SUNFLOWER II

 

While sunflowers
turn their faces to the sun
on sunny days,
they turn their faces
to each other, for support
when skies are grey.

Perhaps that's why we gather
in the streets,
when times are stark,
to feel our connection
against powerful forces
that feel so wrong and dark.

My spirit is heavy,
so I go forth
into the sun,
turn my face,
this golden day,
to each and everyone.

Our life and each other
is all we have,
when all is
said and done,
like sunflowers
turning hopefully
and forever
toward the sun.

for The Muse

SUNFLOWER

 

Her round baby face was my sunshine

when she was two.

She shone golden as the sun

as up she grew.

But then came her years of tears,

of betrayed heart and betrayed trust,

as she sought love

the way true seekers

always must.

We both love sunflowers

for their brightness

and their shine,

and how they dare 

to dream the heavens

as they climb.

There is no happy ending,

just our lives,

flowing through

the ups and downs

that oh so slowly

make us wise.

But her voice has laughter in it,

these days, when I call,

for she found the love

she had been seeking,

learned to trust it, after all,

slowly opening her heart

the way a sunflower

gently lets

each

golden petal

fall.

FOR THE SUNDAY MUSE

The Train of Social Justice

facebook image - no copyright infringement intended

"I hear that train a'comin',
a'comin' down the tracks...."

I hear all the people wanting to get on board,
hear their passionate words at gatherings,
at the Lincoln Memorial, during newscasts.
I hear the man who wonders if civil war 
will come again to the United States,
never so blatantly and impossibly divided.

How are we hurting and discouraged millions
ever going to get that social justice train
on the tracks and traveling towards
Martin's dream? We are long overdue.
This train is 50 years late,
its passengers never more imperilled,
never more out-shouted by 
the extreme radical right.
Ugliness has never been so unmasked;
we see now, clearly,
and cannot look away.

I can hear the whistle
faintly blowing,
from many miles away.
I have my bags packed
to hop aboard, when it
finally comes my way.

It isn't enough any more to simply know, and write poems of protest. Time to write to elected officials everywhere, to march, to vote, to speak out. If that dream is ever going to be, it is going to take all of us. Had the Dems backed Bernie, I would have a lot more hope. Joe Biden is a decent man, but his voice is too quiet for what we are facing. The same old political formula will not work any longer. We needed Bernie's vision to find our way out of this mess. I hope he keeps fighting, though he must be so tired. My faint hopes hang on November's vote, fully expecting the rampant and blatant corruption to impact the vote. If we lose, we will lose big. Including our democracy.

LA LOBA II

 

wolves by kiri stuart clarke

La Loba,

in your dark cave,

under the full moon,

sing.

Sing as you gather the bones 

of my brothers, my sisters.

Sing as you lay them down

on the ground.

Place them end to end,

tenderly, carefully,

piece by piece, 

until they are whole.

Then breathe life into them 

and watch them leap up,

joyous-eyed, tails arc-ing,

teeth snapping and smiling,

around the fire.

Sing,

as they take my heart with them

and run away,

beautiful, laughing and free,

into the welcoming

midnight forest.

La Loba, sing!

written in 2013 and re-posted here for Earthweal's open link.  I picture La Loba as a wild wolf woman, able to breathe life back into wolfish bones.

"There should be nothing here I don't remember...."

 

364 Christleton Avenue

"There should be nothing here I don't remember."

In my mind, it is always there: my place of safety,
of deep peace and familiar, reliable routine,
the hours noted by the metal clock
on the kitchen windowsill, the cottage so quiet,
its tick-tock could be heard
in every room.

When I was small, Grandma watched me
while my parents worked. After we moved away,
I spent my summers there.

My grandma moved so peacefully
through her mornings.
I woke to the slap of the hose
hitting the wall of the cottage
as she watered everything down
against the coming heat,
lowering the canvas awnings
like sleepy eyelids
over the front windows.

When I wandered outside, I'd sink
into the hammock under the weeping willow -
the willow tree of remembrance,
under which I read and dreamed away
the summer mornings of my youth,
as Grandma cleaned her kitchen,
started things cooking for lunch,
perhaps making fruit preserves:
stewed rhubarb that we'd eat with toast.
My bathing suit, draped over the clothesline,
was still damp from my last swim, 
when I pulled it back on for the next.

