Old Houses

 

Mary Ann Potter image

Old houses
speak in haunted whispers
of days when parents, cousins, friends
and gentlemen callers
filled the rooms
with bright and happy voices ...

.... all gone, now,
dreams abandoned,
like childhood dolls
in the attic.

The two old sisters who remain
were young women in this house once,
dressed in sprigged cotton,
full of dreams and whispered hopes
under the summer moon.
The young men came, then went away,
mothers, aunts, uncles departing in their turn,
the two spinsters
living out their days together
in this shabby, downturning house,
a century rolling by
one day at a time
of waking, cooking, dishes, bed.

Every evening for years,
the sisters have walked,
slowly, with their canes,
along this country path.
Last time we passed, only one was left,
as faded as the crumbling house behind her,
unsmiling, eyes dim,
watching her days slowly
winding down.

Soon the house will be empty
as it has not been since 1915.
Then, how those echoes will whisper
like disappointed ghosts
through all the dusty, empty rooms.

A tale of two sisters, who lived for almost a century out Beaver Creek in Port Alberni. On evening drives, we would see them, standing by the gate watching us pass. Last time, there was only one sister standing at the gate. I can see her face now.

This is where Shay's Word List took me this week.

Flight Maps of Stardust Voyagers

From protozoa that crept out of the sea onto land, from ape to Cro-Magnon man to us, through millions of years of non-human development, to humankind's arrival, our story took millennia to develop. Only in the last one or two hundred years, with ferocious determination and greed, have we managed to do harm to every species on the planet. At the same time, our seeking souls, knowing we have lost our way, still look skyward, singing. We are a species that cannot live without hope.

In my heart and through my being, Sky Woman sings, a song of the sea, a song of sky, inspiration to keep looking up, to envision the world as it is meant to be and to live towards that truth and that vision.

Life feels to me divinely guided, provided by an intelligence vaster than our human minds can comprehend. Every scientist, trained in facts, I am certain, must feel the touch of this mystery.

Primitive people felt the Presence of this force, and paid homage. The human spirit is designed to question, to seek the meaning of life. When we listen to it, it is this inner voice that yearns towards a higher purpose for our brief time on this earth, this lifetime that is our spirit's classroom.

We carry within us flight maps of stardust voyagers. It is in our DNA. This keeps us yearning towards the nighttime skies. It is what makes us strive for meaning with which to fill our empty spaces. We are all star travellers here, arriving on the planet still bemused by the Mystery.

We have been Sky Woman, we have been trees, we have soared with eagles, and sung with whales. We are singing still, that mournful song of living on this planet in a way that has strayed so far from the teachings of the Old Ones. Our prayers rise on the Old Ones' breath, to the listening ears of whatever gods may be, Wakan Tanka among the First People.

There is room for it all - by many roads we travel to the same source, which is called by many names. This same Intelligence which set sun and moon and earth spinning in their orbit, programmed into the DNA of every cell the unslakable desire to develop. To us was added the free will to reason our way through all the possibilities, and to choose our pathway through this life according to our highest truths.

My belief in this Intelligence helps me view myself and my fellow travellers with compassion, knowing whatever our fates on this plane, there will be a balancing out on the scales of a much truer justice than we find here, so that no one's life and death is meaningless.

I don't use one word to name whatever set the thousand galaxies spinning; I only know something cannot come from nothing, that before the swirling gases had to be the space they travelled in.

Looking inward at the teeming life of a single cell, its structure is too perfectly ordered to be random. Looking outward exponentially, spiraling across time and space on a cosmic journey, each star, each galaxy, with its programmed pattern, I believe all theories contain some truth. The only theory I find difficult to understand is that all life is random, that we live, we die, and it means nothing. I can't find anything in the human experience to support that.

Traveller, there are no limits to the possibilities, only perhaps in our capacity to understand them. I believe the soul is part of the story of creation, that it does not die, and that "there is a landscape larger than the one we see," and so much more than to survive that we are meant to do.

How can human hearts
that so long for peace on earth
bear to wage a war?

Posting an older haibun in a world that is farther from peace than it ever was, as we watch democracy sliding away week by week.

A Windigo Wind

A windigo wind
is blowing across the land,
its puffed out cheeks
flushing out terrified people
hiding from malevolence
from every corner.

how I long for peace

Begone, bitter wind. 
We resist. We hold firm
to our longing
for the soft breezes
of compassion and goodwill
to reclaim
the corridors of power.

how my weary heart
longs for peace

We will blow back
till we blow you out to sea,
so humanity and decency
can rule the land
we love.

we long for peace

We have power.
We are grandmothers, mothers, daughters,
grandfathers, fathers, sons
with wolf howls in our hearts,
an army of compassion
that sees a better world
than the one of mad
and misguided power.

