Guest post by my friend and colleague Rebecca Jane. This post does not necessarily reflect the views of this website.
Thanks to Melanie Weldon-Soiset for inviting me to contribute to this blog; I admire Melanie’s work and have learned from her trust in prayer and her enthusiasm for poetry. It is a pleasure to be here to write about my April poetry practice.
This April, I chose to observe “National Poetry Month” by writing one haiku per day devoted to native plants of California. Warts and all, I post each poem on Instagram with an image of the native plant that inspired the poem.
Why do I do this? My intention is to express gratitude to native plants for their beauty, utility, stoicism, resilience, and vitality. Learning from the plants, I aspire to show up in the world, in this case via the Instagram platform, the way plants show up—quiet yet unstoppable, lyrical, fragrant, and timeless. I live in San Diego’s Tecolote Canyon, and the plants that grow here are my teachers.
The canyon’s wildlife is my companion when I practice yoga each morning. I have been studying and practicing various styles of yoga for three decades, and in the Kashmiri Shaivite tradition, there is this teaching: wherever one focuses the mind or the eye-gaze, there goes one’s energy. Writing haiku focused on native plants encourages my energy to flow toward flora; thus, I intentionally offer my energy to Mother Earth. This is a form of Earthing or forest bathing, sure; and, it is a crucial energetic exchange.
Though I have an extremely humble following (not the word I would choose) in the social media realm, it was important for me to share my expression on Instagram for a couple of reasons. 1. My teen daughter uses Instagram, and she sees my posts. This is a way I can communicate with my daughter from my artistic self, beyond my mother self. 2. I needed to post on Instagram because I have given my attention to various voices on that platform, and I longed for connection, to feel a sense that we are engaged in dialogue, and to feel out the quality of energy exchange in the virtual space of social media. In this way, my posts are an experiment that help me measure energetic exchange in virtual spaces.
Over the years, my social media “feed” mostly broadcasts advice, solicitation, advertisement, and entertainment. Does this feed me?
Rebecca Jane
What feeds me? Nature, beauty, vitality, dialogue, friendship, and education. With my virtual presence, I am reaching out with hope to connect my beloved yard with my diverse virtual world, like pressing flowers in pages of a book, pressing something gentle, creative, alive, and vibrant into the virtual page. This was intended to be a conversation with my social media connections. Besides scrolling, clicking, liking, and following, I want to be creating, dialoguing, stimulating, and sharing.
I feel blessed to feed my soul through reading and writing poetry. I have been writing poetry alongside my yoga practice as devotion, as self-expression, and as contemplative investigation into Self-knowledge, as revelation. This April’s practice helped me cultivate an ecological mind focus and gaze.
Another yogic teaching says we are what we see. I do aspire to the resilience and beauty I see in plants.
What have I learned through this practice? I have learned names of, and how to care for, local native plants. I have learned to listen to plant life with more depth and intention. I have learned how to turn my energy toward Mother Earth to offer my poetic expression in service to ecological health and well-being. If I were a plant, I would be any variety of sage. Sage’s fragrance is used by shamans and mystics in ceremony. White sage is especially fragrant when it burns, and it makes me think, if only my flesh, blood, and bone could be so useful when it’s time I burn.
I owe gratitude to the California Native Plant Society San Diego Chapter, the Kumeyaay-Ipai Interpretive Center at Pauwai, Kristopher Hughes, Shonagh Home, National Charity League Seaside Chapter, San Diego Writers, Ink, and and Svatantra Institute. These teachers have helped me cultivate knowledge, sensitivity, understanding, energy, courage, and expression that I needed to write informed and sensitive haiku.
I love writing in various poetic forms. So far, haiku and sestina have harmonized well, in different ways, as contemplative components to my daily yoga practice. Sestina uses six words, repeated over and over in different order in the different stanzas throughout a six-stanza poem, plus a three-lined envoi. It’s a complex poetic form that supports deep psyche excavation, which is part of a contemplative yoga tradition such as Sri Vidya.
Haiku works more like flashes and pauses over moments of being that go unnoticed in the work-a-day movement of the mind, but appear as blooms of insight after deep meditation. Back in 2021, I practiced my daily yoga and meditation routine, then daily sestina writing. After several months, I had a cleaner psyche and a completed collection that grew out of the practice. This April, haiku felt more in alignment with my current mantra practice that intends to align my psyche with the luscious growth of flora in the canyon in Spring. Meditating on plant life proved nourishing for my psyche as I was cultivating deeper eco-consciousness. My mind, rooted with plant life, became more interesting and wiser to me than my mind focusing on human conflict and drama.
Though my poetry serves as a path to Self knowledge, I am always hopeful and grateful to reach new readers, so anyone who wishes to read my debut collection, please find She Bleeds Sestinas available from Atmosphere Press.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post! In addition to your time, I also appreciate the energy and focus you directed to reading, thinking, and feeling here. My prayer is we feel safe to cultivate and direct our energy to grow in loving kindness. Peace!
Rebecca Jane is the author of She Bleeds Sestinas. Her writing has appeared in The Journal for Expressive Writing, TARKA, A Year in Ink, Vol. 14, San Diego Poetry Annual, Feathered Quill, Literary Mama, Earshot Jazz, and others. She teaches yoga and meditation and raises two daughters in San Diego. Read more of her writing at rebecca-jane-writer.com.
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