Judgement

I am silent, listening.
Words fall before me,
clinical, judging, spare,
shaping a life I do not recognise
yet eloquent in their precision.
I want to erase,
to change this picture
and call it alien.
But that would be a lie.
Today I have drawn the Judgement card
from deep within.
It knows my name
and I must follow into darkness.
I am silent, listening.

Ruth Davmor

Laugh

A thank you to morning

The world I enter is dark and grey – a surprise.

The ground has grown tall, reaching up, nearly to the sky.

I laugh at my new-found height in this altered morning.

Footpaths are paved with a sheen of diamonds under streetlights,

even more so in the memory of a thousand winter days gone by.

My nose casts outward for the scent of fresh rain,

finding it not in the now but in that time of memory.

It suffices.

Why is it that everything is so much quieter now?

Even the rain patters softly and the gulls are less raucous.

I look down at my feet and imagine them clad,

not in the armour of sandals but of gum boots.

Mentally I cast aside my sensible umbrella in favour of a raincoat.

I colour it bright in my mind, with polka dots. And laugh.

Within me I feel a stirring.

The Everywhen Child wakes.

She remains still but alert, captivated by a world shrunk to her size.

She brightens the day with her smile – full, radiant.

All teeth. And yet somehow silent, listening.

We watch together as an old man spreads wide his arms and twirls,

a great smile on his uplifted face.

He runs a few steps and then stops, reverting to a sensible walk.

We gaze at each other in delight

and laugh at our shared secret.

But as the day brightens the Everywhen Child stretches,

yawns, and returns to slumber.

It is not yet her day to dance.

Ruth Davmor

Woven

We do not get to choose the pattern that we weave.

We may weave with love and hope - with a vision for the world -

we may try to weave a gift.

But who can know how our work will be received?

The strands we work combine in unpredicted ways

as they meet the tapestry around them.

Joy or sorrow?

Beauty or pain?

No matter our choice

others will decide.

And as the tapestry grows,

so the pattern changes,

and our strands take on new shapes,

new meanings

that we cannot know, or claim.

How will our patterns look in a hundred years? A thousand?

And who will be the judge?

We may choose the colour, the strength, the texture.

We may weave tightly or loosely

and even hope to choose our lines of intersection.

But we cannot choose the impact of our work,

nor see the finished picture.

We cannot choose even to have no impact.

That choice was made

before we ever came to be.

The design is,

and our work becomes part of a tapestry we will never fully see.

To exit is to leave a hole that cannot be repaired

and to fray the edges of a larger life.

Therefore weave with joy.

If the only pattern we can choose is our own journey into being,

then weave with hope; weave with abandon.

We do not get to choose the pattern that we weave.

But we get to weave.

Weave the pattern.

Ruth Davmor

Silence

I do not escape into silence.

Rather I enter it with reverence and awe.

No longer do I cower in the shadows;

I choose them and know them to be

my power and my strength.

This world is not merely my refuge but my castle,

and here, I am Queen.

I choose to be the silence

and offer it as my gift.

Ruth Davmor

Renewal

This place I call home,
this place of stillness,
of deep and silent beauty:
It is my centre -
my balance
and my refuge.
In its silent music
I hear the beating of my heart.
This shadow world surrounds me
and buoys my dreaming mind
upon a pool of light.
Within its shimmering depths
I see myself reflected,
blessings of
a unique vision.
A choice,
a dream,
a hope;
a love too deep to name.
Here is purpose,
here is wisdom,
here is an end of doubt.
From here I rise rejoicing,
In the silence of Truth's song.

Ruth Davmor

Flicker

in dreams i walk,
my mind flickering
in candle flame.
i am and i am not,
dissolving in a spark of light.
whispering,
softly,
the world plays inside me,
floating gently
on the breeze of thought.
i hold it and walk
invisibly within it
as the universe unfolds
in a breath.
and then i blink - out.

Ruth Davmor

Who?

Who am I?

You are this moment,
this breath.
Memory entwined with possibility;
Wisdom,
clothed in fleeting sight.
A thousand thoughts
and unseen dreams:
all you choose to see,
to feel,
and all that you do not.
The past is a shifting shadow
written in your body
and changed by Time.
It shapes your every breath,
but cannot be
the reality of now.
Every word,
every image,
fades.
You are your history
and your becoming:
all -
and none.
You are a choice:
to breathe,
to be,
to feel.
You are the world you touch.
You are this moment.

