The Nature of Music

Poems and Photographs by

Also by Carol Alena Aronoff, Ph.D.:

Cornsilk

Her Soup Made the Moon Weep

Aronoff's poetry and photographs are rare gifts. She writes with striking sensual clarity and a sensitivity to the natural world that reminds one of Mary Oliver and Emily Dickinson. She is fearless and compassionate, an unforgettable yogini among us....

Her poems are so timely yet timeless, so uplifting and deeply spiritual. They are the poems we need now, more than ever. Experiencing them inspires profound connections to our world and our own spiritual practice. They surprise, challenge, delight, and reassure us. They deliver us to a condition where "Resting/in the ground of being, deathless peace prevails."...

What more can we ask of poetry? Of living? Be good to yourself and read this book, then give a copy to everyone you care about. Each poem and each photograph will lead you to an experience that is perhaps best described as blossoming.

"Carol Aronoff's poetry, so rich in spirituality and imagery, awakens us to the certain knowledge that we must view both earth and sky as benediction. Each poem, each photograph, is transcendent." Andrea L. Watson, Braided Lives: A Collaboration Between Artists and Poets

"There is a 'yearning for connection' in Aronoff's poems, a spiritual bond she readily detects in the natural world, be it a Hawaiian sunset, winter light, or 'a simple/ yellow flower.' She has a true reverence for nature, a conviction that nothing exists without a connection to everything else, much like the strand of beads she writes about in 'Prayer.' In fact, her poems are prayers, small supplications to the world that could be, if only we would let it." Scott Wiggerman, author of Vegetables and Other Relationships

"Carol Aronoff's fine photographs offer us the splendor of our natural world and her poems are filled with wise advice and timeless truths." Ellen Bass, author of Mules of Love

"The rhythms and patterns of nature's own music fill this book. Diurnal, nocturnal, seasonal, animal, humanely quizzical - these poems and photographs create a world we as readers want to participate in, and can be altered by. Aronoff knows that good poems do not flinch at paradox and deep mystery, but embody them, and hers do. Her poems invite the daily ritual of reading poems as 'offerings to energy and order,' as they also ask us to pay attention, to hear the innate and subtle music that is our sensory earth." Laurie Kutchins, author of The Night Path

Foreword by Robert McDowell
Acknowledgments

HOLY WORK

Meditation on Morning
Holy Work
The Bodhi Tree
Silence
Waiting
To Turn a Deaf Ear
True Reflections
Friendship
Bodhnath
Prayer
Breathing
River
No Big Deal Mind
Let's Dance
As It Is
The Joy of Washing the Buddha's Bowl
The Buddha's Rooster 24
Death Wish
Hidden Kernel
Breakwater
Sorrow
Purification
Road to Chimayo
Desert Heat
Stone Teaching
White Birds
Concrete Connection
Kona Sunset
Boundless, Boundless
Listening

CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS

Sunrise
Drawing the Dawn
Earth and Sky
Early Bird
In Praise of Slow Mornings
Nature's Fabric
Naming the Wind
Rain is a Music
The Beckoning Storm
Spring
Summer in My Mind
Autumn Endeavors
Daylight Savings
Winter Light
One Taste
Through a Looking Glass
Painted Desert Woman
Still Life
One Heart
Circadian Rhythms
Sleeves of Sunset
Just Friends
Pray with Me
New Moon
Nocturne
Night Diving

IN PELE'S GARDEN

The Island
Cloud Whispers
In Pele's Garden
Deja Vu
Sentinel
Picnic Blues
Tin Roof Garden
Tin Roof Garden Revisited
Coffee Shack Blues
Fruit Loops
Clearing
Cuban Reds
Hearts of Palm
Seeds
Seed Packets
Blue Jade Blues
Serenade
Moon
Garden by Moonlight
The Gardener
Wordfall
Melted Moonlight
Dances with a Goat
Turtle
Where Everyone is Kin

Early Bird

I watch the world open its leaves;
the fruit of unexamined dreams
hangs heavy on low branches, waiting
to be plucked by curious fingers.

In the still gentle light, bees bless
the Rose of Sharon blooms with honey
songs, while birds poke beaks into dark
centers, wings humming in mystery.

I step softly, wanting to be part
of this symphony of morning, to unfold
blue petals like the nearby iris, silent
partner in a butterfly dance.

Nature wraps me in white silk,
the threads of my cocoon light
as gossamer so I can still see pleated
clouds marching out to meet the sea.

No one questions my appearance
on the lip of trumpet vine; for once,
I'm no imposter or dream catcher
in someone else's dream.

Pelican Pond, 2006

Order Information / Blue Dolphin Publishing Home