Sometimes, Grandma hosted canasta games
in the afternoon,
the ladies arriving in hats and white gloves,
card tables set up in the small living room,
tea in fancy cups and saucers, dainty sandwiches,
the ladies, all from the prairies, remembering
Saskatoon berries - no western berry
ever measured up, in memory, to the berries
of their young womanhood.
They called each other by their formal names
 - "Mrs. Marr, Miss Hicks", - and my grandpa
was referred to as "Mr. Marr", always.
It was said he never saw
my grandma's naked body
out of her flannel nightgown.
What horror for this modest,
turn-of-the-last-century woman to find herself,
at the end of her life, a body in a bed,
Depends being changed by strangers,
no modesty, no privacy left,
each change a violation.
She withdrew deep within herself,
waiting for the release of death.

"There should be nothing here I don't remember,"
and so, each time I go back to Kelowna,
I make that trip down Christleton Avenue,
to make sure the bedrock of my childhood
is still there. It is covered with stucco now,  
but the small houses along that street remain,
have not been knocked down and replaced
by giant houses. Yet.

The street still bears the reassuring imprint
of familiarity, the repository of my childhood
and young girlhood memories,
the place I return to in memory again and again.
Whenever I think of childhood, it is to this small cottage
that I come, the slap of water
against the side of the house
that woke me every morning, all the years
I spent my summers there,
smell of lake-scent and roses,  sweet pea and pinks.
I can almost see, in earlier years,  that four year old
still hanging on the front gate, 
under the arched rose trellis,
waiting for her parents to arrive
in the falling twilight to take her home.
And remember the nights
they did not come.

Inspired by "Looking for the Gulf Motel" by Richard Blanco, and Wild Writing by Laurie Wagner

Remembrance

 

There should be nothing here I don’t remember.

The ferry between Westbank and Kelowna
that, when I was little, I thought would have wings,
which made my father smile,
should still be plying the waters
between Westbank and
and Kelowna’s shores.
The ferry is long gone, but the shore
is still lined with the weeping willow
and tear-streaked dreams of my youth.
My mother was so beautiful then,
with her long blonde curls, and huge blue eyes,
like a movie star, but fraught,
at what alcohol did to my parents’ love affair.

There should be nothing here I don’t remember.

Our house looked out across the lake
at the Big Blue Hills. My first dog, Dinky,
a black lab, followed me everywhere
and two turkey gobblers walked with me,
one on each side, as we paced,
up and down the driveway.
Wings outspread, they hissed, chasing 
my mom back inside
when she came out to check on me.

The town was small then,
surrounded by miles of apple orchards,
white blossoms in springtime, the air sweet
with their blooming. Now, going back,
some of the houses we lived in are gone,
and all of the orchards, street after street
of condominiums mushrooming up
where once life was sweet
under the apple trees of summer
and the hot August moon.

I had so many dreams then
of how life would be, when pain
would have ended
and happiness would be mine,
finally, to live.

They did not come true.
But ones better than I ever
could have dreamed
arrived in their stead,
taking me on the most wonderful
and unexpected journey.

Life took me far;
there were so many losses,
pain and tears I held inside
all those years when I had to be strong
for those four who depended on me.
I had so many helpers and guides,
to show me the way, along a path
of awakening, bright as sunrise
over the mountains, I gasping
at the wonder of it.

Now, in old age, tears come more easily
than they ever have – every tender scene,
every lost love in movies and books,
every sad story on the evening news,
and I am awash at the joy and the ache of it.

Tears – for the beauty of the journey,
for the glory and wonder of it, tears
for the pain of all that has been lost.

And yet -
as the poet said, so reassuringly -
“All that is lost
is not lost.”

 

Inspired by “Looking for the Gulf Motel” by Richard Blanco. The italicized lines are his.

 

RAINBOW WARRIORS

On the Road in Clayoquot Sound
Summer of '93

Sally Sunshine, R.I.P.

 

The soul would have no rainbows
if the eyes had no tears.
     - Native American proverb

BLOCKADE. I remember:
dancing on the road, heart full to bursting,
as the big trucks rolled in,
the summer of '93.
Tears, as the forest defenders were carried off
by arms and legs, first a few,
then a few hundred,
then a thousand.

We saved some trees, here,
back then, in Clayoquot Sound.
But the clearcutting continued
on the Island. 
Only a little left, and not protected.
This week my grandson,
a Rainbow Warrior, is going to the blockade
at Fairy Creek, where logging roads
are slicing into one of the last
pristine watersheds, the last of the old growth
on Vancouver Island.
The last of the lungs
on our planet, should anybody care.

This week, the big machinery
turned around and left.
But they are tricky,
so a second blockade
is set up on the back road.

