Sigh

 When the news
brings you to tears,
where is an old woman
to turn?

DISTRAUGHT SISTER MOON

 

source

Distraught Sister Moon,

I see you up there, pacing around,

wringing your hands,

"what to do,

what to do,

what to do?"

Down below, all hell is breaking loose:

bombings, shootings, drought,

famines, floods, melting icebergs,

forest fires,

wildlife fleeing in terror,

no where to hide,

dangerous people with bad hair

behaving badly.

I see you trying to efface your fullness

quickly, perhaps thinking

if you lessen your roundness,

the populace can return to calm

under a slice of moon.

But when were we last calm?

By your light, madmen and prophets collide.

By your light, poets seek truth and beauty.

By your light, we dream of a better world.

You have stopped pacing.

You like where this is going.

Okay, hear this:

By the Light of Your Silvery Moon,

on earth

(perhaps in vain)

we dream,

we dream,

we dream

of peace.

For Mary's prompt at What's Going On - a Dream of Peace

This is a poem from 2017 which you may have read before. My brain can't come up with anything better at the moment, it is full of porridge. The italicized line is, of course, the song title. I remember when that song was on the air waves and the world felt so much more peaceful than it does now - after the War to End All Wars - that didn't.

TAKE THIS POEM

 

Cox Bay, Tofino - photo by Warren Rudd

Take this beautiful morning,

this springtime sunshine,

this blue-sky day, with the song

of a thousand seabirds,

wheeling and circling

at the edge of the sea.

Take the eagle's cry,

from the top of the cedar,

as he surveys his kingdom.

Take the heron,

gliding past my window,

looking like a skinny matron,

purse clutched under

her wing.

Take the waves, rolling in like

white-maned horses, wave upon wave,

day after day - our own glimpse

of Eternity.

Take this moment, peaceful,

crisis-free, in the places

where you are;

breathe deep the ordinary, when

so much in this world is no longer

routine. Feel the peace

of nothing-going-on
- in your life, if not
in the world outside your door.

Let your prayers be prayers

of gratitude. May your tears

bless those living through

apocalyptic times.

(Our turn will come.)

Take this poem which

I offer you with open hands.

Take its wish that you

and all you love

be blessed. Take my dream

of a green and flourishing earth.

Maybe if we share it,

some green tendrils

will begin to grow.

Take a break from the terrible

and disheartening news.

Let's walk our peace into the world,

step out into our front yards.

Let's lift our arms to

the cloud-dotted blue above,

the trees breathing with us in tandem,

such generous and benevolent beings.

Take this ordinary morning

into your heart and let it live there

all day long.

Take this poem,

like a prayer of peace,

into your very being.

Let it sing.

Revisiting this poem from 2023.

Dark Days

 

As the Filipino celebration,
Lapu Lapu Block Party, winds down -

children dancing, families smiling their last smiles,

joy in the early evening -

suddenly a black SUV, at high speed,

mows through a crowd of celebrants,

bodies flung high, crashing down

- the dead and the living -

ambulances lined up, responders running,

pulling on blue gloves,

eleven dead, thirty sent to hospital.

"How do they come to the.......

How do they come to the........

come to the still waters and not love?"*

That is the question of the day.

Have compassion, inclusiveness,

equality, citizenship, become words

of a time Before?

A leader in a turban, a man with heart,

weeps as he asks for a Canada

"where we all belong". I weep with him.
I want that Canada too.

Who peeled away civility and encouraged

hate and racism to rise? 

We lay tulips in homage to the departed.

The world we knew feels departed, too.

How do we get it back?

for Shay's Word List

The living and the dead line comes from the title of a poetry collection by Sharon Olds. The italicized lines with the asterisk are from Olds' poem "Sex Without Love". This incident occurred in Vancouver last evening. We are not used to events like this in Canada, but toxic rhetoric has an impact on some unsteady minds. 

(When I wrote this, I  assumed this might have been a racist act, but it appears to have a mental health component. It is all so tragic.) 

Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader, gave a memorable and emotional speech here:

https://youtu.be/7ZbJHvf689E

(I posted this on my facebook page if you cant access it here.)

We elect a new Prime Minister tomorrow and I am praying it isn't the right wing conspiracy theorist, but the other sane, calm, experienced candidate. We live in hope. I feel like I have been holding my breath for years.

YOU, THE SEEKER, MY LAMP, THE MOON

Little hummer,

irridescent rainbow in constant flight,

you whirred into the room at dusk,

thinking my lamp was the moon.

I swiftly clicked off the light,

to guide you to the window

where you beat frantically for a moment,

till you crouched in its corner,

terrified of the giant

whose hands were slowly lowering

to cup you gently.

You stilled, as I carried

your feathered lightness outside

and, when I opened my palms to set you free,

lay for a moment on your back,

surrendered to your fate.

Suddenly recognizing you had survived,

could once more see the sky,

in that same instant,

you were halfway 'cross the meadow.

Just so, do our hearts encounter

their similar terrors,

bring them down to size,

recognize the open door of freedom,

and, each in turn, take flight.

