In the wildwoods,
do you hear the keening
of ancestral voices
through the trees?
Ghost riders
on the winds of change,
they wait to see
if we choose the way
Mother Earth needs us to go,
or keep repeating
the folly
the folly
that we know.
In the wildwoods,
listen to the talking trees;
they will teach you
how to heal, if you listen.
The Mother Tree will show you
all her offspring,
and how she nurtures them
under the ground,
how she helps all others,
the Mother Tree as giving
as any other mother.
In the wildwoods,
wolves walk soft-pawed
and listening, alert
to any danger,
big ears upright
and attuned.
In the wildwoods,
my spirit wolf
is between two worlds,
new-mooned.
In the wildwoods,
my spirit wolf
is between two worlds,
new-mooned.
He always went
before me
before me
on the path,
and I would follow.
Sweet wolf,
I'll not stop looking
'til I find you.
Keep waiting;
I am not that far
behind you.
Thanks for your poem. We don't have wolves in Australia but I did have a strange experience in the bush recently that I have been finding difficult to understand. The first verse of your poem gives me a window into understanding what it was about. Suzanne - Mapping Uncertainty
ReplyDeleteSuzanne, you remind me of a friend who visited Haida Gwaii in northern B.C. There is a deserted aboriginal village there with a row of totem poles, where a whole village had died during the smallpox pandemic. I told her I imagined she could really feel the spirits there. She said not only could she feel them, she could hear, them, wailing. Shivers.
DeleteI just don't know about saving the world by changing humanity's mind - all the evidence from drastic change is that people just hunker down further into to their great untruths. Maybe something truly cataclysmic, though by then it may be too late -- maybe enough humans will die off to spare the life that remains -- What I celebrate here and also commit to is getting close and closer to the wildwoods, its song: Ensouling the vale of it, to ring its grievous bell. That may serve as cultural memory, the ghost song of the wolves' choir. We hallow that as best we can. - Brendan
ReplyDeleteOh, my heart goes out with you following your wolf spirit into the wildwoods!
ReplyDeleteI've just noticed a documentary on Netflix called 'Big Timber' and it's about 'no-nonsense loggers' chopping and transporting 'valuable lumber' from Vancouver Island. Please tell me this isn't a PR job from the loggers of Fairy Creek?
Ingrid, it IS a P.R. job. Completely. They send raw logs out of the country, thus depriving people who could be employed locally in milling, value added industry etc. Plus they "re-plant" in monoculture which is not the same as the biodiversity of a normal forest. Plus it takes hundreds of years for the seedlings to become large enough to store carbon. They have been logging unsustainably all along. It could have been different, was the thirst for huge fast profits the corporate bottom line. The companies care nothing for the loggers, who are losing their jobs due to mechanization and loss of forest, not the environmentalists they blame. Sigh. It feels like screaming into the wind.......so frustrating.
ReplyDeleteHow awful! I haven't watched it, but I'm disappointed that Netflix aren't airing a series about the defenders of Fairy Creek instead. I suppose no one has pumped money into making such a documentary.
Deletesince few but trees live longer than a century, most of us are ghosts already - soon enough, soon enough - but only some are fortunate as you, to travel with such toothsome and wise companions ~
ReplyDelete