Frozen Light by The Holistic Coach

FROZEN LIGHT

A collection of poems

E d i e S u m m e r s

for the beloved in each of us

Table of Contents

Moon in Venus Lady of Shalott Journey Talk Love Poem Secret Beach holding sand

11 13 15 17 18

Eclipse Dark Angel Afterthought Rainy Season Snow Leopard Crescent Moon

23 26 29 31 33

Letters to Orion First Letter Second Letter Midnight Sun The Snowflake Curve This is My Home

37 39 41 45 47

Moon in Venus

Lady of Shalott I've peered into your fiction world a thousand times. It becomes, on occasion, demystified when I try, not too hard, to catch your gaze. That Look -- of somewhat searching, yet somehow knowing, already, why you’re sitting there among the shadow-green of leaves both conceal and, sometimes, when you least expect, reveal the ripe, unattached lily-pads that just float there in your private pond. I've seen this, on occasion, when I'm only half-looking at your curious stare, avoiding what could be mistaken for eye contact. And, I must admit, I too, felt at times as though I belonged there -- alongside you in your wooden boat, before my courage, too, was sunk, in unclear, jaded water. I've had a sense of timing.

Journey Talk The canyon extends, quiet and longing, curving graciously in slow, wide patterns. We trace the edges in silence, in a black Ford with everything belonging to us crouched in the back, waiting for its new life. It’s a journey in gradation, this canyon-driving – its own, selective world with the trees, part of some on-going chorus. Their voices, near impossible to hear, exist, you know, in a nook somewhere. You sigh and shift into some other gear. It’s a journey of slow rolling miles, percentages, a gas station, patch of sky or two. The day takes on a new sentiment as gold rushes the leaves. They are tingling, or basking in some rose-mysterious afterglow. And we keep the radio tuned to whatever is in reach – the local appetite or static – to find a vague connection as we pass along the canyon road, driving into the night.

Love Poem Evergreens at night in the fields. In the evenings the fireflies glow and gather in the meadow grass. Let it be by this light that we seek one another while the earth turns silently on its steady course. At dawn the silver is replaced with soft gold. Sun and moon alchemize the day and we swoon -Touching you is placing my hand on warm, moonlit sand and sinking, falling into something quite possibly incalculable, and most certainly irretrievable… Still I follow you down paths I was not meant to take, from which I feel no need to return… until you are gone, and I have forgotten from where I came. But the ache remembers, and rises to wake me every morning. And I think to myself sometimes that illusion is good enough to get me by, endure the nights, relish in what lives at odd hours. The summer’s calm that reels me in, leaves me breathless, so in love, and hardly waiting for the placated day.

Secret Beach On some days it came down to this, what to make of the spinning world. The way it continued to travel in a near perfect ellipse The drugstores we’d frequent at nights in search of chocolate, were tempered by an inkling, that what was in store for us the quiet revolution, the awesome expanse of those white clouds that rose and huddled around the moon was proof of a world further taken by its own. We’d travel the beach at night and watch, study the guided clouds, with chocolate melting in our hands. Some days we got up early, when joy was still a figure of light. When you said you loved me, we created the morning in rapture even as the sun disappeared into the sky. There was a call forth to commitment what was still clear in us: the eyes of infants and the arc of the whale, the cadence of laughter, a beach linked with shells. Some days we got up early because the tides beckoned us to come, and the numinous clouds parted ways. When is what was secret no longer so? When winter came and froze the fruit on the trees, and the sand was icy and sharp beneath our feet. When winter came what was holy parted ways, and all concept of faith was like an ethereal dream. When what was secret was no longer so, when dreams die, in the afterglow, like seafoam that is washed upon the shore, I called your name, and sent it out with the breaking waves. If love dies, where does it go? Come sleep on the beach with me tonight under the milky way’s infinite light. Where the pull of my heart is stronger than the moon’s: I remember you, I recollect you… Remind me of stories we once did believe, of light from dead stars and the songs they still sing, to recover what one would hope are not abandoned epiphanies.

