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.

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.



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!!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?