When Tomorrow Comes

 

When tomorrow comes,

will there be singing?

Will the songs be songs of sorrow

brave warriors' voices ringing,

or will it be a wiser world

on the morrow?

Hear the song within your heart,

the place where true peace always starts.

May the song you keep inside

be sung out loud where love abides.

War and peace in endless cycle,

Courageous men, put down your rifles!

Reach across the great divide;

set all prejudice aside.

The man you think of as The Other,

is, in fact, your human brother.

More alike than not are we,

if only we open our hearts and see

every soul that has taken birth

wants peace and justice

here on earth.

When tomorrow comes,
what song will we sing?
What help will we offer?
What love will we bring?

Will the songs we sing
be songs of sorrow,
or will we grow wiser
on the morrow?

for Mary's prompt at What's Going On - Do You Hear the People Sing

Bittersweet

In autumn, she emerges early,

as the last soft stars are fading

and the moon is wandering off

the edge of the sky:

long blue gown, lime green crocs,

smudged glasses, frizzy hair,

with a basket over her arm

to fill with onions, garlic,  

crunchy carrots, a tomato or two.

Birds are singing everywhere

in early morning, a rhapsody 

for early risers. The dew on the grass

dampens the hem of her skirt,

her toes gather coolness

before the heat of the day.

In her dreams, she might have imagined

a morning like this: bittersweet,

with all of the blessings,

bittersweet, with all of the loss.

For Shay's Word List: Bittersweet, a familiar emotion these days.

THE LITTLE HOUSE ON ETHEL STREET

 

This is the house
that wrapped its arms around us
when we had lost everything in the fire.
Gone, all the blankets and dishes
gone, all the kids’ toys and books,
gone my dreams of making my livelihood
by the sea – gone up in smoke
with the arsonist’s match, a suspicious fire
so no insurance money with which
to start again.

But in this house, we gathered
what we could, and what we were given,
and settled into being home.

In this house, I learned to garden,
every morning starting with birdsong
and the shush-shush-shush
of the sprinkler revolving in the yard.

In this house, my children grew
as tall and leggy as the sunflowers out back,
and finally had a home, and books
and possessions again. In this house
my heart healed, and my voice
stilled by shock and pain and betrayal
returned and I began, once more, to sing.

It was from this house that had healed me
that my spirit gathered itself
for a mighty leap, and
took wing.

It was from this house that the dream of Tofino began, that called me over the mountains to the sea.

The Land of Peacocks

 

I am on a pilrgrimage
to the land of peacocks,
charmingly (or not) barefoot
among the cattails. 
(I never was one for spangles.)

They tell me a tabernacle
is a movable habitation,
so how does a flock 
find its shepherd?

Arriving, I discover
the peacocks are a dying breed,
strutting about,
giving one last hurrah
to the old tired ways
of colonials clinging
to times long gone.

I'll keep looking, filtering out
the noisy nobodies
who bid us follow,
to walk the gangplank
of our deepest beliefs,
abandoning everything we know
to be true.

I am looking for leaders
with clear vision,
strong voices,
and an aura of
peacefulness, humanity, and truth.

A dying girl
in the land of peacocks,
where justice is
the only song I know.

for Shay's Word List inspired by the work of Diane Seuss, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl.

This Is No Time to Make Things Pretty

 

This is no time to make things pretty:

the world is askew; democracy is in peril,

the climate crisis continues apace

and with so many crises, we feel overwhelmed.
Humans and other beings are trying to survive

bombs, displacement, starvation,

lack of every basic need.

This is not the time to write poems

about the sunshine and blue sky

out my window, the beauty of the harbour,

clouds wisping along the slopes

of Wah-nah-jus, waves calling to me

from Na-na-kwuu-a.

But, there are a few things my heart knows:

still and always, the mothering earth

under my feet grounds me, gives me

a place to stand, where I belong.

My head may be worrying about

another year of drought in a rainforest,

the way the world continues in denial

of what is surely to come, or that

some of our leaders are actually deranged.

Yet my heart still leaps at growing things

emerging from hard packed earth,

how they butt their heads through

the hard crust and

reach for the sun. We are excited, here,

to watch the rhododendrons bloom,

seeds in the seed trays

sprouting next fall's bounty.
Baby birds are chirping under the eaves.
Yesterday, my daughter saw one hop
from its nest, perch
on her porch railing, spread its wings,
and fly.

