Alive on Planet Earth

 photo by  gotofino.com

Dear Mother Earth,
when the Westerly blows
clouds scudding across the sky,
and the waves crash thunderously
upon the shore,
when the morning fog
blankets the sides of Mears,
jaggedy treetops poking through
to make me catch my breath
in wonder,
while the morning fishboats
putt-putt-putt across the harbor,
and the bell tinkles
over the door of the Common Loaf,
all the faces turning to see who just came in,
wet rain-gear sloughed off and steaming
in the warm, bread-scented air,
when the eagle cries atop
his favorite scrag,
and ravens pace around the picnic tables,
hoping for dropped scraps,
when dogs lollop in and out of the waves
with loopy grins,
and surfers stand to ride, and fall, and rise again,
when I turn in a circle
and see pristine and primordial beauty
for 360 degrees,

when the morning sun breaks
over Lemmens Inlet,
and the jellyfish wake in God's Pocket,
when the seabirds' cries are muted 
by the roar of the surf,
and they sit facing seaward in a huddle,
predicting storm,
when the young ones ride the stream-bed on the tide,
fly ahead, ride the current back again,
because birds just want to have fun,

when sunset paints the entire sky
with colors too fantastic to describe,
after the big fiery old orb has vanished 
behind the far horizon,
as little sanderlings weave and dart
along the shore as one body,
and the sonorous back and forth,
ebbing and flowing,
of the waves' ceaseless advancing  
and retreating
sings us home,

when the wind howls up a tempest
that batters every living thing,
and we hide indoors, 
awed by her strength and fury,
wood-stove crackling,
and snug and well-content,

when just being alive and breathing 
in this blessed sacred forever place
seems more bountiful
than a wagon-load of gold bouillon
and I more richly blessed,
there is no Thank You big enough
or sufficient words
to tell you
how dearly I cherish your beauty,
the sheer awesome 
interconnected wonder of you,
how grateful I am
to have walked this earth walk 
with you, your song in my heart,
and how incomparable a lover
you have always been to me.

photo by Garth Lenz at garthlenz.com

Mary's prompt at Poetry Jam today is to write a letter, a fading art, now that we are all so computerized. I wrote thousands of letters during my lifetime, most of them tapped out at great speed on an old Underwood, with much use of correcting tape and liquid paper......even after I lost two keys and had to go back and insert the missing letters by hand, still daily I sent letters off in every direction. Would be great to read some of them now.

I remember my Grandma's letters, also typed, and hilarious - she ran her sentences into one another, each letter one long ongoing sentence, pure stream of consciousness, leaving off in the middle of a random thought that ran off the bottom of the page.....I would LOVE to have some of those right now. In fact somewhere in the basement Lori has a couple of those precious letters. We must dig them out and I'll share. They are priceless.

I remember a letter from Ireland that Grandma got a huge kick out of...possibly in the scrapbook........I'll take a look for it.

Anyway, I decided to write to my life-long lover, Mother Earth. She has lifted my heart and my eyes to the skies all my life, given me succor and many millions of moments of incredibly spectacular beauty. The best of those during my years in Clayoquot Sound.