ALIVE, ON PLANET EARTH

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When the Westerly blows,

and waves crash rapturously

upon the shore,

when treetops poke their spires

up through the fog and mist

along the slopes of Wah'nah'juss,

my heart exults in wonder.

When the eagle's piercing cry

echoes across the harbour,

and the heron picky-toes

along the rocky shore

seeking her breakfast,

when dogs with loopy grins

go lolloping in and out

of the waves at Chestermans,

and surfers stand to ride, and fall,

and rise again,

When the morning sun rises

over Lemmens Inlet,

geese flying above in a wavering V,

as the sandpipers whirl and swoop as one

along the water's edge,

and ravens croak their gobble-cry,

When sunset paints the sky

with colours too fantastic to describe

as the big old fiery orb sinks down

below the horizon at day's end,

When just being alive and breathing

in this forever power-place

seems wealth beyond compare,

and I most richly blessed,

thankfulness expands my heart

to bursting, again and again,

so dearly do I cherish the beauty,

the sheer interconnected wonder

of Clayoquot Sound.

How grateful I am

to have walked this earth walk

along its beloved shores,

the song of the waves

forever advancing and retreating

in my heart;

how dearly I feel the blessing,

rich with all life's worth,

just to have another day,

like this,

alive, on planet earth.

Marnie Recker Photography

WILD WOMAN ON HOPE

 

"Hope is the thing with feathers,*" the poet said,
and, when she sits listening to the sweet,
warbled trills of a song sparrow,
Wild Woman believes.

Hope tiptoes into her heart against all reason:
against the toxic rhetoric on the nightly news,
against the daily horrors across the globe,
against the planet heating up while they build
more pipelines, against all the reasons
that try to squash our expectation
that good will always triumph over evil.

Hope with feathers is very fragile;
it must be tended with care.

Hope is the gentle deer, nibbling seed
at the bird feeder because the grass
has turned brown in the heat.
Hope is the black horse's big,
intelligent eye, her nose whuffing
against Wild Woman's fingers,
as she breathes her in and finds her safe.
Hope is a litter of puppies who,
if fate is kind, will grow up safe
and loved and never suffer.
(May it be so!)
Hope is greenery and flowers,
that pop up even in scorched earth,
after wildfire, after bombs -
Mother Earth messaging us: See?
See how easy it is to simply bloom?

*from "Hope is the Hardest Love We Carry" by Jane Hirshfield

for my prompt at What's Going On - Hope. The prompt is inspired by a line in a poem by Jane Hirshfield - "Hope is the hardest love we carry." It is, for sure. And of course the Dickinson line is well recognized.

Bird Math

"A poem should always have birds in it,"
the poet said. And "A person wants to stand
in a happy place in a poem."

Here is the mathematics of this poem:

1. My poems are often full of birds.
    But they are having a hard time
    out-shouting the black-hearted rhetoric
    spewing from my tv screen, that makes
    my heart sink and forget how to sing.

2. How can we stand in a happy place
    in the poem of our lives while
    stormtroopers are beating
    and firing upon peaceful citizens,
    and veterans and mothers,
    and caging children because
    their skin is brown?
    While people are abusing animals
    and hating each other?
    Where the world is in survival mode
    and has forgotten how to be kind?

3. I can tell you that, down by the shore,
    herons are picky-toe-ing peacefully
    along the mudflats.
    I can point out the eagle, surveying
    his kingdom from the top of a snag.
    I can show you my balcony
    full of chattering jays
    and swift little hummers,
    all living in blessed ignorance
    of the weight we humans
    are carrying.

4. Bless them. When we look up
    for a moment to track their
    heart-lifting passage across the sky,
    we remember what it was,
    once, to dream.

Inspired by "Singapore" by Mary Oliver. The italicized lines are hers.

for Susan's prompt at What's Going On: Mathematics

STALKING THE SUNSET

 

We walk the fine edge,

between this world and the next,

trying to heal our pain,

recover from our illnesses,

adjusting to the decline of the body

that has transported us so far.

You have fought a long battle,

old pal of mine.

I am sensing your grasp on life

slowly slipping away.

Your eyes are on the eagle,

flying free of his fetters.

You are communing with deer

in your garden.

The orcas pass by,

your mind engraving

the vision and the joy.

Your heart is loving and mourning

this beautiful earth

you are slowly leaving.

We are never ready to let go

of the beauty we have loved so well.

For 37 years, you have always been there:

at the other end of the telephone,

through my joys and sorrows,

on the other side of my screen,

sharing all I was learning.

We have witnessed,

encouraged and supported

each other's journey,

collaborated on songs,

shared our love of the wild,

and music,

and sunsets.

You have been my friend, my mentor,

my guide, my guru.

You have shown me the way,

walking your pilgrim's path of the soul,

listening to your inner guides.

You can never really be gone from me.

On the other side, for you,

there will be a radiance:

your face shining as it did

in coffeehouse days,

when candles flickered on you,

smiling in the glow,

singing Gentle Jonathan

and Forever Young.

I will see you forever

strumming your guitar,

singing your songs

of trees and rivers

and eagles in flight.

On the other side:

Manders, curled,

purring on your chest -

and no more tumors,

shortness of breath,

fatigue and diminishing health.

