Seeing beyond what we know.
Life Unto Life
A seed is planted in my mind
Cracked open just enough to sprout
Awaiting the journey from hull to sunlight
It is a grand thing – this bloom in situ
Encased in idea
On a precipice of potential
Red and gold dusting the edges of desire
Desire that coaxes and yearns and unites
Life unto life
© H. Hennenburg, 13 April 2021
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Miracles
Miracles touch down with
Lightening bolt ferocity
And hover languid
Unseen
They masquerade as the mundane
They ride waves of light
And waves of destruction
They are pronouncements of life
The language of consciousness
Pushing its inscrutable agenda
Despite our weary protests
And bleary eyes
Our delicate, deafening cries
And our rapt supplications for more
© H. Hennenburg, 21 February 2020
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Consciousness seeks to nurture a deeper truth of being while the world wrestles confusion, tedium and opposing extremes.
Insides Out
From a precipice of reversals
I envisage realities stained by a confusion of tedium
I know only this: I am extant
Belly exposed – gnawed open by hunger for the interior
For a collusion of continuum that sees insides out
I am stable in my rudimentary way, but I reach…
I reach for the magma of understanding
Singeing my extremities
Vapourizing foundations
Reducing me to sediment
My core extracted
Gravitational lore exacted
On light of becoming
© H. Hennenburg, 11 January 2020
Joyfully linking with Poets & Storytellers United.
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When we open ourselves to the truth and power of nature and light, we are resolved to the same truth and power within ourselves.
Rendered
A sylvan dream requites our arrival
Permeating gold ablution washes over giants
Reaching us in strands
Vestiges of brilliance painting our skin
We are but miscreants and maladies
An opus dissonant and wistful
Resolved and replete by respiring light
We are sublimating, reintegrating
Syncopated selves dissipating fleet
Into amorphic jubilance rendered
© H. Hennenburg, 20 December 2019
Joyfully linking with Poets & Storytellers United.
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“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
– William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Legend
Legend comes after the fall
Rocketing on wings sooted with truth
Imagining bravely a new world
Jettisoned stocks of mislaid deeds
Lie crumpled in the garden
A masterful affair torn to wilds
And reclaimed by its own natural temperament
Bastions slated for oblivion
Rise to a new mantle
Humility spilling itself from rivers of love
Whose currents authored our passage
In this our new genesis
We blanket the sky
Freed from our stories
Alive with presence
Soul sounding endless reverberations
Of light made song
A resonant throng after the fall
© H. Hennenburg, 28 November 2019
Joyfully linking with Poets United.
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Washed Ashore
Washed ashore
I think of you
And the many times
You tried the landing
Echoing absences
Dot the shallows
Of what might have been for you
But for me,
I am here
Waterlogged and foreign
Time crawling out of my skin
And abandoning me to gravity
And as I become part of the landscape
I wonder now
What becomes of you?
© H. Hennenburg, 6 July 2019
This poem was originally inspired by a painting I admired while wandering through a summer farm and craft market. The artist, Isabel Gibson, was lovely and had many interesting stories of the coastal and pastoral settings depicted in her paintings. Nature inspires art, art inspires poetry, poetry inspires love, love inspires life…and we are cycled and recycled over and again.
Joyfully linking with Poets United.
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Wings To The Firmament
Our first instinct is air
We are casualties of longing thereafter
Oscillating on currents
That paint us red
And conspire to wake our dormancy
Jostling and cajoling
Skyward blooms unfolding with majesty
All that holds us aloft
In a universe unremitting
We are want and unwitting
Wings to the firmament
© H. Hennenburg, 29 November 2019
For Bill and for bookmarks. 🛩️
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This painting has remained a powerful and ever-fresh source of inspiration since I bought a print of it nine years ago. That is the magic of Mary DeLave Art.
When I look at any piece of Mary’s work, the words “mystery” and “primal” leap to mind. It conjures up from within me something ancient and instinctive; something fundamental and pervasive. What is it about these paintings that is so deeply and endlessly compelling?
Is it the vibrancy of her colours, paired in such a way as to ignite themselves and each other? Maybe it’s the celebration of music, a most powerful force unseen but universally understood. Perhaps it’s the frequent presence of animals in Mary’s work, or the many wide, unwavering eyes shared by all her species that convey an intimate interconnectedness of life.
Maybe it’s the way – if you look at a DeLave painting long enough – a face you hadn’t noticed at first will often emerge, sometimes seeming part of the more obvious faces…are we separate or are we one? And perhaps there is a faint suggestion of spirits in what looks like invisible profiles kissing cheeks.
