PUBLIC EVENTS & RELEASES
2025 JOIN US FOR OUR 2ND BOOK RELEASE AND READING ~ THE SCHOOL OF 3 LIGHTS
Forgotten Bloom, Sarah H. Paulson, 2025
(excerpt below)
An Afternoon of Poetry and Dessert with
Sarah H. Paulson and Laura C. Stelmok
“Two women gazing into each other’s eyes, Calling the Rain!”
Writing from the annual winter artist residency, “Calling the Rain”
When: Sunday December 21, 2025 3:30-6:00 pm
Where: Sheepscot Hollow (live) and on ZOOM! (virtual)
28 Nilsen Lane, Whitefield, ME, 04353
Please email us if you would like the Zoom information.
Released November 18, 2025
The 3 Lights Press
$20.00 + $5.99 Shipping and Handling
To purchase the new book CLICK HERE
Forgotten Bloom is a collection of poems based on the author's personal mystical experiences. Those who are drawn to the silence of the heart will recognize the journey that is Forgotten Bloom. In a series of 32 poems, the reader is ushered through a tapestry of revelations conveyed with passion, severity, and at times, even humor. Messages about sacrifice, betrayal, friendship, and beauty are tucked in amongst inner secrets of the heart. Ultimately, Forgotten Bloom is a tale of union, reaching toward the universal in fellow lovers of truth. The potency of love consumes us, writes the poet.
About the aurthor:
Sarah H. Paulson is an artist and acupuncturist. Her first book of poems, To My Companion: within the room within the room, was published by The 3 Lights Press in 2021. In addition to drawing and painting, Paulson has worked extensively in the realms of performance for over 20 years, combining dance/movement, video, music/sound, and visual art to create large-scale multi-disciplinary pieces. For more about the author, visit: sarahhpaulson.com
Forgotten Bloom (an excerpt)
You agree to be the forgotten part in order that she can remember something in herself. This is friendship at its root.
There is No Door
There is a residual pain from traveling.
She travels the human soul.
This bloom is one that waits for the mortal condition
to make way for the immortal condition.
The mortal must approach the immortal,
must sweep the threshold,
must not skip the path
to be opened into the door.
“But there is no door!” the mortal complains.
The mortal cries in pain, in pitiful despair.
The immortal knows this mortal of dense earth.
For the blooming is within,
no density can trudge upon the petals.
Her reflection is touched through my friend’s worn hands.
Between the earth that holds us and the earth within us,
we are privy to the earth that is us—
gleaming toward my hands, our hands,
locked and caressing, reminding us
of our humanness, of our lineage,
reminding us of the secrets held in
ecstatic bondage.
All of them—
they go into the earth,
this earth that is my love,
my lover,
my teacher,
my student,
my ungendered position of praise and sacrifice.
This earth is the one that teaches service,
not the effort to reach this buried place.
The ecstasy is in the effort
and the service is in her existence.
Sarah H. Paulson, Gathering with the Angel, 2025
To purchase the new book CLICK HERE
2021 THE 1ST BOOK RELEASE & READING OF THE SCHOOL OF 3 LIGHTS!
To My Companion: within the room within the room,
Sarah H. Paulson, 2021
(excerpt below)
An Evening of Poetry and Dessert
with Laura C. Stelmok and Sarah H. Paulson
“Two women gazing into each other’s eyes, Calling the Rain!”
Readings from the annual 6 week winter artist residency, “Calling the Rain”
(From the early Taoist tradition of the Immortal Sisters, the character for the Magician, calling the rain: 2 women, praying for the rain, the grace of Heaven.)
When: Wednesday July 21, 2021 6:30-8:00 pm
Where: Sheepscot Hollow (live) and on ZOOM! (virtual)
28 Nilsen Lane, Whitefield, ME, 04353
Please email us if you would like the Zoom information.
