Grandmother University

We'Moon Datebook for 2020

Vandana Shiva, the nuclear physicist,
went back to her land, India in the Himalayas,
to save seed for the farmers.
Organic farms, 
five times more productive than monoculture,
lead the way at Navdanya, “Nine Seeds,” 
her farm and home.
Saving fifteen hundred seeds, a biodiversity of seeds,
for local farmers to plant.
Farmers in the Cotton Belt have killed themselves
by the quarter million 
after Monsanto colonized the region.
“We learn from the seed.”
“We learn from the seed generosity. 
We learn from the seed diversity.”
Grandmothers, the elders, are the best link,
the true source of biodiversity.
“The link of the past to the future,”
says Vandana, her smile huge and warm, her eyes alight.
In the cotton regions,
Monsanto has colonized the seed,
limiting to five the thousands of cotton types known,
and from these five, genetically modified,
extracting royalties for their use.
And in Vandana’s way, at Navdanya, her ecological farm,
 “the Earth is generously saying,
‘Take everything from me.’”
“I have deep trust in the Earth.”

Annelinde Metzner
January 11, 2013


I am so grateful to the We'Moon sisterhood who have published so many of my poems over the years.  This year I am especially proud of the two poems in the 2020 issue, with the Tarot theme of "The World."   This poem is devoted to the brilliant and compassionate Vandana Shiva who is revolutionizing agriculture in India while resisting corporations such as Monsanto. Here is some info about Vandana.
     And some info about her movement, Navdanya.

Vandana Shiva

One of my poems in We'Moon 2020

Tree Mother of Africa

“I’m a child of the soil,” says Wangari.

“I don’t think you need a diploma 

to plant a tree.”

The women learn.  They plant trees.

Teaching one another, nurturing the seedlings,

brown arms reached deep 

into the brown earth,

anchoring the eroding hillsides 

with tiny saplings.

Thirty million planted!

On the faces of rural women in Kenya, 

there is hope.

“I have a new dress, and I can eat!”,  

says one.                                                       

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Each seedling is watered 

from hand-held tin cans.                                                            

The new forest grows, the soil stabilizes.

Animals begin to return.

“Deep in the roots,” says Wangari, 

“we are planting the seeds of peace.”

After thirty years of planting, nurturing and growing,

Wangari gets the Nobel Prize.

“I’m a child of the soil.”

And isn’t that you and me?                                                                                        
Aren’t  our own brown hands there, 
planting, waiting, mothering,

knowing all our futures are in the thin new stems, 
their bending and giving?

“You must empower yourself.  You must break the cycle.

You are planting hope in your life, and for your descendants.”

Wangari steps out on the Oslo balcony with her prize.

The streets erupt in ululation!

This is how we heal the Earth.

This is how we heal the Earth.

This is how we heal the Earth.

“Let’s plant trees!”

Annelinde Metzner

May 2008

I am inspired by Wangari Maathai once more, having just heard her jubilant and life-filled voice in an interview at the radio show On Being. 

     This poem can be updated to 52 million trees planted now!

See Wangari's website: http://greenbeltmovement.org

(photos from the Green Belt Movement including title page)   

      We have all gotten great joy by performing this poem at a number of my concerts.  Enjoy hearing Becky Stone in her reading of "Tree Mother of Africa":

Wangari Maathai

"I Feel Like a Big Person"

Dr. Mukwege with Congolese family

Dr. Mukwege sews and sews, 

hunting for the pieces of Alfonsine’s bladder.

Dark circles lengthen under his eyes, 

that yang look, hardened really,                     

born of living closely 

with viciousness every day.

     “Sometimes you go on your best guess,” 

      he says.

Alfonsine is newly arrived to Panzi Hospital.

After her rape, 

the perpetrator blew his shotgun into her body.

How could she survive?

But then, one day, 

lifting one tired and jaundiced eye,

Dr. Mukwege glimpses her 

on the hospital grounds.

This is the day she sang and danced!

She lifts her face 

and looks Dr. Mukwege in the eye.

     “I feel like a big person in my community,” 

      states Alfonsine.

     “I can do something for my people.

      Women must lead our country.   

      They know the way.”

Congo,  emerald jewel of Africa’s plenitude.

Dr. Mukwege raises his head 

from sewing,  sewing,

the intricate patching of torn flesh.

He hears the song 

that joins the women’s power 

to the earth and sky:

     “I will never be ashamed.

      God gave me a new heart 

      that I can be strong.”

