Prairie Song

Hi all!
I wrote this song on a warm day in January, after many cold ones and an ice storm, when the prairie I saw on the way to work was so beautiful I had to write about it. But now it reminds me of the sacred spot on the prairie that we occupied for a week in May, and of my spirit brothers and sisters who spent that week with me!

The sun comes in showers of glory
and waltzes across the sky
then sinks like a ball in the firey west
while our lives fly swiftly by.

The birds of the air are singing,
to the beauty of the day
And the wildflowers tell their stories
As they dip and dance and sway.

CHORUS
Your thoughts are as deep as the prairie
Your heart is as wide as the sky
You stand tall and firm, and grounded to earth
While your soul is learning to fly.

The land is covered in whiteness
the snowflakes dance on the plains
but the ice and the snow
hold the promise and hope
of the warm summertime rains.

The winter winds come a calling
They howl all cold and forlorn
But as we live we know that after the frost
Comes the beautiful gift of the morn.

CHORUS

The wind waves through the grass on the hills
that shine like a vast sea of gold
And this beautiful spot
On God's good green earth,
Can't really be bought or sold

The night sky, it sparkles like diamonds,
like the sun on the morning dew
And as I stand and I gaze at the rolling green hills,
I begin to think of you.

CHORUS

I'm Ready

And it's all true!

CHORUS:
I’m ready, ready, ready as I can be
I’m ready, ready, ready as I can be
I’m goin’ to Kansas, I’m ready to be me

STOPTIME:
I try to get centered, I try to get clear
I try to organize away my fear
REFRAIN: I’m ready, ready as I can be
I’m goin’ to Kansas, I’m ready to be me

STOPTIME:
Picky placing gear precisely in my ride
While my suitcase is still empty & my clothes piled high... REFRAIN

STOPTIME:
'Bout out the door, this pop stand to blow
But I can't find my journal, without I'll never grow! ... CHORUS

STOPTIME:
Finally on the road, headin’ outa town
I remember I forgot… my coat and turn around... REFRAIN

STOPTIME:
Miz Mazda makin' tracks, zoom zoomin' at last
The Prairie is the future, the Boot Heel is the past... REFRAIN

STOPTIME:
Eight hours later, almost to Council Grove
When the police pulls me over, now I'm goin' so slow… CHORUS

BRIDGE [Slow with rubato]:
I’m craw--lin’ across Kansas, craw--lin’ out’ my skin
But if I ever get there… [Fast with energy:]
I’ll be ready (I’ll be ready) to jump in… CHORUS

BRIDGE [Slow with rubato]:
I’m craw--lin’ across Kansas, craw--lin’ out’ my skin
But if I ever get there… [Fast with energy:]
I’ll be ready (yeah I’ll be ready)
Come on get ready (oh I’m ready)
Are you ready? (yes, I’m ready) [Stop:]
to jump in... jump in... yeah jump in... oh jump in... JUMP IN!

-- Maria Johnson, 5/08; rev. 6/08

Jubilee

It feels as if
All my life I've been waiting
To arrive at this place
In the trajectory of my life.

The numbers speak differently to me
That it seems they do to others.
For once, the fractions make sense:

50--Why, that's half 100!
Grandma becomes that next year!

12ish--That's one-quarter of my life,
That's how long I've been farming,
Lived in one place,
Been a grandma myself.

In this exact moment,
I am crossing the bridge
To the second half of my life
Waving banners,
Requiring that trumpets announce my way.

How light everything feels,
Here on the other side of 50:
I let everything that is not beloved
Remain behind in the rubble
Of life before my Jubilee year,
And I skipped over the bridge by myself,
Laughing
With a new, brave voice.


Natalya Lowther

What I've Carried With Me

Today I noticed my favorite boots
have lost their smell of cow manure,
which they picked up tromping dirt roads
by Vermont hay fields a couple of weeks ago.
They must have lost it in Kansas, scuffed off
in the grit of the camp lane we took back and forth,
rubbed out on prairie grasses and forbs,
rinsed in the rains, blown away
in those awesome cleansing winds.
My cats sure sniffed them over good
when I came back. I wonder
if they smelled the calcium-rich limestone,
or a breath of narrowleaf gromwell,
or carrotleaf lomatium, a crush
of burr oak acorn caps, or maybe some clue
to the struggle that lost one turkey
so many feathers by the path to Cedar Point.
Perhaps my boots smell, too, a little
like the nice meals Cathy valiantly cooked for us.
You may be thinking “No, it’s just the OFF
you sprayed on them, silly,” and that may be true,
except for the springiness they picked up
from soaking in hours of music and poetry
and pleasant company. But here’s
where words step back, and I am left
with image and sound and feeling – your faces
and expressions, specific little phrases,
voices speaking and singing, women dancing,
guitars, drums, piano and keyboard playing
melodies, cadences, grooves, harmonies:
memories that roll over the cells of me,
over one thousand miles away,
like a gentle river rolls
over its thousands of stones.

I Carry Your Heart in My Heart

I carry your heart in me
oh beautiful grandmothers
of this sacred land
oh shining lake
in the storms that come
oh brightening green
of the trees that sing
I carry your heart with me
oh dear friend who gives me song
oh dear friends who open up the air
with courage that climbs and aches with love
I carry this place in me
wide green heart that holds its own
place of tribes and medicines long gone
but here, still here

The secret that nobody knows
grows rots to blossom
trees to stone
the earth alive in the wind and sun
right here
I carry all this heart with me
in my heart

-- Caryn

hungry for your words

I tried to post a photo but didn't manage to manifest it. Maybe this one will work. I am working on a song that keeps rolling round in my brain pan and was inspired by this photo... enlarge it by clicking on it and you can see the spot where the sun is shining through on one spot of the road ahead.

