Monday, November 4, 2024

THIRTEEN YEARS GONE



I feel it coming, this poem I will birth
on the thirteenth year of your passing
from this earth.
So close to tears, I realized, of course, it is you.
Just how much and how long I would miss you,
back then I never knew.
Like a burrowing owl, you have lodged in my heart,
like a prickle-burr that hurts,
from which I do not want to part.
You live there, night and day,
in a corner labeled Grief.
From the missing and your-being-gone
there is no relief.

Ghost voices whispering on the wind,
and wolf howls in my dreams,
you look right into my sad heart;
your wolf-eyes gleam.

The barn owl says to light the lamp
on the windowsill for you.
But how can you find me in this place
that was never home to you?

I'm homeless in the universe, alone, without you
and I fear you're out there somewhere,
feeling homeless too.
Lead me back, wolf-spirit,
to the land we loved together.
I will walk there again
as we did in any weather.

When I can hear the rhythm of
the turning of the tides,
my spirit may still find a home
once more, where peace abides.
Maybe your ghost shadow
will accompany the hours
as I walk forever beaches that,
for a time, were ours.


*** *** ***

I went to bed and slept, and then they came:
four beautiful, snowy white wolves
who already knew my name.
The first one came close,
oh! the beauty of her face!
pushed a friendly nose towards me,
as I stood still, accepting,
but respectful of her space.
We were at the beach, the wolves and I.
A visitation from the spirit-world
of the not-alive,
and from deep in my spirit,
which needs both wolves and ocean waves
to thrive,
because it has never been enough
simply to survive.
The barn owl called sleepily
in the early light to wake me.
Four white wolves live within me now,
never to forsake me.

And you?
big, black, laughing, hilarious
creature of the dawn?
You live in my heart
forever, now.
You are never
fully gone.

for my open link at What's Going On?

Amazing to think it has been thirteen years. He lived by my side for fourteen wild and wonderful years. I miss him always. I wrote this poem on one of the early anniversaries of his death. Then, I was living in Port Alberni, where he and I mourned our lost beaches together. I am back here, now, which has been a great blessing. I hope his spirit lopes along the shore with me on my beach walks.

I have many favourites among my poems, but this one goes the deepest.

A Dubious Commentary on Impossible Politics



In the darkest hour before dawn,
 a roving reporter from the underworld
recites a satisfactory report
to the swarthy warlord:

Earthlings are behaving as anticipated.
(They chuckle in amusement.)
Like lemmings, they quietly approach the cliff,
seeming not to understand
a watery grave lies beneath.

Where are the light-bearers
with far-sighted vision,
in these troubled times?

The capricious unreliable narrator,
peering down from Planet Earth in alarm,
interjects:
Let's send in some help!
A small brown warm-hearted bird appears,
off to the side,
holding a sign under her wing:
Wait! Stop!
There is Another Way.


for Shay at the Word List - where the words took me on this nerve-wracking day before the election. 


Sunday, November 3, 2024

DONA NOBIS PACEM: Holding the Light

 


WHEN FEELING HOMELESS,
READ THIS POEM

Fellow Traveler,
do you feel like you've been
searching for home
for a lifetime?

Are you out there in the dark
storm-tossed and weary,
buffeted by winds,
with still such a long way to go?

Come home.
I'll put a candle on the sill
to light your way.
There's a fire in the hearth
and a soup-pot slow-simmering.
Comfort and kind words await.
You need only arrive.

Watch for the light
to guide your steps.
Hold it in your heart,
against the darkness 
and unkind words swirling
around our heads.

Come home, weary traveler,
to the only home
there ever is ~
home to yourself
once again,
filled with your light
and your peace.
Together, let's light up
this tired old world
and make it shine.



We need all the light we can get, my friends, against dark forces that would divide us. But millions of bright lights can create a lot of shine.  Canada is standing with its neighbour, praying that the light will outshine the darkness.

Thanks, Mimi, for years of these blogblasts for peace. Maybe this is the year?



Tuesday, October 29, 2024

She Has Horses




She had horses who lived in her dreams.
When she was little, she would gallop
around and around the back field,
long hair streaming out behind her,
galloping to the rhythm
of the hoofbeats in her heart.
She was trying to be a horse, and
we smiled as we watched her
- da-dum, da-dum, da-dum -
head nodding, mane flying.

When she got big, she had horses:
a brown mare who lived in the country
while she worked in town, then, later,
an Arabian, a Grande Dame of horses,
finally a horse in her back yard,
who lived long, and ruled the small farm,
bossing all the horses who came later.

This mare gave birth to a tiny foal,
his arrival an unexpected miracle.
This magical foal was her child,
she who had never had children.
Because his mother would not nurse him,
she hand-fed him. He was her heart horse,
all of her joy and, when he died too young,
all of her heartbreak.
She did not stop crying for a month.
She still can't speak his name.

Some things you never get over.
Some things you can't speak about,
because the pain goes too deep.

She has always had horses.
What this means is knowing,
when you love animals,
that after some years of joy,
there will be heartbreak.

