The Birds of Waaxp̓inč̓a

Late spring evening,

a thousand turnstones sing

across the harbour

on what we mamalthni*

call Neilsen Island.

The First Peoples of this land

have always known it

as  Waaxp̓inč̓a,

island of the river otters.

The birds converse

in their ancient tongue.

The Nuu chah nulth say

there was a time

when human and animal

plant and tree

spoke to each other

in the same language.

It is we mamalthni

who have forgotten.

But the living land and water,

cedar and osprey,

orca, wolf and bear,

must carry this wisdom 

of interconnection

in cellular memory.

In counterpoint

to the moment’s rapture,

a boat motor roars;

a seaplane flies in, low:

we humans, being –

our cacophony and clamour,

our relentless encroachment

on the wild -

the thousand singing voices

fall suddenly silent.

*Mamalthni is the Nuu chah nulth word for white people

-shared with earthweal, where my prompt is: Soundscapes

Mother Earth, Trying So Hard to Live

 

Is this shame I feel, when spring comes,

as faithful as ever, small green things poking up?
The familiar miracle, even though we've not been wise,

Mother Earth spreading a banquet of beauty
before our eyes. Yet we take more than our share
and fail to hear our fellow creatures'
tears and sighs.

At a rock cliff, down the street,
the other day, they were drilling it
into rocks, the big trucks
hauling it away.

What's left looks battered, trees on top

with roots exposed. They soon will blow down,

and be gone. And yet, when I go close,

even now, I see earth trying to heal itself:

small green fingers clutching at shattered rock.

Mother Earth, even in shock,
still trying so hard to live,

showering us with all we need, and healing

what she can, after we've taken more than she

can safely give. 

My chest grows tight;
I find it hard to breathe, in response
to half the forest coming down. The trees
are kind; they look at us with
questioning eyes,

asking how? and why? do we not hear

their anguished cries? There is a soft depression

under a cedar's bole; space for a fellow

creature to find shelter and grow whole.

I long to climb inside, pull a mossy blanket

over me. 

Sleep for a hundred years, and then awaken
in a world that has learned better
how to be.

for my prompt at earthweal: Soundscapes

LOVE SONG TO CLAYOQUOT SOUND

 

Oh, wild, untamed and glorious

coastal beaches of Clayoquot Sound,

you sang a siren song to me

for years before I journeyed here,

long before I ever saw

the perfection of your beauty.

Your ley lines drew me to you

as surely as a murrelet

is drawn to its nest,

a migrant whale to its feeding ground.

I arrived in love, my heart

rising to meet you like

a long-lost lover.

In wandering your forest trails

and along your sandy shores,

I live in loving, still.

In gratitude, my eyes caress

the curves and slopes 

of Wah'nah'juss; breathe in your misty,

fog-shrouded mornings; bless

soaring eagle, heron picky-toe-ing

along the mudflats, smile as small boats

chug across the harbour

on West Coast afternoons.

I stand in earth's cathedral: thousand year old 

Grandfather Cedar, Hanging Garden Tree,

so many ancient beings,

each one home to

a diversity of life,

each one a universe all its own.

I stood on the road to save you

in 1993; I will stand there

if they come for you again.

Those hours on the road

burned in my heart like fire;

passion, fierce,  like a mother bear's roar

protecting all she loves.

I have grown old, loving you,

and the loving has been sweet.

And sweet the mist

of seaspray on my face,

smell of seaweed and salal;

the delight of sand dollars in the sand,

the wonder of tidepools

full of starfish and anemone.

How my heart exults

as the waves, like white-maned horses,

gallop in to shore.

Love for your wild beauty never

stops singing inside me. I carry it

within, like a gleaming treasure, 

a song of love, reminding me

to breathe in the fullness

of this moment, now, 

for none of this is ours to keep.

We are all, always,

only passing through.

As the world turns burnished gold,

fading soft to starlight,

and its coloured remnants streak

across the evening sky,

I look to your mountaintops,

purpling at the edge of the sea.

I am bound here by your beauty;

held fast by the song of the sea,

uttering a constant prayer

of gratitude

for all you've gifted me.

Shared at earthweal's open link

Reluctant Hero

 

She was a reluctant hero,

emerging from the fog

of trauma into the light

of the new day

she would create

herself.

It is peculiar, looking back,

to see that, in times when
she had felt most alone,

connections were being made,

just the right turns were taken,

as if she had been
helped and guided

all the way along.

Like a river, life made its own way,

sometimes meandering
between the banks,

sometimes flooding over

to forge a new
and unexpected path.

She had never wanted to
have to be that strong,

yet, in the end, was grateful
that she was.

They say wild hearts can't be broken,

but I disagree. They break.

They just grow stronger

in the wounded places.

A rather predictable and uninspired response to Shay's word list. But I tried. Smiles.

POSTCARD FROM THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

I'm standing on the rim of the world,
at the far edge of far,

next stop Japan.

I am thinking of you.

The news is bad.

It is very bad.

But the view is beautiful

from here.

I send you

a small postcard

of hope

across the waves.

May it reach you

in time.
May it lift your heart.
May it remind you
of all
we are trying so hard
to save.

shared at earthweal's open link

End Times

 

They tell us to regret nothing, all those

sad and terrible times, when life was

so much harsher than your dreams,

and you spun in circles, trying to find

your way out.

They say those times got you to here,

made you the person you are today.

But how much pleasanter a journey,

if that unfolding had been kinder,

with less abuse. How hard would

it have been for life to gilt-edge

just a few of those encounters, left you

with some golden memories

among the pale and gaunt?

