Creating Sanctuary

 

I built my house of driftwood and sea fog,

wrapped it around me, the way a sand dollar

creates its home from sand and grit around it

and carries it within.

I go there when the world is loud and cruel,
injustice and inhumanity too much to bear,

pull the drawbridge up, bathe in silence

and necessary peace, turn off the news,

turn on gratitude, quietude,
my beating heart
steadying

like the ticking clock on the windowsill

of my childhood.

I create a sanctuary there, where cruelty

has no place, and beauty
and compassion still exist
- (that line of monks, padding softly
through the snow) -
where all the values I hold dear

still shine. I create poems in that peaceful place,
a line of walking monks, some grace,

reminding us that beauty is still here,

kindness still lives. They are telling us

it is still all ours to give.

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

The Journey

 

I have been a different woman every decade,

growing from terrified child to lost teen,

from oppressed wife to liberated free spirit,

from single mother to voyageur -

that one leap midlife the beginning

of a whole other journey.

I forgive the many missteps

that got me here. It takes a tree

a long time to grow strong and wise,
with flexible boughs to bend with every wind.

I make peace with having done

the best I could. Given my beginnings,

there is no way it could have been

otherwise.

I built my scaffold with hammer and tong,
making do with whatever lay at hand,

wove my spirit's home out of driftwood

and sea spray, set my sights forever

on blue sky. The call of the wolf

has always been

my reason why.

From the Edge of Hope

source

Fellow traveller,

across the cold, hard landscape

of our broken dreams,

I bid you safe passage,

(a safe journey, a safe return,)

a door open wide

on arrival to shelter you,

cool water to drink,

sustenance

and rest.

Masked men with guns

have overtaken the road

most travelled.

See the empty cars

with smashed windows

by the side of the road.

See the children inside,

wondering where

their parent has gone.

Where to find shelter

in a world so dark?

The forests are full

of hungry animals

who have been displaced.

Prison camps are full

of traumatized humans

whose lives have been blown apart.

How did we make
a world like this?
How do we dream
a better dream,
shelter for every
seeking heart?

My heart finds shelter

in a line of monks in orange robes,

walking across a winter landscape,

walking for peace - for compassion

- for hope - step after step,

not stopped by the bitter cold,

forward, only forward,

into whatever comes next.

I can only offer a blessing

for your travels.

(A safe journey, a safe return.)

May all beings find

a place of safety in which

to weather the storms ahead.

May all beings find shelter

behind that welcoming door.

(A safe journey, and a safe return.)

for Mary's prompt at What's Going On - Shelter.

I Wake Up and It Breaks My Heart*

 

I open my eyes on a beautiful West Coast morning: sunshine, forest breathing greenly, eagles soaring above, the eternal waves rolling in to shore. The world could not be more beautiful. Yet its human and non-human beings are suffering. Holding both these truths at once breaks my heart.

So much suffering: humans, whales, polar bears, Mother Earth herself, all of her creatures struggling to adapt to the climate crisis, wars, discord and injustice that (in)humanity has caused.

I have lived through suffering often in my 79 years. But what is on my tv screen these days I never thought I'd see in North America. Yet here we are.

I was raised to live in hope, "hand on my heart, hand on my stupid heart*", believing that faith and goodness and laws and rights and freedoms - that justice itself - would hold strong.

This box of darkness is too heavy. Yet I have to believe that, collectively, far more of us believe in justice and equality and human rights than not. We can put this box down, rise up to reclaim all we hold most dear, talk loudly to our representatives, VOTE!!!, help, protect and bear witness to our neighbours in harm's way. March for the dispossessed, both human and animal. Help where we can.

I carry two truths in my tired and aching heart: the world could not be more beautiful. That it also is suffering lives in my every heartbeat.

In the morning, I open my eyes on this beautiful West Coast world. And it both lifts and breaks my heart all over again.

* title and italicized lines from "Meditations In an Emergency" by Cameron Awkward-Rich

For my prompt atWhat's Going On: Help for Hurting Hearts. (Not sure how much help it offers, sadly. Other than sharing the journey.)

No Words

 I don't even have words for what happened this morning in Minneapolis. As I watched, a feeling of doom came over me. This. Must. Stop.

HUMANITY RISING

 

Where to find hope or inspiration,
when cruelty and lawlessness,
racism and fascism,
things we never dreamed could be this bad
in North America,
assault us every day
on our tv screens?

It is in
a line of monks
walking across America,
spreading compassion,
exemplifying peace.
Showing us how.

It is in humanity rising
in response to brutality,
neighbours turning out 
to support neighbours.
Love trumping darkness,
even if it takes a while.
Because this is not who we are.

It is in intentional writing,
our words, like the monks' footsteps,
travelling across the page or screen,
our fingers tapping solidarity,
our gaze as loving and serene
as Aloka's,
looking out at a world gone mad,
yet clinging to the peacefulness
within,
so the dark and toxic ones
don't win.

Seeking Peace

 

Walk for Peace photo

Everything is beautiful,
and I am so sad.*

Where to find peace in difficult times?

It's in a line of monks in orange robes,

walking across America for peace and compassion:

their quiet hearts, their smiles, their fingers
raised in blessing.

It's in the sunrise rising up over Rosie Bay,

in the crows strutting along the beach,

turning over shells, looking for their breakfast.

Everything is beautiful*
 and then I turn on the news,
speechless at the illegality, the inhumanity,
the cruel brutality,
yet also lifted up
by the voices of good people
fighting to uphold the rule of law.

Then, I have to
disappear, like a hermit,
into the forest,
to listen to the trees
breathing peace.
What we save, saves us,
I read somewhere,
and it is true.
The trees fill me with their peace,
and I emerge transformed,
renewed, restored.

I have carried beauty and sorrow
in equal measure
through the length
of my old age,
watching the world I love
fall apart.

We turn from scenes we never dreamed
we'd see

on the streets of North America:
an angry, ugly boil that has festered
and broken open.

I walk, like the monks,
intentionally,

to find some peace, and there she is -

a fox, where there has never been
a fox before -

peering from the thicket
- not alarmed, not running off -

just looking, as if to ponder what manner

of beast we humans are, to make so much noise

and clamour and distress on lands

meant for peace and plenty,
for beauty and for joy.

I carry the forest's peace
with me as I leave.
When the clamour is too great
it is the wild
that helps me grieve.

The fox sighting was by a friend, not me. But she sent me the photo and I put her sweet face into this poem.

***The italicized lines are from Mark Nepo's poem "Adrift".

A slight adjustment to last Friday's poem, for Susan's prompt at What's Going On - Peace.

What's going on indeed - things I never dreamed would happen this close to home. In Canada, we are appalled - and nervous.