Saturday, December 26, 2015

Home

Home is a fleeting gift
In a world of scorched earth
Walking on scalding concrete
Seeking solace of presence unknown
Unfounded
Ripped away by history’s pestilence
Stolen by experience
Experiences
Raw and hard
Too hard to let them be heart
But now floating about on a turbulent sea
Dashed against an abyss of darkness
That absorbs every cry out in pain
Every word that can't explain
Every tear that falls like rain
Torrential
Insistent
Maybe
That my feet will never find the Mother
As if that were even possible
But the heart can be kidnapped by the mind
Held hostage by the ghosts of stores never meant for us
Stories that distort and disenfranchise and distance us from something that had its genesis in the heart of the Earth and our immortal communal and singular body
Stories that no feeling human could ever stand to reason inside compassion’s tabernacle
Our feet on the ground
Seeking the safety in some cold, dark cellar’s foundations
Tripping yet on the roots of ancient trees, gnarled, rough, ambling
Expansive and knowing

Still
Showing us the way

Home

Copyright 2015 Ukumbwa Sauti

Friday, November 13, 2015

"I Will Always Remember You (The Starfish Song)"

I wrote this song in the later 80's inspired by an anonymous poem which I'll link or copy below. In the 90's, as I worked with teens in special education settings, the song took on another facet. Not only did its meaning deepen as I considered and observed how this society treated certain particular humans as virtual throwaways, how we struggled to support the humanity of our students and how we saw those amazing students struggle for normalcy, for acceptance and respect.

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Hail Mother (Hail Mary)

Hail Mother,  full of grace
The Creator  is in thee
Holy Mother, Mother Goddess
Blessed are you and all women
Blessed is the fruit of your womb, Creation
Holy Mother, Mother Goddess
Bless us who you have given  life
Now and beyond our life and death
Ashe

Beautiful Mother

Beautiful Motherhood 
Motherhood divine 
Divine Feminine
There lying so close yet
On her journey home
Holding on
To letting go
Held in beauty
And beauty having given birth
To us
Her children
Our lives
Hanging
For now
In her sacred balance
Of Motherhood Divine
Sent by scores upon scores
Of Mothers, of Grandmothers
Long gone and gone
Givers of life eternal
Like this one
Born into the Ancestral continuum
Timeless
Like this one
Beneath my ever grateful hands
Beneath, within my loving gaze
Gazing upon beauty
Beautiful Mother
Beautiful Mother

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

The Crystal Water Gift of Motherplace


There was a people in a cold and wintery place.  They rushed around in industrious bliss, hastily making and doing and manipulating and consuming.  Their Motherplace called to them daily, but went largely unheard.  These people took so much from Her and rarely took time to be with Her and consider the Great Gift that She was to them.  She knew that Her people would grow sicker and possibly die if She did not get their attention and let them know that being still, being present, being compassionate, aware and loving was the first and foremost Gift that they could give each other…Her Great Gift was the people’s Great Gift to each other. …Motherplace called again to the people, this time leaving them a beautiful blanket of Crystal Water on her back, on her life-giving body.  The people, used to the Gift, did not see it as a Gift.  Undaunted, Motherplace left the people more Crystal Water, glistening as it floated down through the air, surely beautiful, breathtaking enough to bring tears to the eye.  The people ignored her Gift.  Motherplace entreated the again, leaving more and more Crystal Water for them, fully in love with the people as this Crystal Water carried the very energy and blessing of Life.  This time the people began to grumble and complain, indignant at the proposition that now they must trudge through the growing depths of this Gift from Motherplace.  And Motherplace was insistent, Gifting more and more Crystal Water as the people became angry, despondent and ungrateful in spite of the life-giving Crystal Water.  The people descended into their own disdain of this Great Gift, swirling in the story of their own indignation.  They walked to and fro in their wanton industriousness, their blank ambition for doing, forgetting their Longtime Story of being, of observing the balance of things, living the balance of things, of becoming in the loving arms of Her beauty.
But soon, all too soon, in their haste, in the Great Forgetting of their Longtime Story, the Great Gift slowly melted away in the growing warmth of Cycle of Time.  It seemed the people could not wait, in their blank industriousness, for the disappearance of the Great Gift of Motherplace, this expression of Her deepest love for the people.  And in the deepest beauty of the Cycle of Time, Motherplace warmed herself and brought forth her loving blanket of Green Life, that which would continue to feed and nurture and strengthen the people in their industriousness, in their fiery ambition.  Again, it seemed, somehow….unbelievably….that the people could even miss the love of the newly flowing cover of warm Green Life. The people, now fully receiving this most deep expression of Motherplace’s love, had somehow missed the great import of this flowering of Motherplace’s Great Gift, given so persistently and generously so that the people could know how much, how deeply they were loved, how important their becoming was to Her.  And the people ate of the Green Life, stood longingly at the peaceful shores of the Still and Flowing Waters, calmed and cleansed, rejuvenated by the Cycle’s offering of the Great Gift to them.  And Motherplace’s Deep Heart ached.  It was as if Her children did not even know Her, as if she could hold them in Her arms, their eyes never meeting her Face of Beauty, their feet never sensing her skin, their hearts never resonating, never knowing the synergy of Her Deep Heart’s affinity with theirs.
Tears of sorrow would blanket Motherplace from time to time, sometimes gentle, sometimes in emotional tumult.  Her Deep Heart would ache like no other time along the Longtime Story. Her children had missed Her Great Gift, Her Deep Heart’s most abiding expression of love for them.  The people continued to walk to and fro…industrious….ambitious….missing the deep and abiding love from Motherplace’s Deep Heart in the Great Gift of the Crystal Water.