Miracles abound.

Humankind has lost its way.

Suffering on earth has reached critical mass.
Unkindness is shouted by
the leaders of the land.

And yet, here is Mother Earth,

in spite of us,

doing all she can, season after season,

year after year,

to keep us alive.

for my prompt at What's Going On ? Inspired by "This Is No Time to Make Things Pretty" by Maya Stein. The italicized line is taken from the title.

GRIEF CAN BE A SUNFLOWER

Grief can be the sunflower delivered

by a smiling friend,

that inexplicably begins to die that very minute,

leaves drooping, head bending, tucking its chin,

giving up, leaf by wilting leaf,

because the world is broken, and too hot,

its roots too tightly packed

for water to reach its faltering heart.

Grief can also be the bouquet of cut sunflowers

I bring home from the CoOp

and put in the tall green vase,

to cheer me as I add one more loss

to all the others, and remember

that the world, though suffering,

is also beautiful.

Grief becomes everything with age,

laced through the heartbreaking beauty

that is this world, this life, and death, all passing,

the shine, the wonder, sunrises, sunsets,

laughter and tears and love come and gone ~

earth grief for a planet in distress,

and our culpability/inability

to restore what has been lost

loss upon loss, the heaviness,

us learning how to plant our feet

and strengthen our shoulders to bear it.

Not giving up like the sunflower,

setting our roots down deep,

strengthening our stance,

accepting pain is the price of being fully alive:

gratitude for all of this life and love -

the richness of it! The gifts.

Joy woven through the sadness.

Sadness woven through with joy-

gilt-edged, and fraught,

and yet still remembering

how to dream.

Then I went to the beach and let the waves sing their song of forever to me. An elderly and rather chubby bassett hound turned himself upside down, paws in the air, snout lying flat on the sand, totally blissed out. It made my day!

for Susan's prompt at What's Going On - Grief

Of Heretics and Flying Squirrels

 

We travelled back to the land
we grew up in, to place my aunt's ossuary
into the ground. A mother deer and her fawn
lay nearby observing, a blessing,
a message of peace, her spirit at rest.

We walked the sidewalks where
once we played jumprope, and hopscotch
and Mother, May I? in our pigtails and pedal pushers.

We sought out the addresses of the shabby houses
we lived in, back then, now no longer there; 
even our grandma's cottage, the touchstone
of my childhood: gone.

All have been replaced by dwellings
for the living large folks.  Country roads
and all the orchards changed into townhomes,
mile after mile. The fabled Casorso pig farm,
where my friends came home from school 
to soup made by twinkling-eyed Grandpa Louie,
no where to be seen, golf course after golf course
for the retired folks in the gated complexes
nearby.

A tear for remembering that sleepy town.

The service was held in the church where long ago
we wore our Easter costumes: pinafores, big hats,
white gloves, shoes we kept meticulously white,
no smudges,  our grandma's sharp eyes
missing nothing.

Country roads we biked down now clogged
with fast cars, trying to maintain
an impossible pace: so much Doing,
so little Being, an exhausted populace
trying to keep up, frowning, frenzied.

I observed, bemused, sipping an absinthe
on the deck overlooking the lake in late afternoon,
watching clouds wander across the sky,
tinged pink as the sun slipped behind
the big blue hills
of my infancy.

On the same day  - such being the way
the world works now - a heretic posted
a photo of himself as Pope, exchanging
his porkpie hat for a Papal crown. As if.

Someone poke a hole in his umbraculum
and let the sun run riot on his orange tan,
turn it MAGA, the colour of all the blood
being spilled in his name, the colour
that makes bulls (and those who long for justice)
see red.

The world is as mad as a flying squirrel,
leaping a chasm that is far too wide to breach,
apparently with no fear of falling.

For Shay's Word List. 

The umbraculum, when I looked it up, is a sort of umbrella to keep the sun off the Pope. 

WOMAN, WEEPING

 

Weeping Cedar Woman
carved by Godfrey Stephens in 1984
in response to the proposed clearcutting of 
Wahnachus-Hilthuuis (Meares Island)

Weeping Cedar Woman,

your tears are for the ancient trees,

in the ancestral garden.

Do not kill them, you say,

your right hand held up in protest.

They are needed to cool the earth,

to bring rain for all the wild ones,

for habitat, to help us breathe. 

