Life.

Yet I marvel how You, Mother Creator,
have faith enough in us to let us perdure.

Now the human children in Eastern Europe
lead their elders through art and acts
of awareness to save the planet
from gross sins of pollution, 
greed’s outrageous assault on Earth.
A Polish child embodies the fate of a flower
poisoned by industry—a precious few begin
to offer a way to restore salvific life
to creation’s body, integrity to ourselves:
science and art unite in the holy work.
Fifty thousand parents and children
go to the beaches at summer’s end
to clean up our litter.
We are trying to unfowl our nest.
The brave teach peace, channel anger,
practice patience.  Our hearts can still be
collectively moved, taken in music’s communion,
when a visiting Chinese conductor raises her baton,

a magic wand, we become one ear in the World’s Body,
our shared soul lifted with the gift of lyrical laughter
by oboe, bassoon, the animal whistles and hoots,

Something More

Not the old gifts
of winter and year’s end—
last night’s communion
of old wine and flat bread
is not the common meal
we seek this morning…

Tired from late hours
the butterfly of night
comes hungry for light,
finds flame, is consumed
by the morning star.

Consider winter loss.
The candle wavers with cold,
and warmth is gone, but light
remains, more precious than before.

Outside the windows in deep pools
the frozen lakes hold fish below;
even in deep cold beneath the waters,
movement of their play.

We yearn for light and play
below the frost in the dark hours
of our dreams.

Toward dawn the skin of thin ice
shatters into the spring thaw of ourselves,
blood melts into milk, milk into power.

We are the food as we feast upon air;
as God gives, we give, from overflow
or utter emptiness.

Trembling, touching, discerning
the deep deserving of each
minutest creature:  we need
only to give up our disbelief
in the gift inside ourselves

What Am I Doing?

Allowing my trick body
finally to slow me down
so I can savor the gifts
of an accidental life.
Is it okay, Holy One,
that I’m just sitting
here enjoying
the occasional sparrow,
effervescent finches,
rainbow of flowers,
light and shadow play
in the pear trees,
horse tails dance
in greengold pastures,
and surrounded by music,
Mozart and the tricolored
blackbird—

not writing letters
in behalf of political
prisoners or even listening
to my neighbors’ troubles?

“At last,” says God,
“one of my creatures
I don’t have to worry about today!  Mazel tov!
Carry on!  Enjoy!”

I’ve finally opened
God’s birthday present
and discovered the true
purpose of life—
to enjoy it!

So from now on
my spiritual practice

will include plenty
of long periods of doing
nothing but giving
God a good time.

            Alla Renee Bozarth from “Moving to the Edge of the World”

“What is Prayer?”  (Part One)

Prayer is intimacy
with the Great Mystery.
Be every moment
aware of the Presence—
how you are loved!
She takes off Her wings
to heal you, He surrenders
everything for your sake.
At all times in every
hidden, open place
It lives in your deep
soul’s core, It moves
in your moving and acts
through your skin
and the skin or bark or shell
of all living beings—forms of angels,
and also of water, rocks, and fire.

So be awake to the life
that is loving you and
sing your prayer, laugh your prayer,
dance your prayer, run
and weep and sweat your prayer,
sleep your prayer, eat your prayer,
paint, sculpt, hammer and read your prayer,
sweep, dig, rake, drive and hoe your prayer,
garden and farm and build and clean your prayer,
wash, iron, vacuum, sew, embroider and pickle your prayer,
compute, touch, bend and fold, but never delete
or mutilate your prayer.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

“What is Prayer?” (Part Two)

Let prayer be your thinking
and thriving, your passionate
living and humble dying
back into Earth and God.
Let prayer be your senses and sex,
your political power, your confusion
and vision for good.
Let teaching tolerance and all childcare be prayer.
Let your mistakes be a prayer, and your unknowing.
Let remorse and forgiveness be prayer.

Make love in every act,
Create growth in each intent.
Nature in any form serves
as sanctuary and temple.
Let your bath be an oracle chamber,
every trip anywhere a pilgrimage,
and your dreambed each night
the Holy of Holies.

And so you are praying.
So you do what you be,
and all your being is blessed
and all your life is a prayer.
And all your acts are a blessing.

            Alla Renee Bozarth from Moving to the Edge of the World