To My Companion: within the room within the room, Sarah H. Paulson (an excerpt)
To my companion -
The companion in my heart gives to thee a pen with which to write the names of god as they come through the stories of those gathered. I cannot say who I am, nor can you say who you are, but what we know is that we return to our deaths with light in our hearts as a direct result of this gathering. My companion is a tree, a companion of the oldest kind, and the love between us will never, ever, take us from the path. The oneness that she is is fully accessible, unadulterated.
The song in me cries to the song in you. Will you sing with me, please? Will you lay your weapons down so the fire may burn pure again?…
A pen, the light. The paper, a tree. I give myself to thee and you to me. Together we are marked. You put your hand upon my head; I look up. I ask, “Who has forgotten this old ancient chain to which we were born? Have they forgotten your face?” And you look at me, show your face and cry a song I had long forgotten. I thank you.
Your companion through eternity.
7.
A poem left its scent on my fingertip and I obeyed.
I opened the land within myself
to elaborate on the meaning of word,
and I came upon an island within my chest.
It had been covered, this ancient and alive body of land.
It recognized me when I parted myself to see it.
The tides were awake; they knew my face.
I climbed upon her closest rock
and discovered that she knew my weight.
I found my footing and proceeded to climb,
higher and higher.
This island was of the north.
I needed only to follow the land.
After hours of exploration, I came upon a book,
the words which won’t reveal themselves to me now.
I reached in my pocket and discovered a pen.
Asking for direction, I retraced the pen’s movements.
I learned that language arrives through dance,
inseparable as mediums (dance and language).
My memory was wiped clean,
and my past no longer pulled me.
I put the pen down on the book
thinking someone else might need it to write,
but the pen got up and inserted itself back into my pocket.
The book opened itself to this page and folded down
its own corner.
Here and onward were empty,
but across the top of this page read:
Your contribution will be overshadowed by fate.
Begin here now.
There are nights when the poems come
and nights when they lay dry,
disinterested in the beauty they might prepare.
It is the seeker’s job to follow the words as they arrive,
not determine their arrival.
The ancient texts were written like rainwater
being collected by the thirsty.
There would be days that called for a hundred buckets
and weeks that would call for none.
If the bead of dew happened upon you,
you would join in communion,
holy worship through companionship and word,
silent for most of the working hours.
Thirsty you would come and thirstier you would leave,
your body wanting something more than it has known.
The subtlety of direct correspondence is that it must pass
through your heart and change you in the process.
You are not saying the words,
but you are receiving them like landmarks in time.
The wind passes through the tree branches,
sometimes rustling the leaves,
and sometimes leaving the branches bare,
and sometimes whispering a song unlikely to occur at any
other time.
If I give you a secret, will you promise not to discard it?
Yes.
You are in anticipation of the drowning man’s words.
Remain marked.
He will need a voice when the time comes,
when the longing is so great.
Until then, remain in practice;
the book will prepare you.
Listen as you do, even when listening has reached its end.
You’ve been captured by the ego’s demise,
the very request you made last night.
The nature of your muse is to ask,
and typically, you are taken seriously.
Settle down. Feel the words as they come.
Don’t jump ahead or behind or even underneath.
The practice in presence, however momentary,
trains you in this relationship between pen and ink,
between inbreath and outbreath.
Change your understanding of what focus is.
The life of the artist is spent in prayer,
in speech and in silence, in production and dormancy.
Every door has another door.
Every word another word within.
You will find desolation there,
and heartache, and forgetfulness.
You will find sorrow and unexplainable overwhelm.
You will seek cover,
but once you enter you best not turn back,
if you are welcomed in.
If you leave too soon you risk stealing the word,
not by intention but because words are revealed,
and you are welcomed into deeper states or different states.
In these states, you are changed,
altered to be the language that was given to you.
If you depart too early, you do not respect the realms
and you are unchanged in the rightful way.
Free will is different in Hurqalya.
Free will is different in the Blue Room.
Free will is your greatest obstacle when freedom leads.
The silent sighs of the sages who have come before us
tell us this truth.
Do not lose your pen as you lose your self.
Holy, holy is the failure.
Sarah H. Paulson, Calling the Rain, a winter residency, 2020