This Mortal Marriage: Poems of Love, Lament and Praise
By Alla Bozarth
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About this ebook
Twilight
A star seems
to slip secretly
over the mountain.
A river sings
a new song of never-before
and always.
You look into the eye
of a deer and see
the whole forest,
a star on each tree.
It could be morning.
It could be night.
The push is over.
At last
you remember
whose you are.
Alla Bozarth
Dr. Alla Rene Bozarth is an award-winning poet and author of numerous titles of prose books, poetry collections, and audiotapes, including Stars in Your Bones, Life is Goodbye/ Life is Hello, Widsom and Wonderment and Water Women. She is one of the Philadelphia Eleven, history-making women who became the first female Episcopal priests in 1974. Dr. Bozarth holds a doctorate in performing arts from Northwestern University and is a certified Gestalt therapist. She practices soul care of herself and soul-mending and soul-tending of others at Wisdom House near Mt. Hood in western Oregon. Many of her poems, along with the art of owner and designer, Susan Lind-Kanne, are featured on Bear Blessings Soul Cards.
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This Mortal Marriage - Alla Bozarth
© 2003 by Alla Renée Bozarth
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written
permission of the publisher.
iUniverse, Inc.
For information address:
iUniverse, Inc.
2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100
Lincoln, NE 68512
www.iuniverse.com
Understanding,
Mt. Hood,
Presentation,
and portions of Scars
and What Wise Women Do Now,
are available as framable art greeting cards among a series of Alla’s poems produced by Susan Lind-Kanne, artist and owner of Bear Blessing Soul Cards. To order Bear Blessings Soul Cards, log onto www.life-lines.us.
Front cover photograph taken by Sherrie Cole-Kalar.
Back cover photograph taken by John Jarman.
ISBN: 0-595-30036-7 (Pbk)
ISBN: 0-595-66120-3 (Cloth)
ISBN: 9-780-5957-5146-4 (ebook)
Contents
Acknowledgements
Prolegomenon
What is Poetry?"
Part One
There is No Such Thing as Safe Sex
Birth is a Movable Feast
The Short Form
Initiation Dream
Single Eye
Telling Time
Bad Sleep
Time Out
Putting it Simply—
Going All the Way
Has Anybody Here Read Thomas Aquinas?
My Liberal Education
Shingles on My Face
The Angel of My Illness
Resurrection Ritual
A Plea Against Imposed Thanaphobia
Spirit Eye—How God Speaks through My Face
For Another Day
Temple-tending
Handwriting on the Wall
The Artist
Pyroclastics
Phrenology
Love Poem to End
Too Much Woman (Says Goodbye)
Complications
Marrow
I Will Always Love You
Dragon Love
Eros in Shadows
Love Poem to a Man Who Claims a Castrated Intelligence
My Love Who Has Left
All or Nothing
The Croissant
Molting
Mt. Hood
Modern Times
Pilgrim’s Process
Cross-patterning
Kairos
Salmon Return
Home Coming
Volcano
Siege
Transformation
Cycle
No Answers Intended
Crystal
Deliverance
Passion Dance
Soul in the Womb of God
Flight into Opposites
Dive
Bleeding is an Involuntary Act
Goodbye Means God Be With You
Begging Bowl
Love Mantra for Letting Go
Recovery: Dissociation of Sensibility
Loving the Body
Twist of Fate
Transition
Chenonceau
Black Madonna—Notre Dame sur La Terre
Advent in Israel
Incongruity/Congruity
I Am Looking for You
My Lover’s Name for Me
In Memory of Us
Shekinah
After Dismembering
Continue Becoming the Person You Want to Be
Fifty Years After Holocaust
You Angels Who Cluster
Life Does
Are We In the Right Universe?
To My Friends Going to Visit Their Chiropractors This Week
Aging
Visiting the Old Folks’ Home
Away
Where Do They All, the Millions, Go to Die?
The Silk Tree
Worlds, My Love
Angst: Rite of Passage*
Trade
The Tomb of Lady Tashat
Beth’s Death
The Poet Who Saw Too Much:
Anne Sexton
Two Sides of Suicide
Vitiator
Late Contingence
Necessity
Scars
Two Houses
Agony
Limenality
The Kinship of Suffering
The Pain of a Loverless Body
Depression
Susto
Chronic Illness: When Coping Wears Out
This Illness
Life Review
Reality—it’s a trick
Teal’s Question
When the Well Runs Dry
Recovery and Memory
Life Breaks All of Us to Let Us Become More
Prayer for Old Age
Sanctus
Consummation
Sea Call
Out from the Islands Off North Carolina
Belonging
Biodance
My Spiritual Practice
What Wise Women Do Now
Dance for Me When I Die
Journey
Equinox
Solstice
There is No Limit, or Pondicherry Pie*
Lady Christ
(The Bodies We Can’t Imagine and) What I Love Now
Free Fall
Sing Me Up
Wedding Dervish
Going to Heaven Like a Bee, Like a Fish, Like a Bird
Part Two
What Did You Learn?
