Meditations in the Ethereal: Poetry and Collage

For me, the ethereal has a spirituality about it, something that transcends the banality of daily life. It has a suddenness to it; it comes unexpectedly, in sudden realizations. It has an ingredient of subtlety; if you're distracted and not in tune, you won't receive its gifts. The ethereal has much to do with lightness, air; ether is at the heart of the word. The ethereal has an elegance, an arabesque, a sort of delicacy, like a lace doily that rests under the frame of a loved one. It can be whimsical. It's definitely elusive.

My daughter seems to have an ethereal quality to her--she is just a wisp of a thing with eyes, eyes that tell the story of emotion and beauty and sensitivity. Eyes that are apprehensive about this world. Eyes with an ineffable hue; eyes not of this world. Her naked body getting into the bath reminds me of Sally Mann's nymph-like children; there's innocence there, but otherworldly qualities as well that portray a sort of ancient knowledge.

Maybe this ancient aspect can be translated into timelessness. Maybe the ethereal, like the divine, exists outside time. And yet, maybe science is honing in on it; it manifests in a higher frequency on the electromagnetic wave spectrum (after all, the ethereal is shaped in light). This science intersects with memory and myth in the mind. These are the ingredients. It's seemingly abstract and incomprehensible when we first witness it, but the mind makes its emotional connections and we learn to define its suddenness for ourselves. This is the interface of story, of myth.

Whatever it is, ethereal is the fine dance of mystery that exists in all of us.

I've tried to match some of my ethereal poems with collage work that has traces of that same quality. I am not sure I was successful in accomplishing my goal, but then again, the ethereal is foremost elusive, and maybe by not capturing it, I've captured it precisely.

        

            Totem Beasts
            There are no ghosts in this house.

                        No hem of a muslin dress

            draped over a riser.

                        No Emily Dickinson archetype

            figured prominently at the banister.

                        No face in the naked glass.

            The boreal firs, always a regiment,

                        are noble, melancholic as the

            tide bathes the sedge. 

           

            We listen for what the hayfield says.

                                                We wait

            for totem beasts, but no coyote parts these

                        fallow fields.  No moose.  No

            osprey in wake of wind.

                        Quotidian, these crows, those gulls.

            I am filled with pale green air.

                        My sister's child thumps in Utero.

            Clouds snuff the sun, the sacrament, the

                        fiery heart.

           

            Night comes.

            I sit quietly inside myself.

                        My father bows his head here,

            the lines echoing around his eyes.

 

            The Slow Pale Rise of Indigo

            The slow pale rise of indigo taps

                        at the door of the Underworld—

            it wants to walk here, free.

            It knows

            every twilight is a prophecy

                        and the visible carries

            the invisible on its back.

                       

            Our last breath passes through tarnished

                        skin and

            clogs the holes in our bones.

                        We fret, catch the slack vowels

            of the lullabies we sing ourselves.

            Something stands between me and the

                        morning glory's cup of prayer.

            Its thin vine grasps at every near thing.

                        At night, it wrings itself tightly

            as if it had hands.

Swollen Mandala

Everything white, as if baked in a kiln.

Moon hazed now, my one hundred year old

eyes closing, a song hidden just under my skin

demands an ear or two.  The seeds

have been sewn.  The sacred chant and

four rosettes are embedded in the

swollen mandala.  I summon the myths

of my ancestors, the mountains supine

and shadowless, the labyrinth on the hill,

the chapel, the Golgotha of cacti crosses.

Huddled in the back pews, the Indigenous

their dark eyes, pious heads.  I walked

the labyrinth to settle my nerves while

their sorrows protruded through the dirt

like small weeds.

My sister's child is a molded angel

white as the dust in that kiln.  There

on the sill, stone wings draped in leaves.

Take root, I say to the rosettes, unfolding.

Lay your pious heads on the translucent pillow,

wrap yourselves in the crimson sheets

and be lulled by song.