I could go on and on. Gazing at Mary DeLave’s artwork feels like an infinite process of discovery of self, of the nature of life and of something beyond. Do yourself a favour and head over to Mary’s site and feast your eyes on some gifts that just won’t stop giving!
Ovation
Will you dance if I play?
Will you sing if the music knows you?
Kiss my cheek and loose yourself to the wind?
All that is promised, my friend
Is the golden rooted hum in the lumber of my guitar
And the spirit of trees weeping Spanish Moss
Echoing their deep bass on the oaky breeze
Tickling our palate for lust for life
Only this raises the palms of the dead skyward for more
Will you dance if I play?
Will you stomp the earth into resonating vibration
So that the whole world may sing
All dressed in a dream
With spiraling notions relieving the seams
This is what we came here for
Something ancient and primal
With our skin stretched across the depths
Like a drum
Will you dance if I play?
Will you spin into arms and out again?
Will you rise with a melodious eye
And spy on the whole of existence?
Its steel strung heart of persistence
Voicing the chant of sublime being
Will you dance the transcendent carnality
Into harmonious crescendo
And raise the light into ovation?
© H. Hennenburg, 5 August 2019
Thank you, Mary DeLave, for granting permission for me to share an image of Music Magic, your painting that inspired this poem!
Joyfully linking to Poets United.
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The Immortal Summons
We came out from a land
Rich with harmony and sacrifice
We built legends and legacies
And threw fire from our fists
Unto the firmament
We brought down gods upon our heads
We sought shelter in their arrogance
Devoured our fear like ripened fruit
And this is how we nourished our souls
Grew teeth in our throats to imprison them
Behind voices made lame by our dinner
Our hearts grew thinner
And our chests spanned wide
To shield and conceal our labouring breath
Convinced of our impending death
But our souls
Trapped in our breasts
Heaved through our skin
The immortal summons
To life
© H. Hennenburg, 20 August 2019
Joyfully linking to Poets United.
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With increasing frequency, I see around me a new and different kind of human. Most often they are young people, though not always. They have a wisdom and emotional intelligence, I would say beyond their years, but truthfully it is beyond what has ever been typical in humans at any age. They speak a language of acceptance and inclusion that is unprecedented and embody a depth of compassion that is eye-opening. They are acutely aware of what happens in the world and they act in hope. This too sets them apart – they see, they take action. And I have very often seen them respond to resistance and misunderstanding with openness, patience and kindness while remaining steadfast to principles of common good.
This is more than the optimism of youth. Their wisdom and depth of understanding at astoundingly early ages is at odds with long-accepted psychological theories of human developmental stages. I have come to affectionately refer to them as the new evolution of human, and I believe, as they step forward, more and more of us remember who we are and the power we hold in our innate love.
So FEAR, wherever you act in the world – whether through violent animosity, complacency, psychological paralysis, spiritual imprisonment or exile – you have been put on notice. We are led by a new evolution of human and we are taking back the human race!
Dedicated to my friends at YVR Pop Choir.
Empires Of Joy
Look across the land and sea
A new day is dawning
There are hearts in the horizon
Sizzling hope crazed with consciousness
Turn around if you fear,
The light will come for you anyway
Embracing all you ever were or have done
You are the chosen one
With all your fits and frustrations
Ramblings and riotous furies
You, with the storm front of worries
And the long line of casualties in your wake
This is the moment of your redemption – your chrysalis
The power of all your might
Will not call back the eventide
See the crystal spark of all you become
Rise into the blinding light
You are more than the caged experience of sight
Blissful, billowing sacrifice of want
Exchanged for gratitude
Great engulfing wave exuding
Empires of joy
© H. Hennenburg, 13 August 2019
Joyfully linking to dVerse Poets Pub‘s Open Link Night
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Riders of the Tempest: The Story of WE
by H. Hennenburg
There is no “I”. There is no “you.” There is only WE. “Reality is in the possibilities,” and Riders of the Tempest is a quest for the heart of what can be.
This collection of poems by H. Hennenburg tells the story of WE. Born from Supernova, we bear the imprint of the universe: the mandate to expand. Gripped by a deep yearning, we march into a tempest…a great storm…a war between our desire to expand as individuals and our desire to expand into the truth of our oneness. We believe we are mere “echoes to the sea and gathering storm,” but there is more to the universe than what we see. We are “more than the caged experience of sight.” Endowed with an infinite stream of choices, what happens in our story if we reach for more?
Download for free at: iBooks, Kobo & most Amazon stores
If you don’t use a tablet or e-reader and would like a copy, please contact me for the PDF version.