At the farm, given I keep doors and windows open during all the warm weather, sometimes a small hummer would find its way inside, and lodge itself in a corner of the windowsill. In my cupped hands, they felt lighter than a feather, flight itself, suspended for that one moment. I have rescued hummers here, too, when I lived in the apartment building. One cute thing about them is how they hovered, whirring noisily, at the open sliding glass door to let me know when the feeder needs refilling. The blue jays would come to the opening and sometimes hop or fly in, then out, demanding seed. I loved that about the apartment.

THIS POEM IS A BIG RED HEART

 

Phoenix

Sebastian

This poem is a six year old boy
whose dad and dog both died.
This poem is a crayon.
This poem is a big red heart.

This poem is a sweet and valiant little boy,
who has known tears, but who loves to smile.
This poem gets knocked down, and
bounces back up again.
Like the boomerang, it keeps coming back,
because it has known death, so it cherishes life.
This poem is a six year old boy
whose dad and dog both died.

This poem is a crayon held in a grubby fist
by an intent little boy
who wants a picture of his pain.
This poem can draw a stick figure dad
with a big smile, and open arms,
and a devoted droopy-eyed dog,
with floppy ears and an old soul.
This poem is a crayon.

This poem is a gigantic wobbly red heart
with a dog inside, along with the words
"Papa and Phoenix are fishin' in hevven".
This poem squeezes the heart
of his mother, who lost her mate,
then, one year later, held the furry body
of his old fishing pal as he went to sleep
for the very last time.

This poem has lost too many loves,
but keeps on smiling, loving and moving forward,
because of a small boy made almost entirely
of hope and trust and sweetness and love.
This poem is a big red heart.

for my prompt at What's Going On: a choice of either "This poem is...." or Hannah's Boomerang Metaphor form.

My heart is even sadder than it was when I first wrote this poem. Because Sebastian, the small boy in the photo and in this poem, with whom I spent time in his early childhood years, died last August in a boating accident, at age fifteen. Now he AND his Papa and Phoenix are all in "hevven" together. This world brings lots of people (and dogs) to love - but also, lots of losses.

PORCH SWING REVERIE

 

We sat there, we two,
on summer afternoons
in our green kingdom:
porch swing rocking gently,
tin roof baking in the sun,
bamboo wind chimes
clacking in the breeze.

Peacefulness.
Sanctuary.
Healing after loss.
Tibetan prayer flags
fluttering, crickets chirping sleepily,
huge maples standing all around.

In memory, we sit there still,
your eyes on me, smiling,
mine gazing back: a knowing
passing between us.

We have been together
in other lifetimes.
We will find each other
again.

The Tenderness of Elephants

 

Line of elephants approaching
Anthony's house in Thula Thula

They come, trunks swinging,

the matriarch, her daughters,

and their young,

swaying along the grassy veld,

ponderous steps shaking the earth.

She startles, the Old Grandmother,

when she comes to bones alongside the path:

elephant bones, the remains of her kin.

Distress, low rumbles among the herd,

swaying from side to side.

Delicately, then, their trunks

whiff along the brittle bones,

sensing, detecting, remembering.

They understand a trauma happened here.

They smell the madness of Man on the bones,
trauma upon the land.

With tenderness,
the Old One lifts a broken limb,

carries it a little way,

then brings it back and gently sets it down.

She is saying she wants the bones

to rise and follow her,

to be back in the body as once they were,

and walking free under

the arching African sky.

As she returns it to the earth,
she acknowledges

that, sadly, this cannot be.

She gathers her herd,
calls to the vulnerable little ones,

and, with a low rumble,

slowly, reverent with remembering,

full of sad thoughts,

they all move on.

In Shona, there is a ritual greeting,
when you meet:

"How are you?"

"I am well."

"I am well if you are well,
so we are both well."

Things are not well
in the land of dying elephants,

so our global spirits are not well.

for Shay's Word List. 

Writing this reminded me of the elephants of Thula Thula, who travelled a great distance upon intuiting the death of Lawrence Anthony,  who had rescued and rehabilitated the herd years before, creating a sanctuary for them in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, where they live wild, but remain protected. Anthony's son continues his work today.

Lawrence Anthony's book "The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild" tells the story of their friendship and how he fought to protect the herd from poachers. A wonderful read for those who love animals. 

The conservationist and author had died away from home but somehow, the elephants knew of his death. They showed up outside his house and stayed, reverently, for two days, to pay their respects to the one who had loved them so well.

When hearts are so connected, it does not surprise me that such things happen.  It only surprises me that so many humans do not understand the depth of the wild ones' hearts. 

EASTER, 1960

 

1960. A small, white clapboard church, with a loft where we in the choir sang the Magnificat and the Allelluia Chorus, dressed in our finest. I had a flouffy skirt, kitten heels, a wide-brimmed beige hat with streamers, white gloves.

It was a sweet and gentle time in small-town Kelowna, surrounded by apple orchards and the lake - lake-scent on springtime mornings, the thought of summer, swimming, freedom from school ahead.

We girls checked out each others' clothes, saw who had small heels, new attire. The gloves were mandatory then, yet for decades now I have refused to wear gloves even in winter. Or hats. Or dresses, for that matter. Don't fence me in.