Annelinde Metzner

September 2, 2007 

   Thanks to the work of Eve Ensler for introducing me to the work of Dr. Mukwege, who has just been granted the Nobel Peace Prize.

     Out of their work arose the City of Joy, a safe community for survivors of violence in the Congo.

Dr. Mukwege at Panzi Hospital (V-Day)

Incredible, Edible Todmorden

Garden in Todmorden, UK

“The industrial revolution came... and went.”
Thus begins the story of Todmorden, England, 
the little town that could.
Food grows free for the picking, everywhere,
at the police station, the fire house, 
the schools.
Yum, yum!  Fresh and free, 
festivals and street fairs,
recipes traded from around the world.
All grown here or right nearby.
“Everyone’s got to eat,” they say, 
and so they do!
“The time to act is now.”
Creating a world truly nourishing, 
for their children,for us all.
Food production begins 
in the garden of every school,
vegetables, chickens and fruit trees.
“The joy of connecting people is fabulous.”
Training the young people to grow food 
and market it,
small sustainable jobs 
where despair and depression had been.
In every nook and cranny, an apple tree.
“Go ahead, take some, it’s free!”
Poultry raising, bee keeping, dairy.
“You just have to give a damn about tomorrow.”
Dear little Todmorden, 
voting for life with all your being,
keep those three plates spinning in the air!

(The foundation of the philosophy of Incredible Edible Todmorden, England, is to keep these three plates in the air: community, education,  and business.)

Annelinde Metzner
November 4, 2012

   This poem about Todmorden has been selected to appear in the 2019 We'Moon Datebook!  Thanks We'Moon!

You can see lots more that is currently happening in Todmorden at this link.

Love for the world

Balinese dancer

I watch the dancer, one arm framing her face,
one hip drawing upward in the belly’s rhythm.
The dance of mature women, Raqs Sharqi,
born of the sensuous music of the Middle East.
Her hips pull us into infinity,
an inward-outward shout of beauty and desire.

In Cameroon, babies learn music
while strapped to Mama’s back.
Coming of age, boys leap high,
beaming with the village’s newfound respect.

In Bali, the gamelan orchestra cues the dancer
with clangs and thumps,
the bodies telling stories of monsters and gods,
each movement of eyes, and fingers, and feet
a perfectly timed posture of sacred geometry.

Oh humans, oh, humans, can’t you love all this?
Can’t you love the way we’ve created the world,
each culture born of each unique place,
and each of us expressing in our own way?
Doesn’t this beauty tear at your heart,
that everywhere we draw up our Earth’s strength
through our feet, through our hands,
and we thank Her with leaps and turns,
ecstatic to be stretching our bounds?

Oh people of our Earth, can’t you love all this?
The exquisite mudras of Bharat Natyam,
nuances of the courtship of Radha and Krishna, her love?
The kibbutz youth, leaping to dumbek and flute,
‘til joy bursts like fireworks from the chest?

Oh humans, oh infinite diversity,
aren’t you breathtaken, aren’t you amazed?
don’t you treasure each other, for the vastness
of what, together, we are?

Annelinde Metzner
Black Mountain
August 23, 2014

Boys practice drumming in Cameroon

Dancers on an Israeli kibbutz

Raqs Farqi, belly dancer

Bharat Natyam dancer of India playing Krishna's flute

I Am With You

No one can talk me out of the hurt he caused me.
                            -The Stanford Rape Victim

Brava, brave one, hurt one, raped one.
Voice this loudly, with all the power you can summon!
Brava, brave young woman of Palo Alto,
“Stanford Rape Victim” the only name we know.
But you speak, you voice this loudly!
Your deposition twelve pages, single-spaced,
letting us know, letting the world know,
letting the court know
what he did to you, what they all did to you.

“You don’t know me, 
      but you’ve been inside me,
            and that’s why we’re here today.”
 
Raped behind a dumpster after a party, unconscious,
pine needles and dirt rubbed into your body.
Painstakingly you described the ordeal.

At the hospital- 
       “a Nikon pointed right into my spread legs...”
the immediate aftermath-  
        “I didn’t talk, I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep...”
the aftereffects-  
       “I didn’t want my body anymore.  I was terrified of it.”
the news media-  
        “By the way, he’s really good at swimming.”
 
Brava, brave one, voicing this for us all!
Your profound work, your deposition
is out on the table for us all,
for young men and for young women,
now at last out in the open, the vividness of your truth.

After a physical assault, I was assaulted with questions
      designed to attack me, to say, 
            “see, her facts don’t line up.”
 