Pain: at the endless putting of profit
before planet, even as the Arctic
hits 100 degrees, melting beneath
the huskies' feet, so they are trotting
through water, instead of on ice.

"Money rules," the fat cats grin,
as if that's all that matters.

"Money rules, but the spirit
liberates," replied my friend,
back in the day. It was my bumper sticker
for years. Along with
"Money is a drug.
Heal the spirit."

Joy: that as my generation of eco-warriors
lies, gasping, exhausted after 40 years of fighting,
the young ones are stepping up,
with pure hearts, and hope, and energy
to save their vanishing world.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
My grandson was five when
I was on the road.
Now he's twenty-five,
and picking up my faltering torch.
I watch these rainbow warriors with pride,
and with guilt, that our generation didn't leave 
them a safer world.

My eyes have tears and rainbows,
my heart holds equal measure
of joy and pain.

Adjacent to Fairy Creek
Ancient Forest Alliance photo
Those few trees left? That's so they can say they're
"not clearcutting."

It is early days at Fairy Creek, but it is building. More people will come to the blockades, as they did in the summer of '93. Fairy Creek is ancient old growth on the way to Port Renfrew, south Vancouver Island. It is close to the mystical Avatar Grove - the huge trunks are amazing. To pulp this stuff for toilet paper is ludicrous; a crime. It is insane to truck this stuff out of the province and send it to other countries as raw logs. But the trucks keep rolling in. The warriors stand firm. Here we go again. But now the stakes are higher. There is not much left to save on this heating planet. Take a look at the beauties these young people are trying to save.

(for earthweal.com: Storms and Rainbows)

My friend, Warren Rudd, a well-known Tofino videographer, worked on this video. He is up at Fairy Creek right now. Check out the beauty that is in peril.

SKYBIRD'S SONG

 

source

Traveler falters

on the path.

She is wounded.

Her wolf companion

has left her side,

and her hand

is empty

when it moves

to touch his head.

It is a blow,

a hole torn

in the

fabric

of her living.

But, soon,

she hears

a skybird's song.

It mends and weaves

the sore place

in her heart, bids her

resume her journey,

encourages her

from low branches

till she

gets up

and walks again.

She follows

that bird

the whole

day long.

An old one, written after Pup died........I am very fond of birds, Sky Messengers. Shared with earthweal's open link.

On the Edge of the Mystery

 

Tashi Paddle School photo
tofinopaddle.com

For time beyond time,
ten thousand years,
this has been the territory
of the Nuu-chah-nulth,
"people all along the mountains
and the sea."
They lived in huge longhouses in Opitsaht,
a sheltered spot across the bay.
When the settlers came, some of the First Peoples
moved up into the mountains.
When they came down, years later,
they found they were the only ones
who survived the smallpox
the settlers brought.

This is still Tla-o-qui-aht ha-houlthee.
We settlers perch here, aware
of our privilege, grateful that
these wise people are as patient as they are
at how slowly we mumalthni become aware
of our place in the scheme of things.

We are living on the edge
of the mystery, where all things
are connected, a dimension
vaster than our limited comprehension
can grasp. Our intuition
tells us there is a bigger story
than the one we are living.

Our thoughts fly into the ether
where poetry lives, where dreams gather,
dropping down on us in starlight
to light our path.

Now another virus stalks us;
the People close their village gates.

It may be time to go up
into the far mountains,
time for the medicine man
to pray to the living land and water,
time to sing his healing song.
Time for us to grow quiet,
and listen to the wisdom
of the First People,
and what they have to say.

ALIVE, ON PLANET EARTH

                                        

Beautiful photos by Nancy Powis, R.I.P.

When the Westerly blows,
and waves crash rapturously
upon the shore,
when treetops poke their spires
up through the fog and mist
along the slopes of Wah'nah'juss,
my heart exults in wonder.

When the eagle's piercing cry
echoes across the harbour,
and the heron picky-toes
along the rocky shore
seeking her breakfast,
when dogs with loopy grins
go lolloping in and out
of the waves at Chestermans,
and surfers stand to ride, and fall,
and rise again,

When the morning sun rises
over Lemmens Inlet,
geese flying above in a wavering V,
as the sandpipers whirl and swoop as one
along the water's edge,
and ravens croak their gobble-cry,

When sunset paints the sky
with colours too fantastic to describe
as the big old fiery orb sinks down
below the horizon at day's end,

When just being alive and breathing
in this forever power-place
seems wealth beyond compare,
and I most richly blessed,
thankfulness expands my heart
to bursting, again and again,
so dearly do I cherish the beauty,
the sheer interconnected wonder
of Clayoquot Sound.

