Monday, May 12, 2025

GRIEF CAN BE A SUNFLOWER




Grief can be the sunflower delivered
by a smiling friend,
that inexplicably begins to die that very minute,
leaves drooping, head bending, tucking its chin,
giving up, leaf by wilting leaf,
because the world is broken, and too hot,
its roots too tightly packed
for water to reach its faltering heart.
Grief can also be the bouquet of cut sunflowers
I bring home from the CoOp
and put in the tall green vase,
to cheer me as I add one more loss
to all the others, and remember
that the world, though suffering,
is also beautiful.

Grief becomes everything with age,
laced through the heartbreaking beauty
that is this world, this life, and death, all passing,
the shine, the wonder, sunrises, sunsets,
laughter and tears and love come and gone ~
earth grief for a planet in distress,
and our culpability/inability
to restore what has been lost

loss upon loss, the heaviness,
us learning how to plant our feet
and strengthen our shoulders to bear it.
Not giving up like the sunflower,
setting our roots down deep,
strengthening our stance,
accepting pain is the price of being fully alive:
gratitude for all of this life and love -
the richness of it! The gifts.
Joy woven through the sadness.
Sadness woven through with joy-
gilt-edged, and fraught,
and yet still remembering
how to dream.



Then I went to the beach and let the waves sing their song of forever to me. An elderly and rather chubby bassett hound turned himself upside down, paws in the air, snout lying flat on the sand, totally blissed out. It made my day!


Of Heretics and Flying Squirrels

 


We travelled back to the land
we grew up in, to place my aunt's ossuary
into the ground. A mother deer and her fawn
lay nearby observing, a blessing,
a message of peace, her spirit at rest.

We walked the sidewalks where
once we played jumprope, and hopscotch
and Mother, May I? in our pigtails and pedal pushers.

We sought out the addresses of the shabby houses
we lived in, back then, now no longer there; 
even our grandma's cottage, the touchstone
of my childhood: gone.

All have been replaced by dwellings
for the living large folks.  Country roads
and all the orchards changed into townhomes,
mile after mile. The fabled Casorso pig farm,
where my friends came home from school 
to soup made by twinkling-eyed Grandpa Louie,
no where to be seen, golf course after golf course
for the retired folks in the gated complexes
nearby.

A tear for remembering that sleepy town.

The service was held in the church where long ago
we wore our Easter costumes: pinafores, big hats,
white gloves, shoes we kept meticulously white,
no smudges,  our grandma's sharp eyes
missing nothing.

Country roads we biked down now clogged
with fast cars, trying to maintain
an impossible pace: so much Doing,
so little Being, an exhausted populace
trying to keep up, frowning, frenzied.

I observed, bemused, sipping an absinthe
on the deck overlooking the lake in late afternoon,
watching clouds wander across the sky,
tinged pink as the sun slipped behind
the big blue hills
of my infancy.

On the same day  - such being the way
the world works now - a heretic posted
a photo of himself as Pope, exchanging
his porkpie hat for a Papal crown. As if.

Someone poke a hole in his umbraculum
and let the sun run riot on his orange tan,
turn it MAGA, the colour of all the blood
being spilled in his name, the colour
that makes bulls (and those who long for justice)
see red.

The world is as mad as a flying squirrel,
leaping a chasm that is far too wide to breach,
apparently with no fear of falling.


For Shay's Word List. 

The umbraculum, when I looked it up, is a sort of umbrella to keep the sun off the Pope. 

Tuesday, May 6, 2025

WOMAN, WEEPING

 


Weeping Cedar Woman
carved by Godfrey Stephens in 1984
in response to the proposed clearcutting of 
Wahnachus-Hilthuuis (Meares Island)

Weeping Cedar Woman,
your tears are for the ancient trees,
in the ancestral garden.
Do not kill them, you say,
your right hand held up in protest.
They are needed to cool the earth,
to bring rain for all the wild ones,
for habitat, to help us breathe. 
All beings need the old growth 
in order to live.

I weep, too,
for the trees and for our relatives,
the beyond-human beings,
who suffer and are displaced
because of us.

Your left hand points down, into the earth,
where the network of living arteries
under the forest floor keeps 
the whole ecosystem alive.

I feel the power in your upraised hand,
the resistance in my heart, that wants 
to save all that is left of the Standing People,
for what we save, saves us.

I carry deep grief for all that humanity
– and inhumanity -  has done to Mother Earth.
For forty years you have stood here, protesting,
and yet the trees keep coming down.
We must protect what is left
of the venerable  Old Ones.

Whales and wolves are starving.
Displaced bear and cougar search  
for a safe place to hide.
Weeping Cedar Woman, my tears
are not enough to apologise for 
the harmful ways of my species.

