Mary Oliver ~ Leaf and Cloud

 

Dear Mary Oliver,

I read you to him
as he drove us, miles and miles,
up-Island.
He listened, he smiled.
But he only spoke the language
of "I Am." He could not really hear.
He was an improbable hello,
and so soon a goodbye.
When I got home, I read some more,
pausing when you wrote, of your parents:
"May they sleep well. May they soften."
Life is a long list of letting go's,
of understanding, of forgiveness.

You wrote:
"A lifetime isn't long enough
for the beauties of this world."
All those years spent earning a living,
instead of joyously living a life.
"And I am thinking: maybe just
looking and listening is the real work."
That is the work I am doing now.

I am a poet, reading a Master, and you tell me:
"....the poem....wants to open itself
like the little door of a temple."
You say: "It may be the rock in the field
is also a song," and I know this,
for I have heard it, singing songs
of centuries ago.
You say: "Maybe the world, without us,
is the real poem."

I was a woman of sixty, when I read:
"I am a woman of sixty, of no special courage",
and my last misplaced love had been and gone.
I and my black wolf were in love with the wild
and it - and we - were enough.

I read your book to the living,
and I read your book to the dying woman
in her final sleep,
to whom I wanted to give a gift.
I felt the energy in the room change,
as the gift was received,
and walked outside into a rainbow.
And all of it -
the dying woman, your words,
the sky, my heart -
was enough and more than enough.

You said:
"Remember me......I am the one who told you
that the grass is also alive,
and listening."

I close the book in gratitude
for the words that help me
better love this world.

for Shay's wonderful Word List prompt featuring the work of Mary Oliver, whose work I adore. The italicized lines are taken from her amazing book-poem The Leaf and the Cloud, which I could not recommend more highly. 

When Mary Oliver died, the poets of Tofino gathered and read some of her poems, and I read this poem I wrote in homage to her. So this is not new. I changed it slightly to use four words from the list. But I couldn't say it this well now, when my poor head is so very weary. Smiles. I just wanted to share it with you.

TREES AS PORTALS

The Hanging Garden Tree

on Wanačis-Hiɫthuuʔis

Trees are portals of living memory,

doorway to mystery and secret dimensions,

above and below-ground.

A tree is a vault of stored history,

songs and dances of the old ones,

forever remembered.

They have recorded every lonely wolf howl,

caw of Raven, piercing cry of Eagle.

If you place your ear to a mossy trunk,

you might hear a whisper of whalesong;

lie down and listen under the earth,

to the pulse of life traveling

along the roots

across the forest floor.

It is sacred, here.

We enter their world as visitors.

We listen.

In deep, deep peace,

our heart rate slows.

We breathe,

and are renewed.

I place my hand on your trunk,

Sister Tree,

in wonder,

in connection,

in solidarity,

in gratitude,

with deep respect

and admiration.

Your forest, my cathedral,

I enter humbly, as a guest.

I come away

transformed,

other-worldly,

kin.

The word I am looking for, here,

I suppose, is reverence.

for Mary's prompt: Doors at What's Going On

BRAVE LITTLE HUNTER

 

Kʷiisaḥiʔis (Kwee-sa-hayis), Brave Little Hunter,

happy after a meal of seal meat

In boats, kind people encouraged you 

out of the lagoon where you had circled

for so long near where your mother beached:

brave little orphaned whale calf, still nursing

when she died.
You called and called for her
and then grew quiet.

They saw you roll and flap your tail,

breach joyously when your tummy was full,

but that one meal was not enough

to keep you swimming very long.

It took too long to feed you, too long

to guide you towards the open sea,

your pod by then 100 miles away,

listening for your calls, but so far

they had an inability to hear

your plaintive cries.

I kept listening for messages,

for sightings, with hope

that your brave heart would take you

to your pod.

They last spotted you, swimming bravely

through open seas, in early May.

You were too young to hunt for seal,

and you had only had one meal

since your mama died.

They say it is hopeful you have not been seen,

but I know better. Your silence tells me

all I need to know. But, in my mind,

I keep you swimming bravely

through open seas, Brave Little Hunter.

Let your story be your courage,

your young, brave and hopeful heart,

who sparked such hope in me

that you'd survive.

Kʷiisaḥiʔis (Kwee-sa-hayis), Brave Little Hunter, was orphaned in a lagoon up the coast, where access to the ocean was difficult, affected by the tides. The amazing thing is she survived weeks after her mother died, without being fed. Experts tried various plans to help her out of the lagoon but nothing worked. They hesitated to feed her for fear of her becoming habituated. But they knew she couldn't last long without the seal meat she was too young to hunt.