How grateful I am
to have walked this earth walk
along its beloved shores,
the song of the waves
forever advancing and retreating
in my heart;
how dearly I feel the blessing,
rich with all life's worth,
just to have another day,
like this,
alive, on planet earth.

for my prompt at earthweal: to describe the landscape that most calls to our hearts. Some of you have likely read this before. I didn't think I could describe this place any better, so have posted this earlier poem. 

Tofino is beautiful. In 1989, it was a quiet fishing village with a few early whale-watching companies. When we blockaded to save the old growth in 1993, the world saw how beautiful it is on the news and started coming. Now we are over-run with tourism and  housing is scarce and unaffordable - except for the building i am lucky enough to live in. A lot of young working people are living in tents, cars and vans. It has been this way for 30 years. Everything has turned into tourist rentals and b and b's. Money, money.

Logging of old growth continues on Vancouver Island. There is hardly any left. A favourite forest near me is slated to fall for a massive housing project this autumn. It hurts. We tried hard to save it. Now we are demanding a tree protection bylaw to save what's left.

Some of my friends are blockading right now at Fairy Creek, a mystical forest on a West Coast watershed. Capitalism only knows how to gobble. It is suicidal, but blinded by greed.

My Heart Can Ask No More

 

gotofino.com photo

My heart travels your ley lines
like a raven on the wing.
Your songlines called to me
in the dreamtime
till they brought me to your shore,
my heart full to overflowing
with the ocean's mighty roar.

Your waves roll in forever,
sandy beaches all before,
smell of sea salt, kelp and seaweed,
and my heart can ask no more

than to walk my remaining years
along the beauty of your shore.

OLD TREE

 

Old Tree,
tell me your story.
You have seen a thousand years
of seasons come and go,
witnessed the wilderness
turn into towns,
watched sadly as the wild ones
- those who have survived -
retreated more deeply into the forest,
growing ever more afraid
as the Two-Leggeds
steadily advanced
with their chainsaws
and their heavy tread.
You have wept as your sisters
turned into houses for humans
instead of birds
and small furred creatures.

Tell me about the time
when you were young,
when wolf pups huddled
among your roots,
and bears scratched their backs
on your rough bark,
those days
when all the wild creatures
spoke to one another
in the same language:
moose and bear and deer.
Tell me about a time
when life was securely lived,
when the word "wild" meant "home",
when safety and the seasons
were all you knew.

Tell me your ancient tale, Old Tree,
and it will be
a fairytale
to me.


for  Shay at The Sunday Muse

WINDIGO

 

source

Through the mist, I see a shaman,
on a fencepost, point the way;
into the forest I go, listening,
for all it has to say.

Wolf Spirit, Windigo, you sorrow
at the extinction of your clan,
the destruction of your habitat
by the tribe of man.

Once we lived and spoke together.
once upon a time we knew
that everything was connected.
You were me, and I was you.

The animals are speaking.
if only we could hear
their cries of distress and hunger,
so heartbreaking, so near.

The forest is deep and dark
and there be spirits here.
When we listen to the creatures,
their message is so clear.

Their peril and ours is connected,
they most want us to know.
Owl, Oracle, Guardian,
protect me as I go.

a poem from 2019 for the open link at earthweal

Protectors

 

Tall turkey gobblers,

bigger than me,

one on each side,

my protectors,

walked me up and down

the rocky path.

When my mother came out

to check on me,

they chased her back inside,

flapping wings spread wide.

They knew that I was small

and in need of protection.

Somewhere there is a photo of me, maybe fifteen months old, being walked by my turkey gobbler friends. 

BEDROCK

 

Summer morning.

I'm sitting on my sister's porch:

horses grazing in the grassy field,

sweet dog lying at my feet.

The air smells like 

all the summer mornings 

of my life: when I and the world

were young, and I walked the hills

breathing in the scent of sage

and Ponderosa pine.

Forever, now, the summer morning smell

takes me back: sweet pea and weeping willow,

lake-scent and whisperings

engraved on my heart.

Since childhood, this has been

the bedrock of my life:

blue-sky mornings, breathing trees,

fur creatures wild and tame

with their love-seeking eyes.

Whatever the "civilised" world is doing,

it is the world of forest and sea breezes, 

world of the wild ones,

that anchors me

and keeps my heart at home.

