Starry Dreams Unfold
“Oath of Dust” Bardic Poetry by Joseph S. Plum
Welcome:
Greetings and welcome to American Bardic Poet.
“Oath of Dust”
This week I share the inspiration behind my “Lupita dreams” painting - a poem I call “Oath of Dust.”
Dreams and the “dreaming mind” are foundational aspects of the creative process for the poet. He finds poems in his dreams. And he finds dreams in his poems.
One important lesson Dad’s often tried to illustrate to me over the years is (in a nutshell):
Between the waking mind and the dreaming mind is a space.
Inside that space is timeless time.
Inside that timeless time is empty sound.
Inside that empty sound is poetry.
At the end of the poetry there is a resounding silence.
The silence at the end is where all is said.
Good journey,
(The poet’s daughter.)
oath of dust
oath of dust
just returning
cast no shadows
to the ground
beyond limits
set by understanding
a still voice
approaches sound
while across these hills
a fierce allegiance
hung with ribbons cold
brings for us
a map to heaven
on which starry dreams unfold
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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