The night before, we slept with our hair rolled onto bristly rollers, very uncomfortable, but my mother always said, "You have to suffer to be beautiful." I was driving with great-grandson Damian once when he was little, and I said that to him, then added, "But I have suffered a lot, and I'm not beautiful," and he replied, stoutly, "No. You're not." Cracked me up.

I remember Easter morning. Our voices soared to the heavens from the gallery above the congregation. Life was lived between the lines back then. There were morals, and good behaviour from fellow humans beings was expected and taken for granted. When the first hippies arrived in Kelowna, the alarmed city fathers drove them out, and told them never to return. LOL. Guidelines were strict for young people, and there was much talk of sin, that  kept us terrified and compliant. Ultimately, many of us rebelled.

Who could ever have imagined then how darkness would triumph? I have to believe it will be stopped, because more of us believe in kindness and human rights than don't. We live in hope. But this Easter morning and that one so long ago could not be more different. 

Small Mercies

 

These are the small mercies
that tend our lives:
spring blossoms, tender cirulean skies,
the eternal and yet ever-changing tides,
the moments in between,
where peace abides.

Tip back your head
and drink the heady fumes
of cherry blossoms
thick upon the bough.
The world we knew and loved
seems to be ending,
but this heady scent
is balm enough for now.

I plant a seed of hope
inside this poem,
to help you ride through
times as dark and these.
I fling it far
upon the springtime breeze.
May it find its loving way to you
with ease.

A small seed of hope for Susan's prompt at What's Going On : Seeds

RENEWAL

I thought to share this poem from 1981, when I was just coming back to life after earlier trauma. In those years I was raising children, and each spring I planted the entire back yard with fruits and vegetables to feed my hungry crew. I was also beginning to speculate about whether to try love again, always a terrifying prospect. Smiles.

March 3, 1981

Tiny stirrings,

buds curled, waiting,

limp, brown grasses

trying to turn green,

a busy twittering of birds

too long silent

in the bare brown branches

of winter.......

Soon I'll be planting seeds

in warm, dark earth,

watching greenness growing

where once a wasteland lay,

letting the seeds go

to grow whichever way

they want to grow,

having finally learned

to just let living flow.

Perhaps a wondering lurks

within my eyes this year

as I start my slow walk back

from Siberian retreat.

The last frozen wastes

are melting near my heart

and tentatively -

oh, more carefully this time-

I ponder what new things

might emerge

from this springtime

of possibilities

I see.

I think it might be nice

to plant something

besides carrots here

this year.

People chuckled when I read that last line at the coffeehouse. Smiles.

Legend

 

The books telling the history

of the First People

were written on their totem poles,
each face a legend
of ancient times
upon the land.

They stripped off the bark

and carved out the innards

of the fattest cedar

to sculpt their canoes,

then pushed off,

into the foggy morning,

in search of the whale

that sang to them the night before

in their dreams.

Their clothing was scant and thin,

but their blood ran warm

as they chanted, dipping their paddles

strongly, backs bent against

the rhythm of the tide.

for Shay's Word List

In April

In April, the forsythia blooms bravely yellow
in the chill. I take the temperature of my being
this 78th springtime of my life.

My heart aches.
Is it existential or physical?
Likely both.

I am processing cruelty and injustice:
the frail  80 year old woman I watched on video,
being carried out by police for protesting the exclusion
of immigrant children from school.
"This is wrong," she said, her face resigned
to whatever came next.

How quickly fascism moves.
How soon "agents" who are "just following orders"
exchange humanity and civility
- and the rule of law and due process -
for aggression, devoid of empathy. 

None  brave enough
- like the old woman -
to say "this is wrong."
As if a switch has been turned within, changing
all decency to cruelty and harsh, uncaring stares.

We have seen all this before.

That same day I stood by my grandson's grave.
This felt wrong, too.
He was so alive, magical, loving,
and now forever gone.
His mother wept beside me,
a forever loss, a rending of the fabric of family.

We promise to keep him alive
through our stories and memories.
But it is not enough.

I have seen so many marches, protests,
heard so many pleas for peace -
yet here we are, still marching.
This is where I came in,
having to fight to restore
all those rights again.

Weariness, fatigue, a tired heart
beating ever more slowly.

Existential and physical angst
feel much the same. They sing one weary note
and dream to hope again.

For Sumana's prompt at What's Going On, on being and doing in April. 

The She-Wolf and the Matriarch

 

Every animal craves, at some point,

a long, cooling drink of river water,

dripping off their muzzle, the same way

tea catches in the dowager's faint moustache,

and drips off her chin hairs, embarrassing,

but dimming vision softens the image

in the mirror.

I can see the she-wolf, snout emerging from her burrow,

with the same temerity as the doughty matriarch,

peering out her doorway, each assessing the hour,

the skies, the mood of the day

in her sphere.

Two elderly beings, their time long past,

the fabric of their days now focussed on

safe passage through an increasingly

noisy and bewildering world,

hearts hollow from remembering

the names of all those they have lost. 

for Shay's Word List