I would love to see everyone's last day circle poem or comment. Or perhaps what you wrote todaty! My eyes and ears are hungry for your words. Antsy Nantsy

So, what should the caption to this picture be?????

A halo for your every word

I will not remember your name.
The names of people, of places
Are not what stays with me.
Your face, the sharps and roundness
Head turning, lips moving,
Eyes lively with concentration,
Will never leave me.

Today, our hands will open.
The unnecessary deeds and all
Encumbrances we carry,
All these will drop away.
Banished by the embrace
of voice and sound.
Only your face will remain.
Its light a halo for your every word.

Mother's Day Mantra...

This struck me as a lovely thought for today ... Happy Mother's Day and Love to all ... Di

Dharma Dog

RRRRROWF RRRROW OW OW OW OW
Dharma Dog
Hits hard with
His wake-up stick!

Dream will not let go
let go
Blowing mist,
the smell of white lilacs,
a thrill of feathers
or is it fur?

The sound of heavy
footsteps
Things focusing on other things.
Objects that whisper
"Carry me from room to room...
"Carry me from house to house."

Bhodi Dog
Barks!
Bites
Samsara to the
White Hard Bone.
RRROWWPT!

Nancy Still barking Hubble
Sending you all delight and love.

Taking y'all with me...

Several times I have tried to tell my husband things about Brave Voice '08 and have resorted to doing that eyes-to-the-sky manic hand waving thing that is supposed to keep you from bawling your head off. But in a good way :)

I Carry You With Me

I am a prairie-sea

of your hearts,

tall and waving

to the sun.

I am a star-cloud

of your voices

mapping out

the sky.

I am a feather-boat

of your spirits

set adrift

on sweet waters.

I am a love-note,

unfolded,

and read aloud

by the wind.

Much love to you all,

Amy

LANDED!

LOVED this pic of our guides of great wisdom. You two are changing the world in miraculous ways with what you have started here. Thank you, thank you...

Had a great trip home sisters... processing the weekend for 5 hours made for a delightful afternoon. Listened to lots of old songs on the ipod from live recordings over the last 5 years and heard them in a completely different way today, because I am truly changed. Five of those songs are now definitely worthy of some attention and are to be recorded on the next CD!

 

I have the Envelope of Truth (as I'm calling it...) sitting on my "shelf of inspiration" near my desk ... It will serve to keep you all close at heart. I am grateful for every single one of you and look forward to checking in here frequently to get updates on everyone's life changes as a result of  this incredible week. xoxoxo

Back to the Other World

Well, I am home, unpacked, with a giant piles of laundry on the bedroom floor and a full heart. Soon I will crash, but I wanted to post my goodbye thoughts before the great crash happens.
Then, more later!

I carry away in my heart
The rainbow colors of each of the souls in this place
and I hear more clearly than ever the song in my own heart,
sung by each crystal voice in this place
and it is beautiful baby!

An Introduction to Brave Voice -- by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

Several years ago rhythm and blues singer-songwriter Kelley Hunt and I started talking about how singing can open up our writing voice, and visa-versa, all of which couldn’t help but to enliven the rest of our lives. That was the impetus behind Brave Voice, the week-long retreat we developed that brings men and women together in the wilds of the weather and their own experience to recover, discover and express more of their voice and life.

As a writer, I’m long-acquainted with the value of entering a new piece of writing through the backdoor, which means being committed enough to write without making such a big deal about doing it perfectly that the words get too scared to show up. Instead, I show up, put myself out there on the page, and bring enough curiosity and respect for the art, for the poem, story, or song to unfurl and show itself. In bringing singing and writing together with Kelley, I realize we’re walking into all kinds of new places through back doors, opening up the physical voice through singing and then watching what happens with that voice on the page, or speaking from the heart and then leaning into a song to see what it has to show us.

This kind of engagement allows us to access far more of our lives, experiences, perceptions, magic, music and words than putting only our brain’s frontal lobe in the driver’s seat. Yet such engagements benefit from enough patience, time, safe enough space to take creative risks, and good enough witnesses to help us see what we’re creating. It’s a date with the mysterious to witness what wants to be said, written, sung or performed, and both Kelley and I believe in having outrageous fun and making sure to get up and dance on such dates.

At Brave Voice, we come together to listen deeply to ourselves, to each other, to the land and lake and sky around us, to the calling of our own voice, and the sightings along our own path. We witness each other, and in doing so, we learn how to listen more deeply to our own creative process. We are witnessed, which helps us feel and know the full weight of our music, writing, and art.

Where we meet has much to do with what we find. The retreat is held at a camp on an arrowhead-shaped peninsula surrounded by Council Grove reservoir. The location, in the center of the Flint Hills (endless hills of tallgrass prairie that look like voluptuous women lying on their sides), was key meeting ground for Plains-area tribes, which came together in council to share news, celebrate, meet and make and keep community. The location of the camp is the precise place where thousands of tribal people met for hundreds of years.

Coming to this sacred ground, we experience both resonance and reverence that’s inherently healing, grounding and renewing. We come to a particular place, and in doing so, we also find our ways into our own particular songs, stories, poems, plays, rhythms and motions. Such a place, combined with such a process, uncovers the utter bravery of our voices, and what we have to say, sing or write to the world.

Check out Kelley's new site: http://www.myspace.com/kelleyhuntmusic.