An Old Blue Light

Selected Poems & Illustrations by Terra Rene

Pausing

awareness

in constant witness

needs lapses.

the hours and shadows

(the sleep and the dream)

are the breaks

that we need

to continue.

(the largeness of being

splitting itself

to make up

the difference.)

contracting is fine.

resting is fine.

falling apart is fine.

the urge to dissolve

(and become)

is beyond us.

Ghosts

a person

need not pass

to haunt a 

space.

(a moment

need not drift

to cease to

linger.)

the weight of events

leave craters

like the land still

erupts

in the sea.

i am still just a child

feeling lost on the grass

as the light creates

distance from me.

Cycles

i have carried

many lifetimes

in this body.

my deaths occur

at every move,

at every sleep,

at every collapse

of the heart.

(at every step

i am born again.)

we gather 

at the horizon.

elusive agents

appear and go

through the axis of the spring.

(eternal soil.

the hollow feeling.

the wall of which

all spirits cling.)

Form

body of spring;

a swarm of bees

move close embrace.

torment

dissipates into

redwoods.

turmoil

dews on the 

branches.

the fog rests

warmly in me.

(this body, this earth,

this web of empty

gathering rain.)

with you in my compass,

my feet hold the secrets

of light-being.

The Breaking

breaking open

in extreme conditions,

as tired

as i'm torn,

i pray

what is revealed

has goodness.

Terra Rene

Terra Rene is a writer, artist, and healing activist from the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 2015, she has lived in various eco-communities, studied in multiple ashrams and monasteries, participated in a holy pilgrimage, lived on the road, and taken some time to cocoon. She worked with the Hope Villa Artist Residency in the Western Ghats of India in March of 2016, and was the Artist-In-Residence at The Schoolhouse at Mutianyu at The Great Wall of China in March 2017. Most of her work explores unlearning toxic conditioning, the nonlinear process of following intuition, radical transformation, and experiences with the divine that have emerged out of trauma as much as the fruition of dreams. Keep up with her work on Instagram at @anoldbluelight, at her press, www.recenterpress.com, and pick up her book, An Old Blue Light.