Life Archives - hennenburg.com

Ovation

Posted on 14 September 201928 August 2019 by H. Hennenburg

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?

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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Embrace This

Posted on 24 August 201925 August 2019 by H. Hennenburg

Life wants to live.

Trauma, indignity, betrayal and other unwelcome visitors show up in some lives more than others. If they show up enough, a person might reach a point where they feel – they believe – they cannot withstand anymore. One more blow, and they will crumple and cease to be. They might plead and put The Great All That Is on notice: “Look, I can’t take anymore. I’m just letting you know this, in case you can find it in your heart to not send any more my way.”

Then, another blow – maybe a series of small ones, or one low-grade, crushing long one. Then, the person might just shut down – cease to even try negotiating with the powers that be. “What’s the point?” Now this person KNOWS, they really cannot take anymore. Truly, this time, the person will break when another wave comes.

Then, another blow. A big one. One that makes all the other blows seem like mere child’s play. And do you know what happens to our little person? Our weary, bedraggled, pushed-beyond-the-breaking-point little human, who has always had thin skin, but who now surely possesses no skin at all anymore.

It takes a long time, but this person opens their heart and makes themselves vulnerable – again. They do it. And they do it because now they really know something. Now this person knows something that is true: Life wants to live. It keeps going whether or not we can keep up. Life wants to live. So may as well embrace it. We are stronger than we think we are.

Embrace This

I’ve watched you break
I have felt every bone,
One by one, splinter into fragments
Into dust and rubble
Utter annihilation, not once
But many times

I’ve seen you stand up to tidal waves
I’ve seen you refuse fortunes
I’ve seen you run headlong into the mouth of a beast
And then another…and then another
How you emerge to run again
I do not know

But I’ve seen you reappear like magic…fully formed
Over and over again
I’ve seen the map re-write itself
I’ve seen the flowers bloom
And ruts in old roads replaced by mountain meadows
Purely by the sheer power of your will

I’ve seen you cry
Alone, abandoned and betrayed
And I’ve seen you walk outside and go right on loving

There is no give up in you
Even when you desperately wish it so
So may as well embrace this
This longing
This heart hurt
This betrayal
Because it is happening
And your heart will rise to meet you
…Again

Joyfully linking to Poets United.

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Empires Of Joy

Posted on 22 August 201929 August 2019 by H. Hennenburg

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

Joyfully linking to dVerse Poets Pub‘s Open Link Night

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Molasses And Steel

Posted on 17 August 201917 August 2019 by H. Hennenburg

To me, truth is joy, and joy is truth – one in the same. So in my view, joy does not always come in the form of happiness. It does not always contain happiness. Always, it comes with the clarity of what is true inside. And that clarity brings a feeling of freedom. Not always a celebratory freedom. Sometimes it is a freedom that is heavy with responsibility to go forth and transform something painful into something so beautiful, it is worthy of the loss that necessitated it and worthy of those who will benefit from the gift of it.

Molasses And Steel

You brought colour to my life
Black for molasses
Blue for steel
You stood for things that were not real
You stole in the morning
Then peeled away
Laying rubber, black as molasses, on scorched streets

You performed elegant and death-defying feats
You raised a glass to greet something
That would beat us into submission
You were cold, hard
Blue like steel

Peeling away the layers of skin
That healed you into my soul
Is not a goal I cherish
Or claim the wherewithal to do
But there is a piece of me in you
And whether black or blue
We both must breathe

We must leave a trace of ourselves in this world
We have to be the steel and molasses
That builds and feeds
And sweetens harsh deeds into submission
It is our composition
At least it is mine

So if I am to thrive on the brine
In the glass you gave me
Break your fast and save me
A cup of molasses

Joyfully (and happily) linking to Poets United.

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The Message

Posted on 4 August 20197 August 2019 by H. Hennenburg

I wrote this poem after reading about Parrotfish. They create entire beaches in Hawaii and help build reef islands in the Maldives by eating coral, digesting the stony bits and excreting them as sand. Yep, you read that right. I was fascinated by how these creatures can build whole beautiful beaches and even islands, a little bit of sand at a time. The notion then co-mingled with an image from a digital art piece I had seen that depicted an angel living on the ocean floor, and voila! Now, I’m not saying anything about the digestive habits of aquatic angels, but I had fun thinking of how we might all be elevated one grain of sand at a time.

The Message

We come face to face,
and I know there is more to this
In what world do winged creatures live in the dark deep?

