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Sensous God

I am a sensual woman,
Love to lounge in the glories of bed,
To splay my feet on fresh mowed grass,
Erotic flavors of an appetite easily fed.

Feed me the touch of Your being;
Feed me the sight of Your soul.
Let me listen in the Garden of Eden,
Smell the scent of Your rose-filled bowl.

And whilst I am there I will taste Thee,
Tongue touching every grove;
Swallowing every sense,
I move closer and closer to You.

Barbara Atkinson
December 1997

The Family of God

I had a dream last night.
(Not an original start.)
But oh such a dream as this,
That brings Roses to your heart.

An ancient Trinity was reborn again,
Without any rancor or blood.
Nurturing with acceptance,
Healing with kindness and Love.

As abiding as She is steadfast,
This One where nature hovers,
From the Garden of Eden They emerged,
Grandmother, Daughter and Mother.

Barbara Atkinson
November 1997

The Explorer

Watching Africa on television,
The wide open plains once unknown,
I wonder about the adventurous life,
And me sticking so close to home.

There is a romance to wandering,
And I am captive to its call.
But the voice I feel comes from within,
Echoing vast expanses and disintegrating walls.

I am an explorer of creative places,
Of spaces still unseen.
I feel things I’ve never felt before,
Hear songs I’ve yet to sing.

This inner safari is limitless,
Suspect still in many an eye.
Yet science is on the threshold
Of discovering this world that never dies.

Barbara Atkinson
November 1997

Life’s Inner Journey

I spent a long time
reclaiming the parts of myself
lurking in the shadows,
not so easily seen.
I had to let go of
feeling responsible for
more than me and
embrace my Self.

It seems such a simple thing
to fully love and accept oneself,
such a simple thing, and
on the face of it, it is.
But once committed,
you find yourself in a labyrinth.
You see this life you
have constructed through desire,
the one you think you control
and is laid out in front of you
end over end,
is really a construct of fantasy.
And you find yourself amongst
tall hedges and the only way
through is with intuition and instinct.
You cannot see over and around
Options here and there,
one looks as good as another,
yet only one will set you free.
All your knowledge of east and west,
the direction of the sun,
the circumference of a circle,
the history of countries,
the geography of the world,
the names of flora and fauna,
all this knowledge just takes up space,
a monument to ego and will
that cannot lead the way out.

Standing dwarfed and surrounded
by those hedges, there is no clue
save your sense of direction.
And in the beginning,
Familial and logical thinking can
overtake intuitive action,

and that sense of direction can lead
to dead ends, wrong turns and
long paths that seem to work for a while
but then peter out and another way
is sought and again it begins,
time after time,
until finally you plop down on the
grass below, with the sky above,
frustrated, not knowing what to do,
your eyes unable to see beyond the
labyrinth’s brush, your heart distrusting itself
having kept you in this prison,
this cage, that convinced you that because
your legs were carrying you, you were really getting somewhere.
But now, you see
you are getting nowhere.

So you decide you will find a way and
Force branches this way and that to get a clearer view.
But hope is short-lived.
Your arms can reach only so far.
You see where to go next, but not beyond,
not through, not out. You learn again,
it seems over and over, all that knowledge,
self-propelled know-how, is getting you nowhere.
What to do; how can you cope?
You don’t; so you do nothing.
Nothing is good.
“I’ll just sit here and wait.”

You lay down on your bed of greenery
and wait. Face to the sky, back to the earth.
Waiting, you begin to learn
the rhythm of life.

You watch the changing sky
as it shifts
like a fast-forward film montage.
You see the play of colors,
scattering clouds,
the density of fog.

You move with the wind,
and are washed with the rain,
and learn the nuances of sound –
the rustling of leaves, winging of insects,
and animals playing out their roles.
You feel the earth,
its temperature changing beneath you;
its gravity pulling you in.
Harmony and balance are woven
Within all you witness.

Everything is bound in b e a u t y
and participating in b e i n g.

Doing nothing,
your mind drifts,
imagination dances,
and energy quickens.

After a while,
nature’s truth pervades your mind:
the meaning of life is to live,
and the meaning of love is to give.
So you give your Self
the gift of Life,
and find you are steeped in reverence.

You stand up, a bit creaky from inaction,
stretch, and find your pace is slower, now
matched with the pulse of nature, being.
You’re no longer rushing.
You don’t cry out because
you cannot see ahead.
You intuitively know which way
to go at each junction
because you listen now and trust,
fed by the light of the sun
and suckled by the earth beneath your feet.

You did not realize that doing nothing
would give you everything –

that the way through and out
this maze was to give in to it,
to fall tumbling to the earth and
give way to allowing –

simply to be in each moment,
knowing that when you place
value on something,
you bequeath yourself to it
and are reborn in it again and again.

You no longer worry or struggle.
You gracefully, instinctively flow
in the direction that moves you,
and, as you do, you notice
you are no longer barricaded
by the labyrinth’s beckoning bushes
suggesting this direction and that.

It is not that you have come
to the end of the labyrinth. No.
It is that you no longer allow it
to limit and define you.

*

The possibilities become endless,
the moments timeless,
and being, selfless.

© 2002 * Barbara Atkinson