You gave this back to the world, saying “chew on this!”
and we have. We hear you!
The world will never be the same,
never again to doubt your truth and your pain.
The world has changed.  There is no turning back.

I can’t sleep alone at night without a light on.
  I have nightmares of being touched 
       when I cannot wake up.
 
Brava, strong one, give it voice! 
Spare the world nothing of your truth!

And finally, to girls everywhere, I am with you.
      On nights when you feel alone, I am with you.
 
I bow in thanks, a thousand thanks, to you, victim-no-more.
For the sake of girls, the next ones and the next,
you gave of your all, you gave us your truth,
the screaming depths of your pain.
Brava!



(All quotes in italics are taken from the deposition of the Stanford Rape Victim,  reported in Buzzfeed, June 3, 2016 by Katie Baker.)

Annelinde Metzner
July 2016

Here Is The Powerful Letter The Stanford Victim Read Aloud To Her Attacker  (click here)

A former Stanford swimmer who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman was sentenced to six months in jail because a longer sentence would have “a severe impact on him,” according to a judge. At his sentencing Thursday, his victim read him a letter describing the “severe impact” the assault had on her.

Katie J.M. Baker

BuzzFeed News Reporter

posted on Jun. 3, 2016, at 4:17 p.m.

One night in January 2015, two Stanford University graduate students biking across campus spotted a freshman thrusting his body on top of an unconscious, half-naked woman behind a dumpster. This March, a California jury found the former student, 20-year-old Brock Allen Turner, guilty of three counts of sexual assault. Turner faced a maximum of 14 years in state prison. On Thursday, he was sentenced to six months in county jail and probation. The judge said he feared a longer sentence would have a “severe impact” on Turner, a champion swimmer who once aspired to compete in the Olympics — a point repeatedly brought up during the trial.
On Thursday, Turner’s victim addressed him directly, detailing the severe impact his actions had on her — from the night she learned she had been assaulted by a stranger while unconscious, to the grueling trial during which Turner’s attorneys argued that she had eagerly consented.
The woman, now 23, told BuzzFeed News she was disappointed with the “gentle” sentence and angry that Turner still denied sexually assaulting her.
“Even if the sentence is light, hopefully this will wake people up,” she said. “I want the judge to know that he ignited a tiny fire. If anything, this is a reason for all of us to speak even louder.”
 

Thank you, Hillary

Hillary Clinton from CNN

A deep relaxation, an exhalation, a gratefulness,
knowing you have been there to represent us,
you, a woman, the mother of a woman,
the daughter of a woman, one of us.
Hillary, you inspire us, with your bravery, your clarity,
your firmness, your discernment on the world’s stage.
High up in the echelons, you represent us.  Thank you.
Traveling, traveling, in ease and in strain,
you spoke of Malala and Inez, all our brave women,
at one with our great community, this world.
Hillary, without fear, you went feet first
to the most dangerous places in the world.
Yes, we share your pain, our pain,
we born with a womb, our badge of courage,
our births that say the way will be rough,
the climb uphill all our lives.
We born with a womb, and from a womb,
our daughters, our mothers and ourselves,
know from birth that we must be strong,
we must know our minds and love our bodies,
we must speak for ourselves when our Hillaries are gone,
remembering her and teaching ourselves,
going on, for their sake, for Malala and Wangari,
for all the women who show the way,
to live strong and free, to move as we choose,
to be what we are, to be.

Annelinde Metzner
December 7, 2012


I wrote this poem of deep thanks to Hillary Clinton in December of 2012, after listening to her speech on Human Rights at Dublin City University in Ireland which you can listen to here.

Hillary Clinton from ABC

Christiana saves the world

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of UNFCCC

“What if we don’t succeed?”  is asked of Christiana Figueres,
months before the climate summit.
Tears well up in her blue and hazel eyes.
“Ask the islands. Ask Bangla Desh.”
Here is the woman charged with saving the world.
Chairing the world climate summit, fearlessly taking on
almost two hundred world leaders-
with her emotions intact, with her tears and her laughter,
her deep hearty laugh always at the ready.
And she succeeds!
O Christiana, with your well-trained sense of respect,
wanting no supremacy of one culture over another,
not needing to make anyone take the blame,
the anthropologist ‘til the end.
With her staff of five hundred, the Secretariat,
she rips off her formal jacket 
to dance.
Fending off global collapse with international agreement. 
Nothing is impossible!
Christiana travels the world, pulling, pulling,
pulling us all together.  We are inextricably linked,
“consciously uncoupling” our growth from our emissions.
“This is your moment,” Christiana tells the ministers.
The agreement is emerging, a new child,
a new kind of child of the world’s making!
Christiana, how we hold you up in praise.
Christiana, go ahead and cry your tears!
Those big, healthy tears for us, for our world,
that yes, you have helped so much to save.

