Mountain is Ancestor to the Cloud
“Cloud Mountain” Bardic Poetry by Joseph S. Plum
Welcome:
Greetings and welcome to American Bardic Poet.
“Cloud Mountain”
I read this poem aloud to myself at midnight on New Year’s Eve this year. I felt like it was a good way to acknowledge one of the most difficult years of my life, while also allowing hope to enter my heart for the future.
As we enter this new year and are guided into a series of new moon cycles, I am sending blessings and love for moments of happiness and homecoming.
Good journey,
(The poet’s daughter.)
cloud mountain
and so it is
that the mountain
comes to the cloud
and cloud to the mountain
for mountain is ancestor to the could
and cloud
child of the mountain’s breath
and breath
force and will of spirit
and spirit
fire and vapor of life
to fill the oceans
empty the mind
to cleanse the heart
calibrate time
to instruct the eye
open the soul
to cradle
this one single moment
of homecoming
just let go!
Read about the poet and the bees here.
Read my post regarding punctuation and editing of the poems here.
Read the poem “Wild Wisdom” and a short essay I wrote about the forest here.
This is a page from the book, I Believe in Seeds: Affirmations for Rewilding, made possible by a grant from the BeWildReWild Fund at Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation. This book combines my watercolor paintings with Dad’s poems, and gave me a chance to try something different with punctuation. Also, it was such a beautiful moment when Dad saw my paintings and realized his poems were part of his daughter’s artwork.
I’m grateful.
I’ll write more next week. Hope to see you again then. Please consider sharing this post with someone you think may be interested in Dad’s poetry.
🙏🏼 Thank you for gathering here. May it be a blessing. 🙏🏼
About the Poet
Joseph S. Plum is a poet in the bardic tradition. He lives off-grid in rural Iowa and composes his unique chant-like oral poetry for fascinated audiences around the world. Joe has over 16 hours of oral poetry memorized in his head. He pulls from this collection of rhyming lines to compose poems according to the energy of the audience listening. Joe does all of this without writing the poems down on paper or holding any notes.
Joe’s daughter, Emily Lupita, typed up his poems over the years and launched Dreaming Deer Press to publish his work. He now has nine poetry books for sale on Amazon that can be purchased on Joe’s website - here.
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