Songs of Gaia

Devotional poems to nourish the heart SONGS OF GAIA

Julie Tara

Introduction I remember vividly when poetry first made a profound impact on me. I was 13 years old, deeply immersed in ballet training at the prestigious Royal Ballet School in London, England. At the tender age of 10, I left home to become a full-time boarder at the school, and was frequently deeply laden with a sense of aloneness, vulnerability, and great expectations for my future life as a professional dancer. I found simple outlets for the loneliness and grief of missing my family: dancing (many hours a day, of course); classical music (I spent most weekends sequestered in the music room playing clarinet and piano); and climbing the huge trees that surrounded the school. The school is situated in the middle of Richmond Park, an exquisite Royal Park filled with deer, sheep, wild birds, lakes, ancient ferns, and magnificent old-growth trees. However, it was when the poets from centuries past spoke to me for the first time, describing their visceral experiences of life, that I felt a powerful connection to the soul of humanity in my little-girl heart: Percy Bysshe Shelley speaking of the silvery moon; William Blake touching me through seeing the world in a grain of sand; William Wordsworth’s host of daffodils that wave about me still. Suddenly I didn’t feel so forlorn any more. Here was a connection to others who seemed to notice, feel and fully experience the beauty of this universe much as I did. It was a meeting of souls, and a great relief. I recall the day I recited by heart D.H. Lawrence’s poem, “The Snake,” to my classmates. Every word resonated in my body as I spoke, and I experienced opening into a mystical, magical place. After the last word flowed out from my lips, an evocative, awe-inspiring silence fell like soft velvet over the room. We were somehow transported into a space of total union, into the presence of something numinous, something otherworldly. The phrase, “Be still and know that I am God,” comes to mind, to heart. Spoken through me, somehow Lawrence’s words conjured up this magnificent spaciousness in which all could participate. I fell in love with the possibilities of poetry, poets, and the power of the word to create palpable transformation in our world. Today there is so much suffering, inequity, violence, betrayal and grief, that finding solace is a challenge. Our beloved earth is going through turbulent changes, as are we. Technology abounds, and connection should be evermore effortless, yet this is not always the case. Our deep connection to and experience of the Great Mystery often eludes us, and we search for it here, there and everywhere, desperate for an experience of truth, love, of peace … of our own soul’s knowing. I believe this is why there is such a lovely resurgence of poetry occurring now. Intuitively we know that we’re birthing a new world, that the light is returning to our hearts. This fills us with new hope and luminous joy. The mystic poets of the ages are once again singing in our midst, singing our souls awake at this auspicious dawn. It is my dearest hope that here, amidst these simple words strung together as pearls on our Mother’s necklace, you will find an opening to your own experience of Presence, of the Infinite, of the Divine, that has always loved you and always will. Namasté

Song of Gaia Kiss the earth and know her longing for your happiness. Tell her you love here and witness the faeries beam. Wash her stones with your tears of surrender and feel her raindrops of forgiveness on your back. Let her hear your lament ~ allow her to bring you remembrance.

For she is your mother, your lover, your dancing partner. She is the one whose mountains you’ve wandered: breasts of the Goddess; Whose rivers and oceans you’ve drunk deeply from: blood of her veins; On whose plains you’ve grown grain for millions: source of infinite nourishment.

Know though you may desecrate her she is always all compassionate. The ubiquitous flow of blessing bubbles forth from the hidden springs beneath her cloak. She is the womb of potentiality bringing forth life, gracefully receiving death. She is the one you cannot offend though she may shake you from her lap. She is the one who whispers to you in your infinite dreaming.

Listen for Gaia is calling, calling her people, calling for us to bring through the light, send roots into her belly, and lift her with us into the higher chord of the Cosmic Song.

Buddha Pearl Everything else aside ~ everything in the world aside ~ there is one luminous, luscious, illustrious place

where lies the smooth satin curve, milky white moonbeam, sphere of perfection:

~The Buddha Pearl ~

Where you and I birth love again. Where you and I

cry in our sleep, laugh in our wakefulness, give thanks forever.

I’ll give it all up ~ everything else ~ to meet you here once again.

Golden Tigers When the last of my golden tigers expires silently in the Siberian snows, and the final polar bear drowns in pursuit of food for her cubs in the constant spring melting times, this you will know.

When the howling wail of my turbulent waters hurls through one more innocent village, and the blazing fires of my thwarted passion and despair

leap through the forests

of deepest devastation, this you will know.

That, though you heard my anguish in your dreams at night all through your life, and rolled over, again and again, heeding them not; yet I will bless you little ones,

for truly you know not what you do,

and I will always love you.

This ~ yes this this we will know.

Wild World I long for the wild world ~ the crashing sea and perilous mountains, the fine sands of deserts undulating in the hot breath of the dragon’s yawning.

I long for the wild world ~ rich verdant forests where bears and foxes forage in the underbrush of life; where eagles circle high casting long shadows across the land as they spiral on the wind, as they spiral across the sky.

Places where no one goes, unspoiled by human touch, untrammeled by human greed ~ Paradise undisturbed by the coarseness of man’s ignorance.

My heart is longing, like a soft breeze through the firs, to be lost and found in the wilderness of our beloved planet.

All I want is to be here, here in the wild world with you.