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Sunday, July 31, 2011

A Wolf Beside My Bed



There is a
wolf-ghost
sleeping
beside
my bed,
and he
gallops
with me
nightly
through my
dreams,
full of joy
and life,
his eyes
agleam,
 along
wild beaches
of our
happiest years,
 (since it is
a dream,
there are
no tears),
and
in the forest,
green and wild
and deep,
my wolf-Pup
brings me
comfort
as
I sleep.

Wild Woman's GPS

[image by T. McCracken at mchumor.com]

Wild Woman's
GPS
is
recalculating.
It is
scratching
its head
and sounding
just a tad
confused.

Is this
really
the Way?

Haven't we
been down
this road
before?

[I must give a nod to Ellie for the idea
behind this snippet. She mentioned a
GPS recalculating on her blog last week.
I remembered two times when my sister
and I were following her GPS and it took
us half an hour in the wrong direction,
getting us hopelessly lost in the process.
Once at midnight when we were far from home and tired.
Not humorously at all,  recently in the news a couple's GPS system
took them down  the wrong road in the desert and the man lost his life,
disappearing as he tried to walk out for help. His wife, waiting with
the vehicle, was found just in time to save her life. Can't always trust
technology.]

Dear God

[photo by Jon Merk]

Thank You
for the
beauty
of this
earth,
and
please
make
we humans
more
appreciative
of the
gift.

Wild Woman on Human Nature

[image from google]

After observing
human nature
all Saturday morning
at her yard sale,
Wild Woman observes
that some people
might benefit
from a nice, tidy
little brain-tuck.



Friday, July 29, 2011

When You Love a Wild Thing


This is for a prompt at Real Toads: to take a quotation from Breakfast at Tiffany's:
I chose this one, (of course)!

"...you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, ...[i]f you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."


— Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories)
 
When you love
a wild thing,
you're rekindling
your kinship
with the wild.
 
Every cell
in your body
remembers
when you once
lived free
upon the land,
when you
lived
the Old Ways
we once
used to
understand.
 
Part of you
remembers
when you
hunted the deer,
and part remembers
when you were
the deer
being hunted.
Both sides
know fear.
 
The part of you
that catches
your breath
while your heart
quickens,
when that
old gray whale
turns her
ancient eye
on you,
is the part
that recognizes,
but can't
put words to,
the message
in her
mournful song,
about this
planetary home
where we all
belong.
 
I gave my heart
to a wolf-pup,
his eyes
intelligent
and true.
He loved
me more
than anyone
I ever knew.
 
He remained
wild,
but left
both
wilderness
and sea.
In order
to be with me
he relinquished
being free.
 
And when
it came
his time
to leave,
he tried
so hard
to stay.
Since he's
been gone,
it's like
the wilderness
itself
has gone
away.
 
Now
when I walk,
yes,
I'm looking
at the sky.
I'm listening
at each full moon
for his lonely
cry.
 
I walk
the length
of his favorite river
with tears
that we're apart.
But I'm glad
I loved a wild thing
because he
fortified
my heart.

Mystical Swimmer

[gray whale image from marineecotours.com]

Mystical swimmer
in the timeless sea,
you travel
in the
amniotic sac
that carries
the DNA
of our entire
history.

You have watched
our evolution
from sea to shore,
from crawling
to standing upright,
but we're living
interconnected
with the land
no more.

Slowly,
we changed.
The Earth 
became "Resource"
and we have strayed
too far
from The Way
to even feel
remorse.

We have
destroyed
the fragile balance
of our
shared home,
stripping it bare,
while 
screams
and bombs
and warring
fill the air.

Your ancient eye
has watched it all.
This is why
your mournful song
is so full
of sorrow.

Your intelligence
is so vast
shamans and seers say
you have access to
the collective
unconscious
and can even see
our tomorrow.

Please don't tell us.

We can surmise
from flooding rivers,
melting ice floes,
forest fires,
earthquakes,
tsunamis,
drought and famine,
a story
far too terrible,
a harvest
we have
sown.

Sister Whale,
what have we done
to our planetary home?
We have forgotten
basic truths
that once
were known.

Sing your mournful song.
Swim through
the murky sea.
Together
we share
a heartbreaking
history.

Let's leave
the future,
while we still can,
shrouded in
mystery.


Thursday, July 28, 2011

Wild Woman on Flying

[First Day of Flying by Shelly S. Cannady
-from Google]

Wild Woman
knows more
than any
mother
wants to
ever
have to
learn,
about watching
her child
teeter
on the edge
of the
precipice,
fearful
that the
slightest breeze
will topple
him off.

