Following an ancient Jewish precedent, some Christian mystics and thinkers have viewed the Divine Wisdom as a female figure: the feminine emanation of the Godhead who manifests, pervades, guides and cares for all creatures. I love this idea. Some thinkers have identified this figure with the Holy Spirit, others with the pre-incarnate Logos, still others with the essence or substance of the Godhead itself. Who am I to weigh in with a lot of theological heavy-hitters?

Here I simply offer a hymn to Sophia.

HYMN TO SOPHIA

You draped the insubstantial dusk in blue

And drugged the poplars in their loamy beds;

Then cut the silver wound that sheds the dew,

While spiders wound the shrubs in silver threads.

You hung the light in sheets of shifting pearl

And glazed with palest green the water's lap;

Then breathed upon the water like a girl

And swelled the sleeping herbs with golden sap.

In wave on wave of deep and deeper shade

You sunk the nest-hung hedges into dark:

You urged the honeybee across the glade

Back to his hive, a dim and dimmer spark.

You strung the stars like sapphires in your hair,

And pulsing Venus seemed to me your heart;

I heard your holy silence everywhere,

Saw everywhere the radiance of your art!

Once, warm, you pressed against me while I dreamed.

"Don't be afraid... I love you...", soft you spoke.

Your face, your hair with golden light all streamed:

You kissed me once and, at that touch, I woke.

Divine Sophia, dancing in the Deep!

Yours is my heart!  From yonder wooded hill

Away across the meadow, at the edge of sleep,

An owl began to sing, and then was still.

- Tod Jones

Late autumn and winter are times I love.  I love the lonely spareness of the landscape when all the leaves are off the trees and all colors are muted and subdued.  Things seem old and new at the same time.  I love the crisp, spicy smell of everything!  The locust trees which in summer have a nearly pre-historic lushness (you expect to see giant, jewelled dragonflies darting in and out amongst the leaves) now look stark, twisted and dark as trees in a forbidden forest.  A lovely melancholy pervades the atmosphere, and one feels that perhaps it isn't SO bad that things must, after all, come to an end.

Here's another poetic offering.

             AND GAZING, FALL

Longing for her!

In this twilight so empty of her caress.

The hills are covered with the soft,

Brown fur of trees, which the last

Sunlight touches.

And the sky is this limpid jewel,

This globe of enchanted glass

Which you might hold in your palm,

In the small cup of your hand...

And gazing, fall into it

And be lost in blissful death.

               - Tod Jones

I have begun to read IN THE NIGHT GARDEN by Catherynne M. Valente.  It is the first volume of a duology of original fairytales called THE ORPHAN'S TALES.  I cannot tell you how magical these stories are, nor how ravishingly talented and inventive is their young author!  (She is in her late twenties, which to me is quite young.)  She does not present the reader with a mere sequence of discrete tales, but a sort of braid of interlinked and recurring narratives which are spellbinding!  They are somewhat reminiscent of THE 1,001 NIGHTS inasmuch as they are definitely for grownups, have an Arabic flavor, and are narrated by a single character whom you could say is the counterpart of Scheherazade.  I have read the criticism that Valente's prose is a little too heavily freighted with similes:  I think that is simply a matter of taste.  It is extremely poetic prose.  If any of this sounds appealing, I urge you to dash to a bookstore and buy a copy without further delay! 

I love the night, particularly when I know I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn to go to work!  The funny thing is, I love the dark before dawn, too.  There is a pregnant stillness in those quiet, solitary hours, an intimate closeness that is conducive to contemplation, to inwardness and to joy.  This morning, as I was sitting quietly in my room (it was still utterly dark outside) I heard an owl singing in it's way somewhere behind the house.  And later, when I went outside to fill the birdfeeder, the clear light was just rising in the East, but overhead the stars were still burning bright. 

Here is another poetic offering.

          LET DREAMS COME

Let dreams come.

Let the holy sleep take all.

Yes, let the Heart awaken finally

In it's own native land.

There, just to look

At the trees is a prayer,

And to plunge your fingers slowly

Into the darkly gleaming ivy!

And sleep, sleep

Is the highest praise!

Like leaping from a fiery cloud into

The bosom of the sea!

               - Tod Jones

It is a warming thought, knowing you are all out there- fellow adventurers in the realms of the imagination; fellow lovers of beauty!  Here's another poetic offering.

         EVENING STAR

Whirring doves dart swiftly

To their roosts in the darkening firs.

Twilight's grey-eyed daughters

Slip through the locust trees

Trailing their long, shadowy hair.

The heady anthem the sun intoned 

All day in the limitless blue

Now faintly and more faintly sounds:

Sunk in an abyss of flowers;

Refreshing the roots of mountains

In golden halls beneath the earth.

O Slave of beauty and longing, 

Arise, your hour has come!  

Your Beloved, the Evening Star, 

Opens her silver window and leans out...

Igniting your heart with her

Soulful, steady gaze!

             - Tod Jones