Then, after five weeks, members of the Ehattesaht First Nations gave her a meal of seal meat. She got really happy, and the meal gave her strength, as they gently encouraged her, to follow them and leave the narrow inlet towards open seas. They say she came to their boat, after, as if to thank them, then started swimming strongly.

I hoped against hope, since she had such a brave heart, that she would reunite with her pod, but by that time they were 100 miles away. It had all taken too long for the small whale. The pod was sighted again in June but she was not with them. She was last seen May 10th, which tells me she just couldn't carry on, unable to feed herself. I hold onto the memory of her swimming through open seas, Brave Little Hunter, searching for her pod.

Life can be heartbreaking sometimes. Especially when animals suffer and die.

for Shay's Word List

I Wake Up, and It Breaks My Heart

 

In the morning I open my eyes on this beautiful West Coast world: old growth forest breathing greenly, eagles circling overhead, puffy-cloud blue sky above, and those waves, rolling eternally into shore. The world could not be more beautiful. The world could not be more suffering, and it breaks my heart: forests we need to cool the planet are being clearcut as fast as the temperatures rise, wildfires are burning - again, still, gobbling more trees, miles and miles of trees. Heat domes cover half the country. People are fleeing the flames, leaving their cities. Other places are flooding. And of course, what we don't see on the news, are the animals, starving, displaced, with no where to run, no place safe from human depredation.

I watch the news and it breaks my heart. War, bombing, starving, suffering and dying people, governments so busy talking about war and the level of political threat in the world, no one is paying attention as the planet heats up. Where once we feared reaching 1.5 of global warming, the latest news is governments have moved the goal to 2.0, so they can conveniently continue to deny that we have already passed the tipping point. 

Soon there will be no polar bears, reporters tell us, gazing calmly into the camera. There are 74 orcas left in the southern pod in steadily warming seas, where the salmon they live on have decreased alarmingly. Politicians care more about re-election - and putting party before planet - than they do about whether their constituents will survive into the very near future. We must be the only planet that doesn't address a climate crisis because it isn't economically viable. (The cost of cleaning up after floods, wildfires, tornadoes and extreme climate events is higher, and war is expensive too, but no one is connecting those dots. And the nuclear threat is once again heating up as dictators rattle their sabres and band together.)

Wolves and dogs, my favourite beings on the planet, are suffering in numbers too massive to contemplate, and it breaks my tired old heart.

I was raised to live in hope. I was once full of dreams. I was so positive I annoyed people.  I believed humanity would evolve, there would be a transformation of consciousness. Instead, I see fanatical belief in misinformation and lies,  a global thirst for fascism and more of that horrible old white supremacy we fought against for so long. Human and women's rights that we fought for are being lost. Are we really going to go back and have to fight all those old battles again? Is North America, that fought fascism in World War II, seriously going to become fascist ourselves? (Be careful what you wish for, right-wingers, because you will get a nasty shock under autocratic rule, when democracy is lost.)

In the morning, I open my eyes on this beautiful West Coast world. And it breaks my heart.

Blackbird

 

For years I wandered aimlessly

up and down,

past all the pretty cottages

in the town

where happy people lived.

Oh, how I dreamed,
when I was on the outside

looking in,

that one day I would live,

like them, within.

I found a blackbird heart.
We loved each other true.

But, unused to being cherished,

knew not what to do

with all the feelings we kept

locked inside

through all the fear we tried

so hard to hide.

"And now you're inside
looking out", he said.

And it was true.

The cornerstone of my free spirit,

trapped. He could not say

the words to make me stay.
I took my broken heart
and walked away.

for Shay at the Word List. After this, I made a mighty leap over the mountains to the sea, and began a glorious adventure. Wild Woman came into her own and it was perfect. 

Link: https://fireblossom-wordgarden.blogspot.com/2024/06/word-garden-word-list-gracefully-insane.html

The Princess Who Ate the Pea

 

favim.com

She'd been told, of course,

about the princess and the pea:

a girl with such delicate sensitivities

she could feel a pea under fourteen layers
of mattresses.

What does it mean, then,

when her bed has pebbles in it

and the message is "you made your bed,
now lie in it. What doesn't kill you
makes you stronger"?

How strong does a wild woman

have to be?

She ate the pea; 
she needed the extra strength
for the journey.

In her world, the prince did not come.

There were no glass slippers.

She got stuck in a different fairy tale,

the one with a wolf in it,
and luckily he was friendly.
(Big teeth, but what a fulsome grin!)

For some years, she felt like

the aging woman in the Dickens parlor,

draped in spiderwebs,

waiting decades
for her suitor to arrive.

She was always brushing

those damn cobwebs
off her face.

Un-fairytales are her medium.

Definitely.

She has got un-fairy tales
down.

She learned to hack her own way

through the thornbushes,

freed herself from her own stone garret.