To ease my pain, I walk the forest trails,
breathe in the peacefulness,
the beauty, place my hand
on a gnarled and mossy trunk. 
I listen.

And I emerge,
grateful, and transformed.


This poem was written for a Poet Laureate project in Tofino. We are asked to write a poem in response to some local art. Tofino abounds in poets, writers, carvers, artists and creative folk in all disciplines. I didn't have to look far.

The carver, Godfrey Stephens, created the Weeping Cedar Woman, 40 years ago when Meares Island - Wahnachus Hilthuuis - was in danger of being clearcut.

OF TOTEMS AND SPIRIT PLACES

 


On the misty islands of Haida Gwaii,
the spirits walk
and sometimes sing.
I have been told they also wail.

The ancient totems of SGaang Gwaay*
lean and topple onto the land
where the Haida thrived
for 17,000 years.
If one is reverent, and listens
with her heart,
she might sometimes hear
the wailing of those ancient spirits,
the entire village who died of smallpox
when the settlers came,
a desolate, inconsolable grieving
that the land remembers,
carried on the ocean breeze.

The cedars stand tall today
along protected shores,
where the white Spirit Bear
and grey wolf families
move peacefully through their
days and nights.
Mother Orca eats well here,
in this remote archipelago,
where it is more difficult
for our grasping machines
to reach and to destroy.

The Haida fought for forest,
and for sea,
cast off the settlers’ name
for the land they loved,
claimed it back as Haida Gwaii,
the Islands of the People,
strong and free.

My soul walks there
each time I think of it,
(a home where I have never lived),
padding softly through the forest
with mother wolf.
It walks along the shore
with Spirit Bear.
I hear the whisper of spirit voices
in the trees,
the song of an ancient people,
my heartsteps gentle
on this wild
and ancient land.




*SGaang Gwaay is the Haida name for the World Heritage site formerly known as Ninstints, where the ancient totem poles are now protected, and where it is said the spirits of the dead can sometimes be heard wailing, by those with heart enough to hear. My friend, attuned to spirits, walked there and heard the mournful wailing herself, and felt the deep energy of this place.

Haida Gwaii are two islands off northwestern B.C. 

Upon contact in the late 1800's, the population of 8000 was decimated by smallpox the invaders brought, only 589 surviving by 1915. The population of Haida Gwaii is around 5,000 people now, half of them the Haida people. Declining fish stocks and forest resources have led to the development of new approaches to financial survival, including tourism, secondary wood manufacturing and the arts. The people have fought hard to protect the land and waters. It is the home of the white Spirit Bear, and 85% of its forests are protected, at least for now. 

Haida Gwaii has always called to me, for its pristine wilderness, remoteness and wild beauty. Its people are hardy and self-sufficient, having survived its untamed landscape and stormy winters for thousands of years. The Haida are a matrilineal society.


Sunday, May 4, 2025

Wolf

 


Wolf by Longwalker

Wolf
in the blue twilight,
Wolf
in the tenderness of dawn,
are you wondering,
sweet fur brother,
where all your wilderness
has gone?

Your forests are burning,
bombs rain down
from the sky.
We humans are too moonstruck
to ask the question:
why?

We raise goblets of red wine
to drown our sweeping sorrow;
tilt at windmills,
and carouse like
we won't die
 on the morrow.

Wolf,
have you ever
seen such foolishness
as this?
Wolf,
stay safely far from us.
Seek the wilderness
you miss.

for Shay's Word List. This is where the wolf led me today. A cheerful ditty. LOL.


Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Sigh

 When the news
brings you to tears,
where is an old woman
to turn?

DISTRAUGHT SISTER MOON

 


Distraught Sister Moon,
I see you up there, pacing around,
wringing your hands,
"what to do,
what to do,
what to do?"

Down below, all hell is breaking loose:
bombings, shootings, drought,
famines, floods, melting icebergs,
forest fires,
wildlife fleeing in terror,
no where to hide,
dangerous people with bad hair
behaving badly.

I see you trying to efface your fullness
quickly, perhaps thinking
if you lessen your roundness,
the populace can return to calm
under a slice of moon.

But when were we last calm?

By your light, madmen and prophets collide.
By your light, poets seek truth and beauty.
By your light, we dream of a better world.

You have stopped pacing.
You like where this is going.
Okay, hear this:
By the Light of Your Silvery Moon,
on earth
(perhaps in vain)
we dream,
we dream,
we dream
of peace.


This is a poem from 2017 which you may have read before. My brain can't come up with anything better at the moment, it is full of porridge. The italicized line is, of course, the song title. I remember when that song was on the air waves and the world felt so much more peaceful than it does now - after the War to End All Wars - that didn't.