Red-winged Blackbird Calls Me Home

This book is an invitation to wander into the heart of the living, breathing world. Poems and meditations draw wayfarers into a journey across time and space, through canyonlands and dreamscapes, into the healing waters of the "mysterious light speed river of now." Invocations, prayers, blessings, praise songs, rites of passage help us do the work of connecting, reconnecting, interconnecting ourselves once again.

Poems in the Wildcat Canyon Suite bring alive moments of intimacy with snakes and hawks, bees and stags, dragonflies and foxes through the eyes of an interspecies ambassador. Conversations of Heart celebrates the full range of life with lovers, family, and friends-from a special mission for two humans making a life commitment, to the great mysteries of transformation through birth, from maiden to mother to crone, illness, love and loss, dying and death, a memorial tea ceremony, and meditation on compassion.

In Magic Words, kinpoetic tales celebrate worlds where humans can marry animals and spirit animals can choose their human allies, breathing new life into old myths and old life into new myths. In a section titled Concrete & Pavement, the words remind how even in the urban concrete canyons, spotting "a two frogs graffiti" can awaken us in an instant. Several poems in the book act as dream catchers, while some conjure elemental encounters. The section Lotus Balm holds space for the war torn and wipes the tears of the frightened. One collection of poems circumambulates the sacred wheel of the year. And another section offers refuge in the Sanctuary of Gaia, calling forth the new goddesses required of tomorrow.

In Red-winged Blackbird Calls Me Home, Claudia L'Amoreaux shares the fruits of her long, committed practice of embodying extraordinary and ordinary lived moments within the magical spell of poetry to awaken hearts and rewild minds. Illustrations by the artist Cynthia Cunningham Baxter grace pages throughout the book. Extensive End Notes and a Resources and Inspiration section provide insights and offerings to deepen your own practice of interconnecting.