But she also
has experienced
more joy
and pride
than any
mother
could ever
have
imagined,
at watching
her fledgling
step courageously
to the edge,
spread his wings-
and fly!!


Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Jeff's latest poem for me



My son, Jeff, is such a blessing in my life. We have walked a long journey together, through his years of suffering, when words flew between us like birds, and we learned the meaning of acceptance, and unconditional love, and Being There. And through his treatment for lymphoma, when I hobbled to the city to sit with him in the oncology ward.

We have always been able to talk about anything. Including death. Conscious living, conscious dying. Being Present.

I remember his huge blue eyes, looking up at me when he was three, the eyes of an angel, an unclouded innocent. We share the gift of knowing what the gifts of living are: the beauty of the natural world, the possibility of transcendance in humankind. He has the Family Cackle. [When our family gets together, it sounds like a fox is in the henhouse:) ]

He continues to humble me, leaving me in awe of being such a gifted soul's mother. His latest poem seems to be his acknowledgment of my aging. It actually is a song, set to music. He creates incredible music, including classical pieces that sound like Bach and Mozart. I havent heard this set to music yet, but no doubt I will soon:)

I Fly Through a River of Dreams

by Jeffrey Siddhartha Crazy Horse Marr


I was a child but I have grown
Your quiet house is all I've known
The crooked peach-tree in the yard
The killing rain we took too hard


And now I must cry
And embrace you
And wave good-bye...


Chorus.


I Fly Through a River of Dreams
Where love is like a summer breeze
I Fly Through a River of Dreams
That carries me toward the Sea

I see you on the bright-green bank
You are the one that I must thank
I see your face and sky-blue dress
Come, let us touch our last caress


And now I must cry
And embrace you
And wave good-bye...


Repeat Chorus.


We'll meet again just you and I
Beneath a peach-tree in the yard
The two of us will never die
And rain becomes a little sigh


And now I must cry
And embrace you
And say good-bye...


Siddhartha Marr.

A True Source

[image from sacredfire.org]


When someone
who is tuned in
to a higher
frequency
than the
rest of us
can hear
speaks
his truths,
I listen
very
carefully.

Because his words
come from
a true Source.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Oncology 101


[This is my son Jeff with his friend, Patches, the little pony that died of cancer soon after my son went through his first round of chemo for non-Hodgkins lymphoma. So far he is doing well, and is being maintained on an every-three months single dose of chemo. Jeff is an incredible being, who graces our lives beyond the telling. I wrote this poem a year ago, sitting in the oncology ward with him. But I was looking for something to post today and this popped up.]

June 4, 2010


"I feel like an angel,
burning up
from the inside,"
my son tells me.


We're in the
oncology ward.


Chemo is
drip
drip
dripping
into his arm.


His hair is wisps now,
across his bald head,
like when he was a baby.


His eyes are still
as blue and true.


"I view reality
with perfect clarity,
but I've become aware
of another dimension,"
he tells me.


"When I look into a flower,
I see the whole universe.
I can hear the earth
groaning in ecstasy
and, in my body,
I can feel, with my heart
of compassion,
myself groaning along with it.


It's a good thing,"
he smiles,
reassuringly -
always,
his unchanging
smile.


The chemo
drips
drips
drips
into his arm.

My son is an angel,
burning up from the inside.

Wild Woman and Technology


This is Wild Woman
laughing
her ass off.

Someone suggested
she put
audio poems
with, no less,
a WEBCAM
on her site.

For one,
she wants
to ATTRACT
visitors,
not scare them
away.

And, two,
she is
a very old dog,
and this
would be
a very new
trick.


Monday, July 25, 2011

My New Nest


Well, kids, I finally have almost everything organized in my new place. Still a lot of office stuff and writing materials to organize, but that might very well be a winter project.

 
Ms. Jasmine, watching the world go by. She loves it here!


A cute, bright little kitchen, hung with my Tibetan pictures,
with cute little lights along the windows for nighttime.


From the sink, I look out towards the barn. Lovely.


Jas was posing so nicely, I took her photo!


My "office", with a wonderful photo of my beloved Tofino above my desk for inspiration, and my medicine shield on the left, for strength and Womanpower. Two women on their moon made this shield at the sundance one year. The woman who sold it to me said the braves who were dancing made wide detours around where the women were working on it, for fear  the women's power  would sap their strength.