All beings need the old growth 

in order to live.

I weep, too,

for the trees and for our relatives,

the beyond-human beings,

who suffer and are displaced

because of us.

Your left hand points down, into the earth,

where the network of living arteries

under the forest floor keeps 

the whole ecosystem alive.

I feel the power in your upraised hand,

the resistance in my heart, that wants 

to save all that is left of the Standing People,

for what we save, saves us.

I carry deep grief for all that humanity

– and inhumanity -  has done to Mother Earth.

For forty years you have stood here, protesting,

and yet the trees keep coming down.
We must protect what is left

of the venerable  Old Ones.

Whales and wolves are starving.

Displaced bear and cougar search  

for a safe place to hide.

Weeping Cedar Woman, my tears

are not enough to apologise for 

the harmful ways of my species.

To ease my pain, I walk the forest trails,

breathe in the peacefulness,

the beauty, place my hand

on a gnarled and mossy trunk. 

I listen.

And I emerge,

grateful, and transformed.

This poem was written for a Poet Laureate project in Tofino. We are asked to write a poem in response to some local art. Tofino abounds in poets, writers, carvers, artists and creative folk in all disciplines. I didn't have to look far.

The carver, Godfrey Stephens, created the Weeping Cedar Woman, 40 years ago when Meares Island - Wahnachus Hilthuuis - was in danger of being clearcut.

OF TOTEMS AND SPIRIT PLACES

 

On the misty islands of Haida Gwaii,

the spirits walk

and sometimes sing.

I have been told they also wail.

The ancient totems of SGaang Gwaay*

lean and topple onto the land

where the Haida thrived

for 17,000 years.

If one is reverent, and listens

with her heart,

she might sometimes hear

the wailing of those ancient spirits,

the entire village who died of smallpox

when the settlers came,

a desolate, inconsolable grieving

that the land remembers,

carried on the ocean breeze.

The cedars stand tall today

along protected shores,

where the white Spirit Bear

and grey wolf families

move peacefully through their

days and nights.

Mother Orca eats well here,

in this remote archipelago,

where it is more difficult

for our grasping machines

to reach and to destroy.

The Haida fought for forest,

and for sea,

cast off the settlers’ name

for the land they loved,

claimed it back as Haida Gwaii,

the Islands of the People,

strong and free.

My soul walks there

each time I think of it,

(a home where I have never lived),

padding softly through the forest

with mother wolf.

It walks along the shore

with Spirit Bear.

I hear the whisper of spirit voices

in the trees,

the song of an ancient people,

my heartsteps gentle

on this wild

and ancient land.

For Sumana's prompt at What's Going On - Ruins

*SGaang Gwaay is the Haida name for the World Heritage site formerly known as Ninstints, where the ancient totem poles are now protected, and where it is said the spirits of the dead can sometimes be heard wailing, by those with heart enough to hear. My friend, attuned to spirits, walked there and heard the mournful wailing herself, and felt the deep energy of this place.

Haida Gwaii are two islands off northwestern B.C. 

Upon contact in the late 1800's, the population of 8000 was decimated by smallpox the invaders brought, only 589 surviving by 1915. The population of Haida Gwaii is around 5,000 people now, half of them the Haida people. Declining fish stocks and forest resources have led to the development of new approaches to financial survival, including tourism, secondary wood manufacturing and the arts. The people have fought hard to protect the land and waters. It is the home of the white Spirit Bear, and 85% of its forests are protected, at least for now. 

Haida Gwaii has always called to me, for its pristine wilderness, remoteness and wild beauty. Its people are hardy and self-sufficient, having survived its untamed landscape and stormy winters for thousands of years. The Haida are a matrilineal society.

Wolf

 

Wolf by Longwalker

Wolf
in the blue twilight,
Wolf
in the tenderness of dawn,
are you wondering,
sweet fur brother,
where all your wilderness
has gone?

Your forests are burning,
bombs rain down
from the sky.
We humans are too moonstruck
to ask the question:
why?

We raise goblets of red wine
to drown our sweeping sorrow;
tilt at windmills,
and carouse like
we won't die
 on the morrow.

Wolf,
have you ever
seen such foolishness
as this?
Wolf,
stay safely far from us.
Seek the wilderness
you miss.

for Shay's Word List. This is where the wolf led me today. A cheerful ditty. LOL.