On Receiving Poems from My Father
Blackout
Legacy
Desert Child
Our Father Died
Old Man, I Loved
Pirate’s Child
Resurrection
Touring
Padre es Muerto
Bone Cradle
Circle
All Souls’ Day
Found (Father) Poem
Gifts
Daughter-rite
Climacteric Lament
Persephone and I
After a Year, Only Bones
My Mother is a Dragon
To My Parents
Ancestors
Winter Rite
Stations
Midwives
Moonfire
It Begins
Loving Hands
Bring a Torch, Jeannette
As We Cross a Bridge of Dreams
Their Sapphire Wings
Shalom, Havere, Shalom Abba Rabin
More Words for William Stafford
After Seeing What the River Says
Shaking
To Thomas Merton
The Son
What Almost Happened—and The Habit of Miracles
Always Let Bells Ring
Going Back Into God
Firebird Regatta
Voyageur
Picture of Burntside Lake Found at Easter
Because it Means Separation
In the End When Life Begins Again and there is Only All and Now
Part Three
Time
To My Love, Gone After Fifteen Years
Beloved Come Lately
Life After Death
Euridyce
Orpheus
Yahrzeit
Silence
Soulmates
Widow
This Mortal Marriage
Carousel
Dear Yoko,
Enduring Friends
Cygnus X-1
Fallout
Antigone to Kali
Eternity Holds Time as Earth’s Atmosphere Holds the Woman Whose Womb Holds the Person Seed
Wedding Gifts
Aurora Dance
Telescope
Memory Tree
Resurrection Sequence
Christmas Resurrection
Something New has Happened, Something Aweful
Where are We Going?
Unafraid
Testimony
Healing Place
What Makes Me Cry
Awakening
Nesting Gifts
Find
El Greco, Athene, Medusa
Lost and Found
Fall Crocus
Isis, Spirit-keeper
Green Man
After the Fact…
As Soul Clings to Substance
Dolores
Suttee*
Men always wait for their wives
At Morning’s End
Christmas in Limbo
My Death
Fire
Imagine
Third Year
Destinies
Demand
Dancing Under Burning Stars
Easter Rites
Talking with My Hands
I, Solitary,
Uncle Yasha, or My Family History
Where Did You Go?
Angel Falls
Reincarnation
Chickadee Sacrament
Photography: Light-writing
Part Four
On the Feast of Joan of Arc
Lady of the Lake
For My Friend Nancy in Supraconsciousness After Cerebral Hemorrhage in May
After the Stroke
Three Friends
That Moment at Last
Pieta
Notes to an Unbeliever
Four Proofs of the Existence of God
Evolution/Resolution
The Middle
Why Me?
Well Being
Maya
Anytime, Anywhere
Claude Monet
The Union of Heaven and Earth
Early Winter Evening Walk
In the Presence of Elders
Changing Channels
Christmas Night
The True Meaning of Christmas and Everything Else
Rose Warrior
Presentation
Saints and Sinners
Truth is a Prism
Alchemy
My Favorite Alchemy or What to Do With the Wounds
How Alchemy Works
Making Gold
Garden of the Unsung Kaddish
How Dying Works
How I Live and Why
Morning Prayer for the New Millenium
Immanence/Transcendence
Dear Doctor,
Understanding
True Story of a Russian Orphan
What Next?
True Colors
My Summa Theologica
Summary
Sacred Sex
Twilight
Soulfire
Soulboat
Acknowledgements
Some of the poems in This Mortal Marriage first appeared in the following books and audiotapes by Alla Renée Bozarth:
Books
The Book of Bliss
A Journey Through Grief
Accidental Wisdom
At the Foot of the Mountain
Life is Goodbye/Life is Hello: Grieving Well through All Kinds of Loss Lifelines
Love’s Prism
Six Days in St. Petersburg
Sparrow Songs—A Father-Daughter Poetry Collection
Stars in Your Bones: Emerging Signposts on our Spiritual Journeys (with Julia
Barkley and Terri Hawthorne)
The Book of Bliss
Womanpriest: A Personal Odyssey
Audiotapes
A Journey Through Grief
All Shall Be Well, All Shall Be One
Dance For Me When I Die
Reading Out Loud to God
Water Women
Prolegomenon
Spirituality and sensuality united together make soul. And without one or the other, soul cannot exist. And because soul is eternal and incarnate, it carries sensual life beyond the realms of time, as it brings the infinite mystery of spirit into the realms of time, though we do not have any idea how all this happens.
Such is the miracle of marriage. It brings two lives, two depths together, and takes them beyond themselves. The marriage may end or break, but when it is true, its effects remain and continue.
So body goes its way in death and returns to earth, and spirit returns to the realms of light. But something of each goes with each still, making both sacred, and that is soul.
