eddys

sound eddies around my ears
radio sound
pounding hammer sound
the water of two days ago
eddies in ghostly markings left in the sand
energy eddies around me
camellias of all colors and styles eddy through pine trees
their dead blossoms eddy
amidst the detritus of pine needles and dry branches
the talk of friends, their voices full of wonder,
eddies through the tree branches that reach into the blue
flowing in, inundating, eddyfying
creeping into the lowest spaces
crawling over weirs into emotional wells
churning, then eddying
as the ebb begins dragging everything loose with it
everything unnecessary with it
pulling the teeth out of the mouth of God,
to keep,
to treasure
to remember the eddys
each in turn.

c. Roberta Compton Rainwater, 1998-2009/2017


streams

a dry leaf dances in the stream as it eddies around the stones,
crosses the hilltops, careens off of trees immersed in it.
the stream moves fast and cold after the rain.
I hear it all around me,
the prayersong it composes and decomposes,
recycles and rebirths every moment. It delights
in the light, moves the light across lichened stones,
smoothes it through my hair and across my face.
everything moves with this stream;
there is dance, here is dance,
yonder is dance.
dance and song reverberate
in my heart
as I sit on the rocks in the midst of the stream.
it reaches up and over me, whelming some of me,
cleaning most of me.
above the valley, I am cleaned and Loved into Being.

c. Roberta Compton Rainwater, 2004-2009/2017

sound and movement telling stories
of nectar supped so sweet and golden treasure found
of adventures felt so deep a bee must dance to tell it all
to tell it all
to tell it all
a bee must dance to tell it all
and share the ecstasy of success


c. 2009/2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater

In memoriam G.N.


what is this landscape?

a void so vast
so constant
of a Constancy so deep and all-encompassing
that a sounder reads no depth
that the specific becomes generalized
and the general becomes pointless
like a compass without hands

my heart knows this landscape
has taken readings
and scanned maps
with ineffable instruments
to follow The Way

if I seem to ramble
I do
because this landscape bids me to
it gives no bearings and nor do I

simply: flow

I am the flow-er
the flower
minute among minutae
moving and stilling
in Constancy so vast
it leaves me breathless...
until it doesn't

c. 2009/2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater

the awe / ness of her

enwhelms my heart

leaves me knowing what

I don’t know

creates some / ness in her awe

anoints with laughter

and hugs

what has not


c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2017

For poetry was all written
from 'The Poet' by Ralph Waldo Emerson

for poetry was all written before time was,

and whenever we can penetrate into
that region where the air is music,
we hear those primal warblings,
but we lose a word,
and substitute our own,
and thus
miswrite the poem;

for
the all-piercing, all-feeding, and
ocular air of heaven,
that
man shall never inhabit.

The religions of the world are the
ejaculations
of a few
imaginative men. The history
of hierarchies seems to show, that
all religion's error
consisted in making the symbol

too stark and
solid,
and, at last,
nothing
but an excess
of the ***** of language.



Transformation
from Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore

the soul    Thomas Moore said    is fostered
in the many turns of the labyrinth
making intimacy with the heart
a profound coupling of ego and soul
in deeps of intensity
deeps of fear
and
deeps of bliss

metamorphosis with artful participation
blushes the ivory to gold-tinged flowering
transforms by imagination
Narcissus


c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 1995/2017

a mockingbird strips the night
of quiet
opens a portal in my soul
to let what was in    out
and
what was out    in

to make an exchange of balances

just so does the cave Lechuguilla
**** air through her ******
in the desert near Carlsbad
balancing air pressure
in great    ******* puffs that make her moan
like a lover satisfied

or perhaps not

perhaps she groans and sighs
for the **** of her million-year solitude
for the loss of her art-full loneness
perhaps Lechuguilla sounds
to stem the contagion of sobs
daily growing in her heart
each sob feeding off the one before
marking like guideposts
the descent she now takes into oblivion
searching    searching

searching for herself

the story of a princess
scratches at the edge of my mind
a princess whose ability was as rare
as the sight of an egret flying against the star-crusted night
she mounted to the roof of her palace
each night    there to repose
to light the whole city
with her radiance

everything begins in the imagined

you donned your suit of lights
to woo me from myself
to court my innocence from its cave
now    head down    pawing dust into fog
I charge    bristling    and snorting threats
through my nose

you    beautiful in light-catching suit
send my barbs like adorned words
into my flesh and soul
I bleed the last of my happiness down my back
into the dry soil
of our We
our glances nick    then slide away
drawing more passion
to coagulate in tidal pools at our feet

I cannot be your imaginal woman

I am my own
I speak in wordchunks like charcoal
hiding fire within
I beat my rhythms to music you do not hear

because you have no reck of me


c. 1994/2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater

she took deep breath of him through her eyes
he snaked through her brain down her neck straight to her heart
there he stopped to drink from that sacred bowl,
then coiled and wiggled his way to her ***.
she felt a surge as her organs shook
her breath came in bursts.
her mind snapped from her inhibition like a flag
in a stiff wind.
she knew his scent without going near him
it was fern-laced and green, and she wanted
to put her nose to him and inhale to the bottom of her lungs.
she felt his ****** mistral blow through her, warming her limbs
he was water-wind-breath, po-wa-ha.
she felt her old skin peel away in the force of his mistral,
in the clean wash of his waterlight,
and the caress of his breathing on the air around them.
she stepped out of her old pelt to reveal
the woman she had always been.


c. 1995/2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater