AUTUMN EQUINOX DISSONANCE (Revised for this year)

 

“Figure out the rhythm of life and live in harmony with it” –Tao Te Ching

 

How I’ve tried

To live up to

Lao Tze’s words

Most of my adult life

And I do

Until anger

Or fright

Interferes

Why can’t I

Accept things like

Political injustice

(The personal is always political)

Or hurricane season

(Live in Florida, stoically face the storms)

Or raging pandemics

(Distance yourself if others will not)

 

I want to be a human equinox

In perfect harmony

Acceptance equal to Happenstance

The point where the

Celestial equator intersects the ecliptic

A harmonious world

Orbiting the Sun

Even if not to my liking

 

My role model is a tree

Is it staring at me?

If so, it goes about its business

Of drinking and photosynthesizing

Of putting out leaves and acorn seeds

Never complaining

Accepting

And I think of Daphne

Evading Apollo

Turning into a laurel tree

Yet every part of the laurel

Is poisonous

Seems to me

She was better off

Fending off the god’s advances

Rather than morphing into

Pure misanthropy

Apollo, whom I think of quite often

He the god of music and poetry

Did give the world the word

Laureate

And the laurel wreath

In her honor

She now balanced

Idiosyncratically

 

So in the week before

The Autumn Equinox

I worked on Lao Tzu’s words

Read the Tao Te Ching

Tried to calm my Aries fire

Fear of the tropical flood

Beclouding my blood

As it rises like the wind

Winding cone-like

In air and spilling on the earth

There’s a long way to go, for me

Confession still not balanced in my seventies

I am a walking, writing vessel

For the elements of

Earth, Water, Air and Fire

But still expect the Equinox

To smooth life over

At least for a day

Until I learn to obey

The rhythm of life…

 

© 2020 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: Autumn Equinox over the swamp 2025

 

 

 

AGRIPPA’S MAGIC SQUARE #15 SATURN

 

Here is the Earth card

In the first ladder rung

  A moisty/earthy poem

 Saturn has sung

Protector, Grounder,

Earth personified

I daydream about

Life underground

Once believed to be ruled

By Hades and Persephone

Littering literature with

Drama and comedy

Dealing with all the dead

No matter good or bad

But we see the true underworld

Earth is like the Ocean

Hosting sources of varied life

Dirt and roots and worms

Delicious foods and yes

Water in all forms rife

Gifting every species

Above and below the ground

Including minerals and ores

Iron and crystals and

Diamonds and gold

Volcanoes grumbling

As fires burn

And tectonic plates shift

As in school we learned

Skeletons and Ashes

Those still loved forever asleep

Our tears into grass and sand seep

As we remember our beloveds and weep

What a place, below the surface

Grass and dirt merely shallow

As above, so below with

Saturn quite generous

With never-ending benevolence…

 

© 2023 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: Saturn 4 in the morning greenhouse

 

 

LIGHTNING FOLKLORE

(ABSOLUTELY NOTHING)

 

Grew up with a healthy

Fear of Lightning

First rumble of thunder

Wooden windows opened

Tea cup saucers

Placed on window sills

Rain filling the chipped china

Capturing the Lightning

So we helpless humans

Would not be struck

 

First few years in Florida

Watched amazed at the

Cloud to ground

And sheet Lightning

Reminiscent of the 1970s

Light shows strobing the walls

It became my favorite nature event

And I’d dream by the window

As in the past

When captivated by gentle snow

 

Then fear hit one day

Driving home from work

When suddenly a thunderbolt

As if from a mythological god

Hit the ground inches from my

Car’s windshield

 

I think a once-upon-a-time

Philadelphia mayor once said

“A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged”

And that’s what happened to me

The Lightning lover almost mugged

In the Lightning capital of the nation

Tampa Bay

Began to stay away

From the lovely sky fire

Born of fear

But hey

Lots of natural phenomena to observe safely

So I paraphrase a favorite song* and say

Lightning, what’s it good for…?

 

© 2025 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE:  Lightning Fire Poppet (by M. Rosen)

 

*Written and performed by Edwin Starr

https://youtu.be/ztZI2aLQ9Sw

 

 

 

 

ANIMA LOCI

(SOUL OF A PLACE)

 

My soul resides

In the Southern corner

Where the property abuts the swamp

Where my South poppet

Fire

Protects loved ones

From her place in a jar

Under the earth

I go there daily

Wanting to leap the fence

Into the dark and mystical portal

A doorway to adventure

Where all the secrets of life

Wait to be discovered

The place where I can breathe

But it can also be the

Genius Loci

Spirit of a place

Literally

Home to kind spirits of oak trees and flowers

Water and air sprites 

But also of gators and coral snakes

So at this time of life

I will remain on the border

Safely behind the chicken wire fence

And leave the rulers of the swamp

To Sand Hill cranes and possums

And those less domesticated

But savvier than I…

 

© 2025 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

Image: Borderland Anima Loci post 2