The mortal marriage is not just the one marked by commitment between lovers. I mean also the mysterious union between spirit and body, the joining of two energies and their spontaneous creation of a third, what we call Soul. When the lifelong union between spirit and body breaks, soul remains, takes off on its own, goes Somewhere. Goes somewhere Else. We can’t track it except by inklings, by imaginings, as parents track the child grown up and gone to Africa to work in the Peace Corps only by inklings drawn from vague descriptions in letters sent home, even though parents and child have until now spent a still-brief lifetime together. Everything has changed. Newness and distance prevail, though they serve to deepen love. Bonds become both frighteningly untenable and truly real. Soul is the lovechild of spirit and flesh that wanders out into the Unknown, and is—after all else goes—permanent, part and participant in a Larger Life than we can know until the going gets us there as well. It is to honor this mortal marriage that I write, and specifically to honor the deepening mystery into which I was drawn following my husband’s early death.
These poems, though not all about you, are for you, Phil, friend and lover, mate and brother—for you, who befriended my body and loved my soul, who befriended my spirit and worshipped my mortal flesh—you, who gave me childhood, who began as the playmate I never had and grew with me into a true soulmate; who had the courage to be true no matter what, to go the journey to the limit and then go beyond, to risk life to the full—you, who taught me to make commitment, to trust, to learn to be both truly happy and truly married. For these true graces, I thank you. Our marriage is always, for what new love has found me since your death confirms that the soul is not monogamous, and all true love and all time bonds are eternal.
Life takes time and Time takes life.
"Love as fully
as Life allows.
Live as fully
as Love allows."
From What Jesus Really said,
in The Book of Bliss
What is Poetry?"
So it may be animal
tracks made by experienced
paws that have been
around
some, picked up sand
and soot from the burn-off
of city mornings
or forest fires, old
volcanic dust on obsidian
beaches.
Could be claw marks
scratching for soulfood—
Could be pure music, too,
to fit a dancing eye
or the ear of the heart,
just the notes themselves
that formed themselves
on the skins of trees
beaten down and pressed
to fit a human
creaturely hand.
I have no idea
what a poem is.
But I know it
has a voice
and makes a sound,
sometimes a creaturely cry
or moan, sometimes a song.
I know it is a joy
that expresses
nerve and bone.
Part One
There is No Such Thing as Safe Sex
Sex is the absolute
possible joy of being
a creature—sometimes
breathtaking bliss,
an ecstatic epiphany,
or a simple high moment
of life.
And sometimes
sex is just
a damn nuisance.
Nevermind that
it can ruin lives,
complicate friendships,
take down nations,
lead to war and worse—
create complete catastrophe.
You never know
where it may lead—
new worlds or
dead ends.
It can make men’s brains
migrate below their belts
or into their fists
and women forget
they had a life plan.
Sometimes an hour’s pleasure
leads to lasting treasure.
Sometimes to sickness and death.
Still, when I feel the old rumble
in my blood and come a little
more alive, I surrender
to the primal call along with the best,
in theory if not practice.
After all, it was good enough
for my Mama, and I guess
I’m more or less proof
it can be worth the trouble.
Birth is a Movable Feast
White is the worst,
said the midwife.
"Blue and purple are bad
but white means a long time
without oxygen."
I was taken up by alien hands
on Ascension Day, May 15, 1947;
I was denied the long descent
down the birth canal, the first
necessary transit.
Picked like an onion
coiled in the womb
at a time not mine.
No cry. No natural struggle
to be born.
I believe I should have liked
to sleep a bit longer and would
have leapt up singing
later in the day.
So. This primal loss,
the grief of a lifetime,
the quest: to be born.
Again and again I struggle
to finish the fear, to swim
into the future, to remember
how it’s supposed to be done.
Give me my birthright!
Every day is a happy birthday,
deathday, something-new-to-discover
day. Don’t do it for me!
It’s my fight, my rite.
In poems, in love, in work:
I will be midwife and mother,
will be the beloved other, urging.
I will strike, shout, inhale
all life in one swallow,
will sneeze eyeswide, let out
the full blast of delight
in at last achieving delivery.
My hands, blood-covered
in their eager love, croon on:
it’s never too late to be born.
The Short Form
My life—or Why I have
fibromyalgia.
I was conceived on Mariposa Street
across from the Biltmore Hotel in
downtown Los Angeles.
Papa told me this for shock effect
when I was in my thirties
and apparently low on entertainment.
I had my beginning in the name
of the butterfly—Psyche’s emblem
of death and resurrection.
After awhile, things changed.
My parents said goodbye to Hollywood
and went north. Papa worked nights
on live radio. Mama listened
while she cooked (and cooked me).
They dined at 2a.m.
and went to bed at dawn,
never up before the crack of noon.
Mama’s doctor said, "I’ll take out
your baby at eight Thursday morning,"
as if I were a tooth to