Holding Sand It’s bittersweet this meeting of minds this coercion of bodies. Eyes so double-edged; blunt or ready for battle, but there is a sweetness that circles, that emanates it circles the air slowly… looking for a place to land. If only what is lost can be found. Let the rooms become familiar again so they radiate a certain something like a surreptitious moment or touch a blinking eye or two. Washed up and spit upon the shore we are stranded on this beach, full of future glass. Like a wounded panther that cannot defend her cubs, we are waiting, merely waiting for the wounds to find their scars. Time passes. We find ourselves well traveled, yet further along a dangerous highway, anticipating a time of repose, as in a safe sleep. A place where shields are burned, when the flames stop licking… What a head game with which to tempt ourselves, this fawning over safety and the need for revelation. My love you are so precious but something is faltering. It is almost irretrievable, this image of twin stars crystal, silver shards, splintering… A rainbow, translucent and pure, but the distance has no earthly access. But I am hanging onto something: a string, a web, some light. Holding onto your grace because I know it’s there, circular, inevitable, radiant… Like the connection that we have, I just can’t find the switch.

Eclipse

Dark Angel I find you in the graveyard, dressed in black, with green wings. What are you doing here? Perhaps you wait for me while my soul continues wandering. You crouch behind the iron gate and watch your silent dominion. The cemetery otherworldly glows. I wish you would speak, for there’s so much I would ask. But the night is between us, and my heart opaque. And so I watch from a distance and try to comprehend. A world consumed by darkness, and my soul that lies in wake.

afterthought Ancient ruin I am, my story yet untold… Underneath my breath, I am holding it ever so quietly so that you may not even notice I'm only really half impressed, a mere image or carbon copy, an Aztec princess who may not have existed at all. There's a rupture in the sky quietly susurrusing… It's where the action is, the real unraveling. The sun sinks then into such a lazy distance that I can hardly trace its glow or believe that it was really a sun at all. And your kisses miss my mouth by at least the distance of the nearest star. In the evening there is a whispering…there are cracks in space… I see the wind drive through them with the speed of shall we say sound.

Rainy Season Rain, warm at dusk, flushes the plain the wet confusion, wild beauty a concurrence of originality, concussion of relief. Pattern is the rhythm the cycle countermelody. When pandemonium rises on the Serengeti plain, it is a gorged moon that hovers like a silver ghost shimmering in the heat. There’s movement of the mane that ripples in as in speech, sets the tears to motion find some shelter underneath. The cycle of the rains rocks them gently as they sleep, the rhythm that is steady yet trembling with the heat.

Snow Leopard Chameleon, twinkling, turning into some kind of gem, a wondrous sight. The soft underside of your belly, eyes of amber, padded feet, the pattern of stars that trail your body… In the forest deep at midnight you stand in atomized snow. The night lengthens, layers… the swirling shapes give me nothing but vertigo. You wander through the forest, slip between the nameless trees, and into obscurity again. The rain falls secretly and the world is suddenly quiet like an echo that has vanished into the black of sorrow. There is jade, opal, amethyst and flowers turning freely in the night. In the grass there is a sound. It is the leopard staring at me with animal eyes like precious stones I could not hope to redeem.

Crescent Moon I had a dream about you again last night… you came and put your hands on me. And then you stood before me… I knew you still loved me but you could not say it. You stood there in silence, waiting for my consent… until I told you to go away. You said you could not be with me because you were not well… you looked at me with unspoken longing and then, with an empty stare, dismantled your gaze. Here we yet reside where the river runs dark and deep, where there is no sound or rippling of life to ascertain. On the bank it is dry and hollow. The birds circle once and then fly away… Will I ever see you again? Maybe one day we will take that trip to Prague. We would rent a house, play in the streets, kiss in the cafes, make love after listening to Pucinni’s encore and forget all the past mistakes. The crescent moon rises tonight. Its face is masked, it longs for the light, the distant memory of the sun, dark star…remember when I was your heart? Come and paint the moon with me. I am waiting for you here, before the strike of midnight. Let’s begin again before we go to the place where no green waters run.