Just an expansion of the soul

which has grown too large

for your chest to contain,

and needs more room

in which to grow.

In memory, you will always be

on stage at Brock and Friends,

or, later, stalking the sunset,

camera in hand,

at Chestermans Beach.

It is in sunsets I will

forever see you,

old friend of mine.

Always remember,

on the other side of sunset

comes the dawn.

That is where I'll find you,

once you're gone.

A poem from 2015, written for a close friend and mentor, Matthew from coffeehouse days. I wrote it when his health began to fail, and I sent it to him in his last month of life, in 2017, because I wanted him to know, while he was still alive, how much he meant to me. This poem was read at his celebration of life.

He was always attuned to Spirit. He did walking meditations, where he projected a silent "I love you" to every rock, and dog, and tree he passed. He told me that after a few minutes everything started loving him back. He was always Spirit-led and so I know he trustingly followed into the spirit world. They played the songs he had composed, as he was dying, and his wife said it seemed the sdongs had been created for those very moments, so peaceful and beautiful was his passing.

He was my friend, mentor, guru, supporter and guide. He knew me when, when I was just awakening, recovering from trauma. The coffeehouse in 1980 was filled with souls living gently on the earth. I walked in the door and I was home. They watered my parched roots, gave me space and acceptance, till my petals slowly unfurled. I have such gratitude for the gift the coffeehouse, and those gentle people, were for me. Matthew was one of the special people in my life.

I will be forever grateful for having such a friend.

Mea Culpa

 

Did you know that turtles talk to each other?
I didn't know it either, till a scientist on the radio
played recordings of their guttural utterances,
explaining each sound is attached

to a particular behavior, 

repeated along with the corresponding action.

Wow.

My neighbourhood abounds in "wild" creatures
who do not seem wild to me at all, but shy:
the watchful wolf, who tries so hard to keep away
from we dangerous humans; the placid bear,
wandering the forest in search of berries,
who disappears into the trees when the
unpredictable Two-Leggeds appear;
the grey whales, struggling through heating-up oceans,
then washing ashore, dead from starvation,
because humans are addicted to oil.

All "wild" beings quake with fear as the forests fall,
as the wildfires burn, as bombs fall from the sky,
as we celebrate our wanton disregard for other lives
with firecrackers that terrify the furry and winged
creatures, who have no understanding of why
we grandiose humans behave the way we do.

Mea culpa, to every beyond-human creature,
struggling to survive because of us.

It seems to me that the wildest and
most uncomprehending species on the planet
are the humans.

for Sumana's prompt at What's Going On: Wildlife in Your Area. My area abounds in wild creatures, all of whom are struggling to survive in an extractive capitalism world, that acts as if Mother Nature's cupboards will never go bare. 145 grey whales have died along the west coast between Baja and Alaska this spring from the warming seas and starvation. Researchers say it is a catastrophic mortality event. Scientists  are horrified at what is happening in all the oceans right now. We have been ignoring Mother Nature's warnings for too long....50 years.

Meanwhile same old same old, oil, pipelines, the Economy, which will have a hard time paying to clean up the mess. Europe is far ahead of North America and we are the worst offenders.

Not on the News

What didn't make the news: half a dozen poets, 

sitting under the trees, sharing cake, 

cackles and poems; a man

quietly planting trees in a clearcut,

to help heal the ravaged earth; a kind

and weeping woman, driving two

brand-new, but orphaned baby fawns 

to a wildlife rescue; someone 

organizing a community garden, 

food for the hungry; kindness.

Kindness in human hearts,

even when things are going so wrong

we can't believe it, now, when 

we have never needed kindness more.

Inspired by What Didnt Make the News by Maya Stein.

This is What the Living Do

 

This is what the living do:
we wake up each morning to the day,
our beds a time capsule,
carrying us through years
of dreams and memories.

I closed my eyes, in bliss, at forty,
when I opened them this morning,
incomprehensibly, I am eighty.

I put out seed for the morning sparrows,
watch them hopping, while I make
my cup of coffee, because
this is what the living do; we have
our rituals, our small comforts,
our ways of coping, our day after day
of sameness, moving us inexorably
to an unknown day up ahead
that we don’t like to think about.

But, when we do, we remember
to cherish these small blessings,
this gloriously ordinary day,

In which life can change

at any moment. 

I remember
to be grateful for the gifts.

Yesterday I carried my brown bag
of groceries home from the CoOp.
The sun was so warm; two smiling friends
walked towards me. We stopped, and chatted.
We talked about our hair, which needed cutting.
 We stood there, laughing in the sun,
hands poking at our heads,
glad to have seen and spoken with other humans
on this sunny warm morning
in Clayoquot Sound.

The waves were big yesterday; the surfers
were happy. I walked to the big log and sat,
watched the breakers come rolling in,
felt my heart expand with the prayer I recite
every time I am there: thank you, thank you,
thank you, for this: for the gift 

of living here, for the beauty,

for the many gifts I’ve been given.

This is what the living do: we remember.
On this beach, I walked for miles and years
with an exuberant, big black wolf.
And now I live alone.
I visit the sea. I am still living,
less exuberantly, but no less gratefully.
I remember him.
I remember it all.

I wrote this poem from the title of Marie Howe's poem What the Living Do