We have waited a millennia
for peace.

for Mary's prompt at What's Going On -  How I Long for Peace, inspired by the song with that title. Definitely a timely topic. 

The Windigo is a mythical malevolent creature from the folklore of the Algonquin people.

Take Two Aspirin

Mother Earth says to her
understandably nervous citizens,

"Take two aspirin and call me in the morning."

But by morning anything can happen:

a drooling, dozing  "president" briefly awakening

long enough to go rogue and bomb a country

without consulting Congress, a sleepy Congress

acting like deer in the headlights, meekly trying 

to not be noticed, "proud boys" acting incognito
as ICE agents

(they and their "president" will never get
capital letters from me).

It's like watching the madmen take over the asylum

and pretend they are the normal ones.

The scales of justice have tipped into the abyss,

along with thousands of the disappeared,

and I,
who used to be the Cheerer-Upper-in-Chief,
can barely crack a smile at this ghastly version
of a wuddyacallit world.

Ha, I watched the news and then read Shay's Word List and this uncheery ditty is the result. Apologies, but there is only so much one old woman can take. The last four months feel like years.

I still have gratitude for the beauty and peace around me. But am all too aware of the suffering that fascist governments are causing all over the world as well as closer to home. Stay safe, compadres.

Grandma's House

 

As a small child, I was put on a train

to Grandma's house every summer,

like an orphan, the porter tipped five dollars

to keep an eye on me.

Clickety-clack, clickety-clack,

away from the sea, into the desert,

to dream away the summer

in the hammock

under the leafy willow tree.

Lake-scented mornings, starry nights,

phantoms dancing in the flames

as Grandma told me Irish ghost stories,
thunderstorms in the afternoon,
Grandma's big laugh,

and a twinkling-eyed Grandpa skulking

across the hall to the bathroom

in his long underwear.....

One day I will board that train again,

hear the haunting whistle blow

its lonely song,
clickety-clack clickety-clack

along the tracks taking me

to Grandma's house once more.

for Shay's Word List: Iron Horse

GRANDMA'S KITCHEN

 

From every corner

of Grandma’s small cottage,

I could hear it –

the old metal clock,

ticking and tocking

on the kitchen windowsill.

Grandma’s house was that peaceful.

My four year old heart drank in

the safety and serenity,

the way a parched sunflower

gratefully receives

summer rain.

Grandma’s house

showed me, child of

drinking and violence,

that another life 

- that peace -
was possible.

I followed that template
for the rest of my life,
and modeled it
for my own grandchildren.

When I am remembering,
it is to this small cottage
on Christleton Avenue
my thoughts return,
like summer swallows.

I can still almost hear
the ticking and tocking
of that metal clock
on the kitchen windowsill,
singing its brave little song
of peace.

for my prompt at What's Going On - Grandma's Kitchen

My sister and I went back to Kelowna in May to find that Grandma's cottage, touchstone of my childhood, is now gone.

Wild Woman's Birthday

British Columbia Photos
Mike Dellio

Wild Woman was born again

in mid-life, the night she stood

on the shore of the western sea,

and knew she was standing exactly where 

she was always meant to be.

She knew it was now or never,

her spirit was sore and sinking fast.

It was either give up on a dream

or make it all come true at last.

When she arrived, a fiery orb
was going down behind the hills.

There was a small whale in the bay;

such perfect beauty: chills.

Wild Woman came alive

that day, which marked Before and After.

It was the birthday of her soul, set free

to the sound of wolfish laughter.

for Susan's prompt at What's Going On : Birthdays. This night was my real birthday! Smiles.

Looking Up

 

The black flies have hit the jackpot:

this old woman in her rocking chair

is like an all-you-can-eat buffet.

***

People begat and begat

and now we are here:
there are days when

humankind looks like

a failed experiment,

a rollercoaster of up and down,

forward and back - a fine madness,

enough to make your head spin.

     ***         

I prefer the company of animals.

Wolves, elephants, dogs, whales,

carry collective wisdom

we would be wise to access.

        ***          

Instead, madmen kill them -

for tusks, for thrills, to prove

they can dominate the innocent,

the helpless, to say

"the world is mine."

***

 It isn't even noon,
and I am oh, so tired.

I turn the radio off,
with all its bad news.
I go outside.
Even blackflies
have to eat.

And I need to watch the sky.

***

This bit of weirdness came from Shay's Word List, after reading a couple of Anne Sexton's edgy poems. My brain took a ramble. 

THE BIGGEST CONTRADICTION OF ALL

 

The biggest contradiction of all
is how,
in a world where
billions of people
pray and talk and sing
and long for unity,
justice, and peace,

the wars go on and on,
the atrocities get
worse and worse,
rhetoric gets more toxic
and inflammatory,
injustices abound,
and peace 
can only be found
and felt
inside one's human heart.

for Sumana's prompt at What's Going On: Contradiction.