Never mind. Peace found you,
at mid-life, or, rather,

you carved away everything

that was not peace and claimed it

for yourself. You got here,

however bumpy the road.
The view is all forests

and ocean sunsets now, and the hours

tick past, the days saunter by,

as friends.

In My Garden

 

The nature spirits worked with me

in my garden. As I crawled up

and down the rows, weeding,
fat brown rabbit

hopping along beside me, nibbling,

I'd whisper "pretty, pretty!"

to encourage the tender shoots. 

That garden grew so lush, showering

fruit and vegetables of every kind:

platters of watermelon, canteloupe,

strawberries, grapes, to feed

my leggy, hungry children.

Squash and zuchinni, peas, beets

and carrots: up and down the rows

we went, collecting nature's bounty
for supper, in late afternoon.

Early mornings, I loved the slow

swish-swish-swish of the sprinkler,

its wide arc showering droplets

onto the thirsty plants below.

It wasn't Findhorn's Garden, but 

it came close. It seemed a miracle

that so much growth could come

of tiny seeds, and sun and water -

with the blessing of the nature spirits,

turning our world green.

for earthweal, where the challenge is to honour an element of the commons we live in. Brendan's essay, which mentions Findhorn, took me back to my gardening days, the years when I and my kids and the world were young.

To Speak With Clouds

 

Mother Sky,

teach me to speak

the language of clouds.

My feet on earth,

my eyes on the sky,

my heart swooping and soaring

with Raven,
with Eagle, with Owl,

I am adrift in the beauty

of your forever blue.

I have walked through this lifetime,

head tipped back and

smiling at the sky,

enraptured by your puffy

storybook clouds,

your ever-changing colours,

your huge canvas,

which inspires all of
our dreaming.

Teach me to speak

as gently as clouds,

so my footprint on earth

will grow ever lighter,

like Wolf, like Deer,

like Heron.

After I learn

the soft-speak of Cloud,

may I next learn

how to speak Tree.

for earthweal's open link. An old one, as I am enjoying the clouds so much these days.

Phantoms

 

For too long, I was asleep.

I awoke at twenty-seven,

on a leafy autumn sidewalk

in the West End, liberated 

from my sham of a marriage

into a whole other season.

The jackals gathered,

sensing my vulnerability.

Was it a hallucination,

those next three years?
They had come to warn me,
but I was not whole enough
to understand.

I am far beyond them now.

The hyenas stopped circling

and howling long decades ago.

The phantoms from those days

no longer visit my dreams.

Instead,
a big black wolf appears,

his eyes looking straight

into my soul. He smiles,

and I awaken, my heart

a vagabond until the day

we meet again.

for Shay's Word List.

GIFTS

 

This is what the living do:

we wake up each morning to the day,
grateful for the waking,

our beds a time capsule,

carrying us through years

of dreams and memories.

I closed my eyes, in bliss, at forty,
on the shores of Clayoquot Sound.

When I opened them this morning,

incomprehensibly, I am seventy-six,
- here, once again,
and still -
in my heart's home.
The greatest gift of all.

I put out seed for the morning sparrows,

watch them hopping, while I make

my cup of tea, because

this is what the living do; we have

our rituals, our small comforts,

our ways of coping, our day after day

of sameness, moving us inexorably

to an unknown day up ahead.

Meanwhile, we remember

to cherish these small blessings,

this glorious ordinary, more special

than we know.

I remember

to be grateful for the gifts.

Yesterday I carried my brown bag

of groceries home from the CoOp.

The sun was so warm; two smiling friends

walked towards me. We stopped,

a careful ten feet apart, and chatted,
because the virus is still here,
wary and mutated.

We talked about our hair, which is long
and needed cutting even before

the virus. We stood there,

laughing in the sun, hands poking at our heads,

glad to have seen and spoken with other humans

on this sunny warm morning

in Clayoquot Sound.

The waves were big yesterday; the surfers

were happy. I walked to the big log and sat,

watched the breakers come rolling in,

felt my heart expand with the prayer I recite

every time I am there: thank you, thank you,

thank you, for this: for the gift of living here,

twice given, for the beauty,

for the many gifts I have been given.

This is what the living do: we remember.

On this beach, I once walked for miles and years

with an exuberant, big black wolf.

And now I live alone.

I visit the sea. I am still living,

less exuberantly, but no less gratefully.

I remember him.

I remember it all.

for  Ingrid at dVerse where the topic is gifts. I have been given so many, all my life. I am aging ever so gratefully. I adapted this poem from one written earlier during covid. But some of us seniors are still having to be careful, as the mutations are still about, and we are vulnerable.

Light

 

A small white plant burst forth 

this January, in the yard.

How did it sprout, the ground

so cold and hard?

My heart lifts at

the coming of the light,

lasting a little longer

night by night. 

Six small round candles

line our footsteps at the beach.

We walk between,

           all beauty within reach.          

Earth's promise is renewed

year after year,

Mother Earth, shining her
gift of
hope and beauty
crystal clear.

***

Each evening, now, there are
a few extra minutes before
the darkness dims our sight,
as the planet turns itself,
once more
towards the light.

My heart lifts to meet it,
caught in gratitude
and pain,
as the age-old miracle
unfolds itself again:

Mother Earth's winter tears,

watered the earth where
we will bring
the seeds to grow
another garden
during one more
beautiful spring.

A small offering for earthweal : Fertile and Pure: a Candlemas Harrow. The coming of the light lifts my heart every year. Each year I am blown away by the miracle of the earth coming to life again.