I swim passed the hourglass that is shattered
– sand being more useful than time –
and I see that you are building an island
and I am your first guest – a child who knows everything to be true
How very wise of you
Though you know I cannot stay

I am the accidental messenger
The incidental friend submerged by wonder
and taken in by what should never be
If one believes the stories…but I don’t
For you are here amassing islands under sea
Proving all things possible

And when you spread your wings, do you fly or float?
Can there be any greater hope? You rise up either way
Even one grain of sand at a time elevates you

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Deepest Sargasso

Posted on 26 July 20197 August 2019 by H. Hennenburg

Still waters under starry night
The azure blackness
In broad strokes
Painting me into this one moment in time

I am cradled by the mother
Of every living thing
I am not made to be led
I revel in deepest Sargasso

I relish her salt in my veins
I am swept ever inward by her gyre
And drilled down to the core
Where I am no more

Every waking moment is an opportunity
Every breach in protocol is the sea
Begging off boundaries
Offering new life

Joyfully linking to Poets United.

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Star Gazer

Posted on 19 July 20197 August 2019 by H. Hennenburg

It was September when I brought home these uncommonly dark, richly coloured Stargazers. Within days, the blooms were gone. I planted the bulbs in the garden, and all winter I waited.

The lilies became a symbol for my own internal transitions. Unidentified potential skulking about in me. Restless and impatient with containment, angry and eager to burst. Bruised by the longing to be.

And at the same time, a growing sense of all that is alive in the universe that we do not see. Reading about experiments in physics demonstrating that light is sentient and, in its way, senses us. Waits in its own state of potential for us to choose and take part in the co-creation of what is and what will be.

Star Gazer

Stargazer
Underground
Earthbound
Potential seething
Awaiting warmth of sun
Churning deep plum
Like a bruise

Star
Gazing down
A cold and soundless
Observer
Waiting with hint of light
For scent of night
Alive with bloom

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The Art Of Touching You

Posted on 13 July 20197 August 2019 by H. Hennenburg

I am often grappling with the uneasy coexistence of absolute oneness and the seeming separation imposed by being in a physical body and of an individual mind – the condition of being an earthling, as it were. Here, the antidote to existential loneliness is an acceptance of a connection that is not knowable through my physical senses – a real surrender to my own beliefs. Physical touch is so much easier, yet this other kind of connection is so much bigger. But how do we live that kind of connection in our day-to-day physical world? We have to reach out our hands, answers my intuition. She gives no further instructions.

The Art Of Touching You

Telescope to the sky
A tingling darkness rises within
Shaping me tenderly
Resonating with things too far or too close for the eye to see
Things to be known instinctively

I sit alone with the universe
Embodying its great infinity
Contemplating the boundlessness
And the borders we impose
Intersecting at nowhere

And it is here that I laugh again
Because you are so close
That I can feel and know and love you
You are in my very own particles
And yet you are uniquely apart, as am I

But the art of touching you
This is the quest for which I turn to the telescope
The finer details eluding me
Out there we intersect, you and I,
At every point imagined and unimaginable

Here, I lie back and open my soul
To the immensity of that truth
My cosmology defining nothing while explaining everything at once
In this vast darkness swirling immeasurable light, I surrender and repose my longing
And reach out my hand and accept that you are here

Joyfully linking to Poets United.

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Weather

Posted on 10 July 20197 August 2019 by H. Hennenburg

Weather or not
I stand
I hold to my nature
I embrace her presence
Weather or not
She is swayed
And bent
And occasionally splintered
Because we all change form
Weather or not
We persevere
We keep trying
Though the general atmosphere
Is prying at our spirit
Let love reign to the last
Weather or not

Posted for the fine folks at Poets United for the Midweek Motif: weather.

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Hope Is Not Passive

Posted on 6 July 20197 August 2019 by H. Hennenburg

I hear a lot of talk about the state of the world. Often, I hear statements that begin with vision and understanding and shift quickly into sentences starting with, “but sadly… .” I hear a lot of voices filled with resignation saying “I hope… .” The implication being “I hope I’m wrong about where all this is headed.” This is not hope.

Hope is not passive.

Hope is not waiting to see what will happen. Hope is not about outcomes. Hope is making choices. Hope is choosing what you do with your thoughts, where you focus your attention, what you do in response to the challenges in your world. Hope is not passive.

Hope is investing in life. Showing up. Being here – for however long you get to be here. You wonder sometimes, “is there any hope for us, for our world?” You are our hope. Be here! I am our hope. Stand with me! All we have to do is show up, see ourselves in each other and choose accordingly.

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