Kundalini Splendor

I have recently come in contact with a poet whose work is little known at this time, but who will, I am sure, ultimately be acclaimed as one of the major poetic voices of our time. Her focus is on the world of spiritual exploration and discovery. Elizabeth Reninger's writing is elegant and exciting, crafted and visionary. It is a great honor to present her poems on these pages.

Trinity

now one
by one the stars release
their brightness to this dark

mantle of
leaves, to this slow
rising through
abstraction of the quiet

details of
a tree, the textured
torso of

an Oak, the golden
veins of Autumn's
parchment, the feathered
throats invisible

to your eye that signal
the coming of those first
long shadows, a stroked

silence waking
to song, to a flight
of syllables finding
their way into the white

sky of a poem, the deepest
portals of

Your hearing ...




Sunyata

softly as a flock
of angels
crystalline wings alighting

on rock
new snow gathers
whitely on the creek's

shoulders
beneath which flow this braided
tumble of

small waterfalls
the spiraling
mystery of pools

churning up ancient
patterns at their base
as the sky on every

side grows ever
more dense and brightly
open

with a descending
bliss ...




Stations Of The Cross

like a cross
the quiet
title of this poem

one by one its syllables
becoming flesh

its steps across
ground smooth
and rocky

(is this Kashmir
or Jerusalem?)

at the top of the hill which is the bottom
of this page it will hang
completed

a work of art
a savior

an idea whose halted
breath three
days later will return

emerge as though
resurrected





Lao Tzu Counsels His Daughter

quivering through marsh-grass thick
with shadow
the gold ribbon
of Bear Creek snakes
silently

falls over
rocks into
a churning froth

then smoothes to a silken
fire again, a bright
mirror, the honeyed
tongue of god, caught between
Earth and Sky

singing its escape
through a field of jade
stalks

copyright, Elizabeth Reninger