The wall of bookshelves I have wanted all my life.
First thing I see when I open my eyes
in the morning.
My Tibetan singing bowl and prayer wheel are up top,
with a few other treasures.
Jasmine's bed and toys are in this corner.
She claimed this space from the first moment
and decreed that's where
her bed would go..


More shelves in the hallway.
Every space has to be utilized to the max. The effect is cosy,
and so far doesnt feel cluttered to me.
Everywhere I look
is something I love.


My TV and music corner.



My refuge - with my beloved Carmanah wolves poster above.


Pup has his special corner here, as he always will in my heart.
I love the wolves gathered round the candle, on the left.
My sage burning shell, eagle feathers, crystals and big prism
all honor him.
The window above is hung with prisms,
so when the sun shines I have a room full of rainbows.


It's Home.
All hung with prisms, and full of rainbows,
drums and music.
I am a lucky girl.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Smiles in Heaven

My mom, Lori and I, 1956

I just spent a highly satisfying Saturday morning, washing the outside of all the windows with vinegar water, while Lori planted a rose bush and mowed the lawn. It was fun, both of us busy working around the place.

When we were each maintaining separate places, the workload was too heavy for either of us to manage. Here, where the load is shared, it is easier to keep up, not so overwhelming. Plus there is more motivation for me to, say, wash the windows, with someone else outside working too. Too easy to put it off when I lived alone and it felt like I would never catch up anyway.

As I went up and down the step stool and moved the squeegee up and down the panes, I reflected back to when this house was our mom's. In the last few years of her life, she got the small farm she had wanted all her life. A time or two, when she was young, she realized this dream, but lost them to financial woes. She had given up on it, and was living in the city, when my sister found this small two-acre hobby farm, with barn and pasture, and even a pond,  for sale for a song back when real estate prices in Port Alberni were low. Mom sold her place in the city, paid cash for this place and banked a tidy sum.

She gloried in the farm, the chickens, baking her own bread, for a few happy years before her health began  suddenly to fail. At that time, an addition - the one I am living in now - was added to the house, and Mom moved into it, Lori moving into the house itself to look after her. Mom died unexpectedly the next year.

I remember Lori taking me, in l988, for a zodiac tour to see the whales in Tofino. As the boat coasted up and down the sides of huge waves, I remember Lori saying, "We could end up the two crazy sisters, living together on the West Coast, in our old age." I laughed, but she said, "It could happen." And look at us - it did. I never would have predicted in a million years that I would have to leave Tofino, a loss I still mourn, and be forced to settle in Port Alberni, the least likely place for me to locate. But that's how it turned out.

That trip she took me on to see the whales that year sealed my fate, and made me know I had to follow my heart and live in Tofino. When I was wrestling with the hugeness of the change and the precariousness of not having employment and housing waiting for me, my mom phoned me and gave me her blessing, which allowed me the courage to make the leap into the unknown, yet heady, joyous life that awaited me there. She had worried about me, as a single mother of four, always poor, always struggling. I had only just moved into a management position at my job, was for the first time making good money. The choice was to stay where I was, where my soul was dying, for financial "security" (of which there is none, trust me!) or to follow my heart.

My mom told me, "This is your dream. You have wanted this for years. Go for it. You're not alone in the world. You'll be okay."

My mom helped me a lot while I was raising my kids, so this was a generous and compassionate thing to say, knowing I was giving up a good income to throw my fate to the winds of chance.

I moved to Tofino in the spring of 1989 and lived there for the ten most gloriously happy and fulfilled years of my life. As it turns out, when you follow your heart, the universe supports you, and time after time, as I lived those years, I recognized that the universe was holding me in the palm of its hand. There is no other excuse for the things that came my way there, in the place where I belonged.

It was a magical ten years.

And now I am here, in Mom's suite, Lori and I both happy with the new arrangement, which provides each of us with the support, help and companionship our lives otherwise lacked, while still allowing us our space and solitude, which is important to both of us, and of which we are both respectful.

I was thinking there were likely smiles in heaven today, Mom and Grandma looking down to see the two sisters, busy about the place, dogs all lounging happily, watching us with half-closed eyes, dreamy tail-thumps any time we came near.

All You Need To Be


[my photo of the pond near the summit on the way to Tofino]

This was written as an exercise at writers' group. The suggestion was to take a published poem from your favorite poet, and use it as a guide, replacing the poet's words with your own, so the metre remains the same, yet creating a new poem. I chose Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. Oliver's poem was about geese and my poem, while the metre of the piece reads to the same rhythm, is about something else entirely. A new poem was created in the same metre as the original. A cool exercise and wound up being an interesting poem.

