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Totems at Ninstints
BBC photo
They have been many: an ethereal woman appearing
to my mother on an upper floor, questions in her eyes;
wings signalling a death that followed my mother
down the hall on waking; the sound of galloping hooves
along a country lane at full-moon midnight,
echoes of a fatal buggy ride a hundred years ago.
A woman attuned to the other world heard
wailing and keening of long-dead villagers
at Ninstints, a village wiped out by smallpox
when the settlers came, their grief never-ending.
And now the voices of dead children are calling us
to their unmarked graves across Canada,
and the generational trauma of residential school
can no longer be silenced. "They found us,"
they whisper to each other. "Soon we will be
going home."
What are the spirits of Israel and Palestine
telling us? Are we listening? To the grief,
the horror, the suffering, the endless
spilling of blood, after which no spirit
can ever truly rest.
There are spirits among us, they say,
trying to get our attention, the waft
of a cool breeze in a hallway, items
moved from place to place,
a cold shock down my spine,
knowing that her ghost was right behind me;
a photo of a loved one that jumped off a bureau
as we were speaking of him. Galway Bay tinkling
through my brain, from left to right: my Grandma
saying goodbye. The weight of a snout
on the side of my bed, a whuff,
his fierce resistance to leaving,
as his body went into the flames.
There be spirits here, when the veil
between the worlds grows thin -
and other times as well, if we
are listening: the dead telling us
that once they walked like us,
sleepwalking, unawakened
to the world
that's coming next.
for Desperate Poets : Night of the Desperate Dead
"The weight of a snout
ReplyDeleteon the side of my bed, a whuff,
his fierce resistance to leaving," I loved that line the best, so immediate, so real.
I'm with qbit. That!
ReplyDeleteWe are unawakened, refusing the voices of ghosts within and without. The older I get, the more aware I become of their sound. Jung makes the point that life is a brief interval between eternities, how much we make of the interval and not the grand landscape we are in. You gain some vantage of that place here, populated with the lost, their lament. Now what are they singing, I wonder. We think they miss the living but maybe they are trying to tell us something to prepare us for being dead ... Great response to the challenge, Sherry.
ReplyDeleteA powerful poem, Sherry. I do wonder what the spirits are trying to tell us.
ReplyDeletethe dead telling us
ReplyDeletethat once they walked like us,
sleepwalking, unawakened
to the world
that's coming next.... that is both lesson and warning... it's true if we care we can listen to what came before us and do right.
We are all haunted by our dead; sometimes it's a comfort but most often it seems to be a curse, or perhaps merely a sad moan for what is gone from their alternate reality..
ReplyDeleteBoth a beautiful and an aching read for me, this part :"items
ReplyDeletemoved from place to place,
a cold shock down my spine,
knowing that her ghost was right behind me;
a photo of a loved one that jumped off a bureau
as we were speaking of him" - this feeling that i know and that is beautiful, but at the same time, a feeling i would never wish upon anyone, at the same time.
I do believe there are spirits that walk amongst us. They are searching for someone who is open to them. Once the gateway is open, that is when the unexplained becomes real.
ReplyDelete