Ruth Davmor

Dazzle

remember you were born

a child of stars

sail this vast ocean cloud

wake to the dark dazzle

of your heart

and dance as flowers blaze

with a secret vision

like the ghost of fire

let trust linger softly

and be as smoke

on a slow warm breeze

Ruth Davmor

Witness

In the shifting colours

of rising dawn

I am witness

and participant,

privileged to

know myself one with

drama beyond imagining,

magnificence beyond reverence.

Ruth Davmor

Gaia

I am Gaia.

I am the shifting sands,

the fragile moment.

I am the land I walk,

the ebbing tide

and the desire of my heart.

Paradox and conflict,

many voices,

One.

I am the what is

and the what is not.

Ruth Davmor

Druid

Against a near-dark sky
a lone figure stands:
tall,
straight,
unmoving.
And for a moment
this is not merely a man;
instead a druid,
ancient,
in all his still and silent power,
lost in contemplation
of the departing moon.
The sand seems to shimmer
and a ripple of energy
passes beneath him,
spreading outward
even to where I sit,
mesmerised.
The ground is reaching upwards,
surging with power and
embracing the moment of communion
made possible by the presence of this
human lightening rod of
listening possibility.
Air pulses in response
and the moment is gone.
The world grows lighter
and the figure moves,
simply a man once more.
But the moment is not lost
for it has been witnessed.
I have heard, have felt,
the call of Earth,
heard its conversation with the Sky.

Ruth Davmor

Resolute

Gleaming white
against the morning's breath,
dew greets my steps.
Birds call softly
from the shadows:
a greeting to the rising Sun,
or a lament to the
lost Mystery
of Night?
Barely glimpsed against
the cityscape horizon,
clouds form mountains
of molten blue
and gold.
My feet turn
of their own accord
as my heart pulls eagerly
toward this
unfolding drama.
But my path lies not
this way
and I turn again,
resolute,
travelling west
into the cloudless day.

Ruth Davmor

Learn

When sunshine chooses

to dance wildly in your soul,

learn its rhythms.

Ruth Davmor

Equal night

Magical reality

Sing the darkness
Sing the light
Sing the joy of being!

Fleet and fragile
Capricious, fey
Dark meets light
in Magic's clay

To be, to do
To know, to act
Imagine is create

This the balance
This the choice
This the path I walk

Two worlds as One

Ruth Davmor

Dance

candle flame is dancing
    with my spirit
        in the night

it offers up its radiance
    tracing secrets
        on the sky

silent shadows weaving
    a pattern
        on the walls

and i alone am dreaming
    in a velvet
        pool of light

Ruth Davmor

If I see you

If I see you

and only you,

then the world shall smile.

If I see you

and not my past,

then that world shall grow.

My needs,

my fears

my loneliness,

are all in black and white;

but you are made of beauty

unique and precious child.

Possibility lies within

the dreams you hold inside,

the magic of your laughter

and the hope within your eyes.

If we stand together,

then you may see me too,

and I will see a new world

reflected in your eyes.

You my love are beautiful

and the world has grown so wide.

Ruth Davmor

submitted in support of Twenty10 Fair Day 2015:

https://docs.google.com/a/griffith.edu.au/forms/d/1he8SqhgvfpWaqfeOWNeq2wef319J7kTxtUObBVqswXs/viewform

http://www.twenty10.org.au/

Woken

Newly woken,

bathed in raindrop diamonds:

white magic.

Ruth Davmor

Game

Sunshine chases

gently dancing showers

across the sky.

Ruth Davmor

Alongside

I cannot walk another’s pain,
nor take it from them.
Yet gladly would I give a little of myself
to walk alongside
in companionship and love.
When the soul is darkest
and the light most hidden,
there would I offer the breath of self knowledge.
I cannot know the path to follow,
but if I could,
I would reflect the radiance of a person’s essence
back into their heart,
that they might find their own path
with sure and knowing steps,
and not walk those steps alone.
Where their path may lead
I cannot know.
Yet gladly would I follow.

Ruth Davmor

Sleep

Sleep would steal me for its own,

eschewing day’s reality,

bearing me through wondrous dark,

infinite in possibility.

Ruth Davmor