Annelinde Metzner
December 14, 2015 

 

        This week, we've had the glorious news that the climate change summit in Paris has come to an agreement accepted by almost 200 countries!   In this poem, I give thanks to the woman who pushed, pulled, persuaded and corralled all these disparate peoples so that we may all survive.
     For an excellent article about Christiana Figueres, see Elizabeth Kolbert, "The Weight of the World," in the New Yorker, August 24, 2015.

UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon and Christiana Figueres.  It's time!!

Be proud, Christiana!

 

I Have Sworn to Protect Her

"Healing" giclee by Autumn Skye Morrison

I have sworn to protect Her!           
Miracle blue-green jewel of all the worlds,
ancient blue mountains, vast golden deserts,
hummingbirds in the jewelweed,
black bear in the raspberries.
I speak for Her!
I howl for Her!        
I howl, “Beware!”
to you who remove Her sacred mountaintops
torturing her body to get at Her coal.
I howl, “Beware!”
to you who go deep within her mineral layers,
scraping away at her core
for your own gain.
But no one gains by this.  She feeds us all.
I have sworn to protect Her,           
this day that She needs us,
when even Her vast blue-green oceans, teeming with life,
are tainted with blood, the black oil of power and greed.
This is the day, this is the hour.
She, long-silent, awaits our voice.
The signs of Her anger are everywhere:
desert, flood, tornado, wildfire, earthquake, typhoon, tsunami.
I howl for Her!             
I love my Earth as my own body!
I have sworn to protect Her!

Annelinde Metzner
July 31, 2011


As I turn the page to "December 2015" in my We'Moon wall calendar, I come upon an excerpt from my poem above, with fabulous art by Autumn Skye Morrison.  You can see her wonderful giclee, "Healing," as well as other art pieces at her website here. 

     I send out my poem once more as a prayer, to add to so many others, for divine wisdom to come through and among the many world leaders courageously meeting this week in Paris for the World Climate Summit of 2015.  May we all protect our Earth, our beloved Home!!   May we love Her more and more each day!!

Delaware River, Margaretville, New York

  

Sacred mound, Blowing Rock, North Carolina

The shaman visits

Ancient woman shaman from Manchuria

I lie in my bed, feet-to-the-head,
window wide open to the May breeze and birdsong.
The shaman has come to heal me!
Three candles on all sides,
the sharp aroma of Palo Santo incense piercing the air.
She shows me the magical items
in her sacred prayer bundle.
Stones, animal figurines, the jaguar and the snake,
a tiny drop of blood.
“Which stone speaks to you?” she asks me.
I choose the one with inscriptions, layers and depth.
“Let the stone absorb all your pain.”  I do.
The shaman moves around me, singing prayers,
shaking the carved Amazonian rattle.
The sharp, high sound cleanses the air all around.
I close my eyes and am at peace.
Slowly she moves up the center of my body,
testing me with the pendulum.  Hardly any motion.
She passes over my body with her hands,
her warm belly pressed against my side.
I release my fears into the Mother, into Pacha Mama,
into millennia of healing women,
the warmth of Her body held close to mine,
succor and comfort and clarity.
This healing is simple, a fact of human life,
the legacy of our bodies.
Slowly she moves her hands from my head to my feet,
intuitively pulling out this and that,
blockages and negativity and fear.
Once more, the high-pitched hiss of the shaker.
Again the pendulum, and, lo and behold!
Each chakra has movement,
a gigantic “Yes!”,  the glow of life.
“Tonight this will all begin to move,” she says,
“the path of healing.”
She comes to my side to pray to Pacha Mama once more.
“Now She will mulch you” she says softly.
With her two strong hands under my body,
I feel like an offering to Her, to our Mother,
and I’m good with that!
It’s Mother’s Day, and I am here,
my life is this gift, and this Shaman’s hands,
supporting me, offering me in this ancient way.
I’m suspended in the Mother’s hands
and I give thanks.





Annelinde Metzner
May 10, 2015


On Mother's Day of this year, I was gifted with a wonderful healing by the Ecuadorian shaman, Sylvia Ponce.  Right in my own home as she was visiting!   It was a truly healing, supportive and loving experience as described here.  See photo below of Sylvia and my dear friend Consuelo Nino.

Sylvia and Consuelo

Tuvan shaman