For Sarah at earthweal who asks us to write about our connection with nature. Mine has always been with me. As a toddler, I walked our small farm, a turkey gobbler protector bigger than me, walking on either side. When I was old enough to ride a bike, i biked out into the country, left the bike, and wandered the hills, singing. Once a herd of cows followed me, perhaps thinking I was leading them home to the barn, and supper. I have been a Blue Sky Woman all my life.

Forever

 

You carry the world we have lost
in your antlers, gazing at us
as if to wonder how we ever
treated it so lightly.

Your forest is shrinking;
this brings you into the edges
of roads and towns
where you're not safe.
Your babies wobble fearfully
on concrete paths.

We once thought
that Forever
would forever
last.

for The Sunday Muse

CURRICULUM VITAE OF A STRUGGLING WORLD

The night trump was elected,
I went to bed disheartened,
knowing a nightmare lay ahead. 
(Even so, I never dreamed how bad.)

The divisive rhetoric is constant;
it has changed us.

My voice at first resisted, outraged.
Over time, I grew weary and discouraged.
(That is the strategy; it works.
Keep the uproar coming; no one
can muster the moments of clarity
needed to resist.)

The climate crisis is still happening;
we have just been too distracted
to pay attention.

My poems have all become poems of grief:

Tahlequah, Mother Orca,
swimming a thousand miles
with her dead calf on her nose,
expressing our collective heartbreak;

children in cages at the southern border
(still in cages. Is anybody helping?)

The wildfires in Australia, burning up
all the koalas and kangaroos.

George Floyd.

Chantel Moore.

Takaya.

The corona virus.

The people rising up in protest;
the goons in camoflauge beating
them back, yet still they
bravely march.

The forests of California, burning.

This morning Russia is talking about
nuclear responses to perceived threats.
Really, it couldnt get much worse than that,
and they are Going There in their minds.
Will we wake one morning in the rubble?

The earth has the energy of life, 
of interdependence of all species.
It moves through its seasons struggling
against the opposing forces of human
destructiveness, misplaced power and greed.

We need everything to change.
We need leaders to lead, and care.
Mother Nature needs to get some help.

Mother Wind, sing through our
broken human hearts
a song of illumination
and transformation. 

May the ways this past four years
have changed us, change us back
into beings of light and hope once more.

Wild Writing inspired by "Curriculum Vitae" by Lisel Mueller

August in Tofino

It is August in Tofino, and the tourists are in a frenzy. The whole town is slightly crazed, as too many people and cars overrun our tiny village. One hears the locals lamenting; one gets messages from former Tofitians saying they miss how Tofino was. I miss how it was too and am so glad I was here during those years, when we stood on the road for the trees - the largest incidence of civil disobedience (at that time) in Canadian history. The event that let the world know how beautiful it is here and began the stampede that has made it hard to live here for everyone except for the very rich.

However, I have always been a glass-half-full kind of person, and everything I love about Tofino is still here: the sweet little village, with its familiar funky buildings; the way fog and clouds play along the slopes of Wah'nah'juss; the pink sky at dawn when the world looks brand new; sunsets at the beach, and those white forever waves rolling in like white-maned horses.

I love the conscious, awakened village folk, too, so aware of the privilege it is to live in this environment, on the Ha-hoolthii of the Tl-o-qui-aht people, in this beautiful Sound, full of some of the last old-growth on the planet, home to wolves and bears and cougar, to the aboriginal guardians of the land - and to us.

The tourists come here for a season, pay thousands of dollars to spend a few days here. A motel room can cost four or five hundred dollars a night here, more for the upscale ones. Yikes. This makes finding housing and hanging on here difficult for we low-income folk. Rents are equivalent to most of our monthly incomes. We cling on like marsupials to a wavering branch.

But how rich in spirit we are, hearts expanding at the beauty we are surrounded by, immersed in, in love with. My eyes bless every beloved, familiar shape. My prayer is a constant one of gratitude: Thank You. Thank You. Thank You for this beauty, and for bringing me home a second time.

NOTES FROM AN IMPERFECT LIFE*

"Things are far from perfect.
So we may as well dive into the water
and swim with imperfection."
Laurie Wagner, Wild Writing

Things aren't perfect.

The climate is in crisis.
Wildfires and hurricanes rage.

A huge explosion just rocked Lebanon.

Oppression and corruption are everywhere.

Refugees flee homelands
in search of safety, finding none.

Everything has changed.

Masked, we walk wide swathes 

around each other,

evading the corona virus 

which stalks our days.