She and her wolf had fourteen years
of wilderness, with brave hearts
for the journey. No need 
to be rescued by a knight
on a white horse;
wild beaches and forest trails
were all they needed.

Un-fairy tales can get repetitive,
what with all that pining.

One may feel like she is beginning

a new chapter every other week.

It gets exhausting.

And delicate sensitivities?

One needs to toss those overboard

right from the start,

develop a hearty cackle

and a Can-Do attitude.

(But she still Believes,

for all that,

in fairy tales.)

For my prompt at What's Going On : Un-Fairy Tales.

Link: https://newwhatsgoingon.blogspot.com/

My Treasure

My room is full of wolves,
hanging from the walls all around.
I have a wolf head on a chain,
that I wear for medicine
when in need.

But when it comes to
the real keepsake,
the thing I want to
take into my casket with me,
it is your urn,
your wolfish face
engraved on the top,
your ashes inside.

(How I wept when
they handed you to me,
my big, noisy boy, so reduced,
in a small white take-out box.)

In life, in death,
you've always been
my treasure.

for Susan's prompt at What's Going On - Keepsakes/Treasures

link: https://newwhatsgoingon.blogspot.com/

Night Road

 

I travelled that night road

for far too long,
riding my bus of dreams

all over town. 
In ceremony,
with fragile faith,
I lit a candle,
hoping to feel your presence,
breathing,
all around.

In memory - once again that magic kiss,

the one that showed me all a kiss could be.

As you left this world, you came to me
as I was sleeping.

With the greatest love,
we set each other
free.

for Shay's Word List: Night Road

link: https://fireblossom-wordgarden.blogspot.com/2024/06/word-garden-word-list-night-road.html

The man of my dreams, from whom I parted in the 1980's, came to me with love in a series of dreams a few years ago. When I looked online, I saw that he had died around that time. In the dreams, we finally got the loving right, and I knew he finally understood all he had meant to me.

BOOKS

She has carried home

an armload of library books

every week for seventy years.

Her walls are lined with books;

a tall stack of Read Next's

teeters on her dresser.

Through the day, she looks forward to
climbing into bed at night,
and opening the cover
of her current book.

As the soft light falls upon the page,

all evening she treks through

the Himalayas in search of

the snow leopard.

She communes with a shaman

in Africa, her heart aching

for the White Lions,

marveling at the mystery

of their history.

She walks the Camino with Shirley Maclean,

and looks through the veil of a burka

in Afghanistan,

lives in a refugee camp in Palestine,

is disappeared in the jungles

of the Amazon.

She wakes in the bitter cold

of a Siberian dawn

in the Gulag. She sleeps

on the bare hard boards

of Auschwitz.

She expands her heart

and her humanity

by learning of

and caring about

the human family.

Books are portals

to the great mystery.

Books tell

what it was like long ago,

and also what it is like

to live right now.

She lives in small rooms

full of books
and feels herself
wealthy beyond words.

for Sumana's prompt Books/Reading at https://newwhatsgoingon.blogspot.com/

I had to let a lot of books go as I downsized, but still have a solid collection of favourites.

Tears of Blood

NBC News image

What heart is not haunted by the past?
Say "Latin" and I am back
at early Mass, breathing in the incense,
bending my head at the ringing of the bell,
the familiar, comforting chanting
my safe harbor, my peace.

The wax is dripping down the candles.
We pray for the dead,
those restless ghosts
perhaps kneeling right behind me,
haunted, spirits
without rest.

The movie of the past
lives right behind my eyes,
each random thought
rolling a few scenes,
beautiful, tinged with regret
for all I did not then, but needed
desperately, to know.

In Italy, a Madonna weeps 
tears of blood
that any mother understands.
Believers beat their chests
and pray, spread wildflowers
at her feet.

The statue's owner refuses
to submit to
a DNA test.
Doubt enters the hearts
of the faithful.

Perhaps it isn't
the end of the world
after all.

for Shay's Word List:  https://fireblossom-wordgarden.blogspot.com/2024/06/word-garden-word-list-madeleines-ghost.html

Weirdly, Blogger wont let me insert links any more. Sigh.

Waves

 

Our time is brief.
We slip away, out the open window
into the starry night.

Behind us, we leave memories,
tears and laughter, poems,
so those we leave behind can find us
and remember.

Watch for Grandmother Owl,
flying across your windshield,
looking in at you,
her head turned back
to hold your gaze
even as she flies into the forest.

She brings a message
from the otherworld.
Listen to whispers on the wind.
Walk in an old growth forest.
Watch for the messengers.
There be spirits there.

Look for me in old man's beard
and fiddlehead fern.
Hear the song of the eternal waves,
forever advancing and retreating
in my heart.