Her farm has a burial ground
where lie the bones of
all the cats and dogs and horses
she has loved.
Their spirits are content,
because they are still at home.
The horses she has today,
circle the burial ground on their track.
In wet weather one area moves
and puffs up, then deflates,
as if the ghost horses are galloping
underground in their dreams.
Sometimes the live ones above-ground
kick up their heels and toss their manes,
bringing us joy as we watch
through the farmhouse window.

The horses have calm hearts
and shy, wise eyes. They look into our souls;
they know who is kind, who is not.
They bring their big soft noses
over the fence-rail and whuff
in our faces. Their gentle, seeking lips
nuzzle our hands, looking for treats.
If they find none, they nibble our clothing,
or the top of the fence, and sigh.
They daydream about carrots and apples,
and sweet, young grass.

They love their small barn, their round track,
and their people, staring towards the window,
where their humans live,
waiting for their next meal of hay.

She has always had horses,
who visited her in dreams
until they came to her in life:
each one with its own story,
each one a heart in search of love,
soft voices, gentle hands, sweet hay
and safe stall.
She has horses, and loves them,
and so she gives them
all of that, and all of her heart,
and more.


Inspired by Joy Harjo's She Had Some Horses, and for Shay's Word List, based on Harjo's book with the same title. And by my sister, and her horses, all of whom I got to love, too.

In the Mansion of Memory


In the mansion of memory
there are goblins and ghosts,
invisible wings flapping
down the hall
presaging a death,
hoofbeats galloping
the twisted lane
under a midnight moon,
no horses in sight,
whose riders
never come home.

A little old gnome,
a grandfather recently deceased,
sits at the foot of the bed
and points a gnarled finger
at Ivy,
who dies in a week.

The madwoman shrieks
in the bathroom
and rends all the towels.
A heavy tread stomps
up the stairway,
stair after stair.
Pure dread and shivering
under the blankets:
the Monster is here.

There is a long dragging step,
and chains,
above the ceiling.
Bats perch on the windowsill,
looking fierce:
Let us in! Let us in!

A pale ghostly woman
appears on the
second floor balcony
and peers through the glass.

And somewhere between
the earth and sky,
a soul books passage
to Eternity,
finds herself walking across
a barren landscape.
There is a river ahead
and, around the bend,
she can hear people
dipping their oars
and singing.
They are coming to get her,
but then she wakes up
and comes back from the dead.


for Susan's prompt at What's Going On - Ghosts. 'Tis the season! My family is Irish, so there are many ghost stories in our family, some of them in the poem above. (Not the chains or monster, though they appeared in different guises, human-made. Smiles.)

Monday, October 28, 2024

DANCING THE PARADIGM

 



On the cusp of Samhain
the time when the veils between the world
grows thin, can you hear the Ancestors
urging us to expand our perspective
wide enough to change
the earth's music
to a brand new song?

To breathe an evolution,
a revolution, an expansive flowering
of every good intention
dancing the edge of
a new paradigm?

A shift is happening
on Planet Earth.
Our souls rise to meet it
with joy.

Come, let’s trip the light fantastic,
prancing and cavorting like giddy reindeer
under a waxing polar moon,
conga into winter sunshine with hopeful feathers
all aloft and glistening,
caper into the dawn, vibrant and smiling
and never so alive!

Join me. We’ll pull on moss
like sweet little socks,
tiptoe through the forest
like sprites, dip our tippy-toes
into the Pond of Peace
set all our dreams alight
with the shine of sunset
over the wilding sea.

Mother Earth is calling us
to a new paradigm,
a more conscious way
of being on the earth.
A birdsong symphony is playing,
so crank the music loud,
and dance,
my fellow wood-sprites.
Dance for all you're worth.


A caveat: This sounds more hopeful than I actually am at the moment, but I am heartened by things I am reading that encourage us to change our vibration to one of living together on earth in a way that nurtures life, rather than destroying it. I once believed this shift would happen in time. But my hope remains that it will happen, if only in response to the calamities we are beginning to experience. When everything feels impossible, what is left is the Possibility of Change.



Wednesday, October 23, 2024

Kinfolk

 


Walk into a grove of trees
or sit by a body of water
as the sun is going down.

Can you hear it?
The longing of Mother Earth
for us to live in harmony
with other beings, and the earth herself.

We are kin, she whispers on the wind.
Be an ally, not a conqueror.
What happens to one,
happens to us all.

Do you hear the heartbreak
of the great whales, whose calves
are dying for lack of food
in a warming, polluted sea?

Do you feel, as great winds
blow our houses down, and floods
cover the land, the dis-ease of the earth
growing too hot and tempestuous?

Turn off the toxic rhetoric
meant to distract us from a planet in peril.
Listen to the wild ones, the raging rivers,
the roaring winds, Mother Earth's
warning cries.

May we rediscover kinship
and become the earth's  allies.

Only 73 orcas left in the Salish Sea. Of the last two calves, born this spring, one has died, and other is failing from under-nourishment. And Brave Little Hunter was last seen in July, so she has likely swum on, alone, into the spirit world.