February 12, 2003

You do not have to be Superwoman
You do not have to leap tall buildings
with a single bound


You only have to get through
this one intricately challenging
and slightly preposterous day
with as much grace and humor as possible


Tell me how hard it is,
sometimes,
to just keep going
and I will hear you


Meanwhile the myriad galaxies spin
in their mystical and so mysterious orbits
across a midnight sky bejeweled with diamonds.
Meanwhile the generous sun comes up each morning
offering a brand new day for trying
Meanwhile all beings in the cosmos
arise and go about their single day of solitary living


Whoever, you are, whatever your state of being,
the world awaits your constant co-creation -
issues you a blank canvas that cries out for
all the vibrant colors of your day,
you the living paintbrush, to draw forth
all your fire and fortitude and passion
and your deep, sweet peacefulness
at resting in the life that is oh so sweetly
and familiarly
yours

Friday, July 22, 2011

The Evolution of Night

[image from flickr.com]


The prompt at Poets United's Thursday Think Tank is: Nighttime

I took something I wrote years ago about memories of the nighttime throughout my life, and tweaked it just a bit, to show what nightttime has been like for this human, on her long journey from childhood to peace and happiness.  Not much of a poem, but my brain is too tired for rhyming right now, I am still recovering from my move.

Night
when the small child wakes
to drunken  thumps and crashes
and screams
from the living room,
and lies shivering with fear
 in bed
until the fighting stops.

Night
when the young girl dreams
that love will come
and bring her
the home
she has
always wanted.

Night
when the baby wakes
and the young mother takes him
to her breast,
watching out the window,
waiting for daybreak,
cocooned in a warm,
sweet world of two,
her heart full with, finally,
someone to love.

Night
when the husband
furiously harrangues,
night after night,
into the early hours:
her lacks, her faults,
his needs not being met,
what-is-it-that-you-want,
what's wrong with you?

Night
when he finally leaves,
the barrage stops,
relief,
her life restored to her.

Night
when she discovers
what love
between a man
and a woman
can be.
Night of ecstasy
and wonder.

Night
when he leaves too,
because he "has to be free"
and, besides,
he has two new girlfriends now.
But thanks, and here's one tear,
for remembering.

Night.
Of despair. Of despair.
The long night of the heart,
when it is frozen,
asleep, refusing to be roused.

Night
that one keeps waking from
because one must,
and because,
over time,
the rosy sunrise
keeps on winning.

Many, many nights,
till the heart
finally
comes home
to a place of fullness,
where there is
no pain.
Aware that the world
is full of weeping, hungry,
frightened children,
damaged, drunken adults
and danger in the night.
But believes more
in the way the world
wakes fresh and brand new
every morning,
with the chance
to do things better,
and builds a life on that.

Night
when it
at last
becomes a friend
to an old tired soul
nearing the end of
such a long journey,
when bed is
a place of rest
and comfort,
where one pulls
the covers up
over her shoulders
in a silent, peaceful home
and the heart is
completely
at rest.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

A River of Tears

[image from flickr.com]

Her eyes well up.
"The doctor says
there will be
no improvement.
His systems
are failing."

He opens his eyes
at noon
and asks me
"where have I been
this whole damned day?"
I say,
"you've been
snoozing."

He is practicing
for a very long sleep.

But Faiza
cannot possibly
prepare
for this parting.
It is too big.

All of her will
has been focussed
on keeping him alive,
and now it's
not working.

I tell her,
"We'll take it
one day at a time.
Bill is happy
at home, you love
and care for him
so well.
We'll do all
that we can
for as long
as we can,
while he is here."

I am grateful
God is taking
Bill first.
He would have
been lost
without Faiza.

Meanwhile
she is facing
losing the man
who is
the centre
of her world,
her reason for being.
A gaping void
yawns
just behind
his right shoulder,
ready to
swallow him up,
leaving behind only
his empty brown chair.

He looks up at me
helplessly.
"I'm cold, Sherry.
Always so cold."
I take him
a fuzzy blanket.
Everything can
be made better,
this particular moment,
with a fuzzy blanket.

He says,
"Thanks, sweetie.
I always love
to see you."
"I always love
to see you, too, Bill."

And I wonder
if I will
still see
this sweet, sweet man,
when I come back
next week.

Baby Chloe is Getting Bigger!


The "awwwwwwww" factor.


The baby is getting bigger!


Exploring at the beach.




Mexican standoff - Chloe and Pork Chop


Can you find the puppy?