Everything has changed.

This isn't the life I was living,

but one that has veered off the rails

and into uneasy and fearful territory.

It is both good and bad

to be old in such times.

Good because, for me,  

there is an end in sight.

Bad, because I can remember idealism, 

optimism, hope, honour, integrity,

dreams we would change the world,

and it is hard to see how far 

we have fallen short.

Everything has changed.

This earth was once a garden,

and then we came.

Things are far from perfect.

But some things are.

Morning still dawns pink with promise.

Clouds and fog still make sweet patterns

on the slopes of Wah'nah'juss.

The white-maned waves roll,

lovely and eternal, 

into shore.

My eyes trace the beloved landscape 

with such love;

my heart is joy and pain

in the same moment: joy for the beauty,

pain for all that has gone so wrong.

We have so much work to do

and we are tired, tired, tired,

on the verge of becoming

unbelievers.

How do I stay a believer?

Sheer stubbornness.

Child of the sixties, 

those once-bright dreams of mine

still shine.

They refuse to die.

* The title is from a line in the poem "Riveted" by Robyn Sarah. The prompt is from Wild Writing with Laurie Wagner, the source of most of my poems these days.

Shared with earthweal's open link.

SORROW MOUNTAIN

                Available here

Step by painful step

I climb Sorrow Mountain,

iron bar chafing my ankles,

starvation one long pain.

My captors are cruel;

when they beat me, I pray

that my suffering will liberate

my people, and my country.

 In isolation, my mind

seeks its peace in 

memories of the past,

in one hundred thousand prostrations

in the darkness of my cell.

Will my soul achieve forgiveness

for the oppressors of my people?

The Dalai Lama's face before me,

eyes wise and kind.

If I do not die, I will continue to climb:

my duty to my people, clear,

my beliefs holding firm.

Step by painful step,

I climb Sorrow Mountain,

watering its rocky path

with brave and loving tears.

May my suffering

be for the benefit

of all sentient beings.

May my pain

help to liberate

my people and Tibet.

I am reading Sorrow Mountain by Ani Pachen and Adelaide Donnelley, the story of a warrior nun who suffered greatly and courageously during the invasion of Tibet. She survived years of imprisonment to finally reach Dharamsala, and the Dali Lama. 

Reading about the cruelty of oppressors, I reflect upon how many places in the world - including North America - where people are made to suffer greatly simply for being who they are. 

STRANGE WORLD

image by Erik Johansson

[Apathy, Denial and Hope, oh, my!]

A s events conflate, crisis upon crisis,

P opulations shut down, overwhelmed,

A very effective strategy for corrupt rulers,

T hat care only for power, profit and greed.

H ow can we awaken to our plight,

Y et stay strong enough to resist? We

D are not close our eyes & ears, or turn away,

E ven to preserve our own well-being.

N ow every vote and voice is needed.

I n the voting booth, in minds & hearts, let's

A ll join our voices, demanding

L eaders of integrity, ethics and compassion.

H ope is what keeps us moving forward,

O nto a kinder, and more caring path.

P eople of the earth, let's rise up, singing,

E xit this strange time, dream a better tomorrow.

Well, we can dream. For Earthweal, where the challenge is: Strange World. It has never been perfect. But neither has it ever been this strange, or felt this wrong. My last shred of hope is for the coming election. Just to have the nasty rhetoric stop would be SUCH A RELIEF. People not dying would be wonderful too. Stay safe, my friends.

Owl Woman Calls From the Forest Deep

Darkling the night spins its web of stars,

Hazy the moon in its tangerine shroud.

Owl Woman calls from the forest deep:

Waken, all dreamers, from your sleep.

I rise, all unwilling, from my wildish dreams.

The midnight is peopled with the wild ones' screams.

The trees lie in wait with their strangling roots,

ready to trip my scruffy boot.

The forest moans low as the fog moves in.

When I look up, the starry heavens spin.

Dark and drear, the ground I tread upon;

When I turn to go back, the path is gone.

A poem from 2015

Owl Woman

Artistic Photography Dreamlike Portrait Photography by Damien Casals

Owl Woman

calls from the forest deep:

"Waken, all humans,

from your long sleep."

I wake to the sound

of the wild ones' cries.

We may be smart,

but we are not wise.

Owl Woman

bids us change our ways.

Her hope is fading;

she prays and prays.

"Time is short"

warns the owl on her shoulder.

I fear we'll grow

no smarter, just older.

for Carrie at The Sunday Muse