Letters to Orion

Dear Orion, It’s winter again, and I find you at last in the night sky. Where were you? My heart ached with the passing of each ceaseless day. Still, it was I who killed your love, I’m sure. Then winter was upon us coldly, until we languished in the mellow haze. For a time we touched hands, as I’d wait for you at twilight. Trembling until dawn erased the memory of your face. Why cannot I be where you are? It’s springtime somewhere of that I’m sure. Where a billion suns ignite and daze… Yet as you rise, I am doomed… As you set, so shall I rise. A thousand sunsets must consume before we meet again… love, The Scorpio

Dear Orion, Like the flower bends with the rain, I fracture where you fall. The moment you were born, my heart broke. Like your mother or father, I loved you before you spoke. I love you without limits, and as far as starlight wishes to travel. I love you like the snowflake loves to curve, and the flower to unravel. I am haunted by your eyes, haunted by the ghost of love. I am troubled by the absence of the wings of the dove. I look to the skies for some kind of solace, but all I see is black, and all that is lawless. If we meet again, I know it will be magic. I will drop to my knees and forget all that was tragic. But if we never do, I won’t hold a grudge. I’ll wait for you in heaven, or wherever is eternal blue. I know you have more traveling, and things left empty yet to fill. If only we could do everything we need to do, and not leave each other behind still. I saw you when you were born, innocent and good. And I know now that everything happens as it should. Yet we never end up where we start, and somewhere along the line, you broke my heart. But I wish you safe travels as you continue on. I wish you much love and light as you journey now into the dark. love, The Scorpio

Midnight Sun Soulmates splitting everywhere like the atom What do I do now since you were the one? Sacred geometry, particles of light… What did you see when you stared into the sun? and turned your back on love… Was it god or the golden ratio? Perhaps it was your shadow you chased. Darkness falls and I settle into incessant wait. At night I pray that you’ll be here when I awake. I am waiting for your love like an insomniac waits for the deep night to cease. I am waiting for your reign of freedom to end its lease. What endless beauty exists compels you to chase the flame… If only you could see that love and freedom are the same. I wonder when you’ve had enough of all you’ve known And hear my voice again calling you home… Because love, I swear, is calling my name. And so I wait, a mermaid washed upon the shore. What rapture I hold for you forevermore. I’ll wait for you forevermore… I hear the angels, do you hear them too? Perhaps they are too quiet for you. They whisper where the static murmurs And sing in praise the exalted views. The waves crash in and devastate the shore And wipe away the covenants we swore. To keep forever nothing stays, remains the same The coast is gone. It’s been washed away. But the whispers of divine energy call my name. And the weight of the world breaks open my veins. Darkness falls and spreads her wings… The waves crash in and devastate the shore And you can’t see me anymore

The Snowflake Curve Breathe in, breathe out. Let the lightness of spirit fill me with life. I am a ghost no more. I feel the weight of your body on mine. Everything here is electric magnetic divine. To confess to you my secret history would be to crash, exiled a white-winged gull diving through the foam that caps the water, where shelter does not dwell nor the pledge of revelation. What a relief to throw my hand to the wind and watch as the cards flutter and spread themselves about the edges of the turquoise sea. Here there is no refuge, but all around me sanctity. This harbor where the land leaves off, I call my home, but the air and land as well my sanctuary. And when I land there’s solace here. No retreat necessary. I do not hold my breath for anything but for this life. I call my own for now the time is being… Here in the wild I broker the beauty’s dream. I am Scorpio, Libra rising -And I send praise above for all that reveals itself to me.

This is My Home This is my home… Despite all my difficult paths, I realize that I am deep in beauty here. The woods outside my window hold serenity of soul, and an auric certainty that maybe the only very wise know. The moon hangs back in the dark blue sky Like a small light on a wristwatch, and patiently glows. I notice it out of the corner of my eye, and wonder about it all. This is my time… It’s complex, it’s organic, and it really is all mine. I see the rim of foreign beauty as I drive by the Ponderosa, and the image of eternity move* as the wind blows through the pines, and I behold the silent darkness in the corner of my mind. This is my life… This house, is where I write, and where I love, and where I gaze up at the stars sending light from up above. There spins in the deep space sky a white and blue marble, casting spiritual lightness way out into other worlds. And you move in closer to the fire with me, as I reflect back to you an aura blessed with certainty. *Plato

Edie Summers is a professional writer and holistic coach. She writes on integrative health and spirituality. She is currently writing her second book on chronic illness, “The Memory of Health,” due out in early 2010. She is from Salt Lake City, UT and lives in Portland, OR.