Tuesday, August 26, 2025

THE SKY GODS ARE ANGRY

 


The Sky Gods are angry.
Down below, dragons are breathing fire,
and raining down rocks
and fire and floods
upon the villagers.

"Help us!" we cry,
for we are weak, and afraid.

"We are aware of the problem,"
the Sky Gods say,
"but we are very busy."

Meanwhile villagers, children, elders,
creatures wild and tame,
are suffering.
The Sky Gods appear
to be unmoved by
their anguished cries.

What can we earthlings do
to smooth the rifts
between the people of the earth,
each other and other earthlings,
between commoners and government,
or one country and another?
How do we cross
the unbridgeable chasm between
corporate greed and a struggling climate?

When will we understand
 we must heal our disconnection,
remember that we are all one,
that what happens to one happens to us all?

How can we make the Sky Gods
smile again?
Send the dragons back to sleep
in their caves?

We must find a way
to heal our minds and spirits,
and find our way back
to the garden.
If not now,
then, on the other side
of cataclysm,
we will be required
to begin again.




for Sumana's prompt at What's Going On : Rifts. Very timely.


Tuesday, August 19, 2025

Happiness is No Hat

 



Sometimes, we wear our stories.....
like the beige, knitted, peaked hat
I wore for years,
hair stuffed underneath willy-nilly,
busy single mom of four,
with no time (or inclination)
for fashion.

(Once, at a beauty parlour,
I said to the girl at the desk,
"My hair......." removing said hat,
long hair falling out every which way
 ......."needs help"
and everyone cracked up.)

My kids hated my chapeau. One day
it disappeared. Much later, I discovered
it, flung up onto the roof of the shed,
the kids cackling when I showed them.

(Last time I wore a hat,
with sunglasses,
my daughter said I looked like
I was in the Witness Protection Program.)

Now I walk the beach, bare-headed,
in almost any weather. Winters are milder here,
plus I like feeling free, unfettered,
hate the confinement of a hat,
dislike being unable to see sideways 
when, of necessity, in rain,
I am forced to pull up my hood.

Sometimes we wear our stories.
We change our ways. 
In later years,
we are less and less willing
to feel confined -
perhaps because
what lies ahead are walkers,
wheelchairs and nursing homes,
and we need to exercise our freedom
while we can.



Sunday, August 17, 2025

IN A FLOUNDERING SEA



Mother Earth,
you grew me like a tree
on a riverbank, toes in the water.
You grew me with eyes
always looking up
at your ever-changing skies
that taught me to strive.

I am a student, longing
to learn the language of clouds,
of trees, of birds and beasts,
of whalesong.
I learn from my indigenous neighbours
that everything is one, that
even the lowly slug's slippery journey
across the path is to be respected.

I am a sailor on the sea of hope,
praying for safe harbour.
I am holding two truths simultaneously:
the glorious beauty of this long, golden fall,
and the forests dying of drought.
I am a beating heart, aching
at salmon lying dead by the thousands
in dry riverbeds, yet lifting
at the news fish are still leaping
the rapids in the river that I know best.

There is an owl calling to me at night
from the nearby forest. I listen; so far
it has not yet called my name. One night,
a cougar screamed below in the darkness.
Here, the wild ones come close, into "our" world,
which is wilder and more cruel than theirs.
I long to walk back with them,
into their world, of deep forest
and hidden unpeopled shore.

I stand on the tombolo, and turn
in a slow circle: 360 degrees of beauty,
radiant and shining. I close my eyes;
when I open them, the colours
have deepened. I am one with the sky,
the sand, the cedar, the soaring eagle,
the croaking raven,
one with the song
of the waves
~ my soul-song.

Mother Earth,
you grew me like a tree, with strong roots
to hold fast against the storms of this life,
but you kept my branches flexible,
so I can support others, yet not break
when the wild winds blow through.

I am a tired tree, now,
bending low towards the earth,
still a student, striving to learn
the language of the wild world
I hold in my heart.
I am a sailor on the ocean of hope,
in a floundering sea,
praying for safe harbour,
and shelter, and justice
and peace,
for all of your beings.

A poem from 2020, just because I stumbled upon it today.

 

Thursday, August 14, 2025

The Song of the Ancients



Listen, friends.
Do you hear the song
of the ancient ones
floating on the breeze?

Can you hear the cries
of the wild ones?
Do you feel
all the broken human
and beyond-human hearts
sorrowing
across Mother Earth?

Let's join our energy
with that of the elders,
to sing in the mystical whales,
guardians of our collective wisdom
since the world was young.
Let's send our hearts
to the edge of the cliff,
where the wise ones have gathered
through millennia.

In spirit, let us
sing the whales into the bay,
as Indigenous people have done
through all of time.
They are waiting
for our song.



A poem inspired by Julian Lennon's song, Saltwater, and also by his film about the aborigines and the whales, titled Whaledreamers. In the film, elders from around the world gathered on a cliff in Australia, where, long ago, people sang the whales into the bay. The elders gathered, they sang....and the whales came, a moment of joy and wonder. The whales carried the memory of this tradition in their enormous consciousness.


Sunday, August 10, 2025

THAT FARTHER SHORE



When the angel of death
arrives at my bedside,
like the ferryman
coming around the bend
of the river, plying his oar
with determination,
pulling alongside
and beckoning me in,

When I gaze at him,
my bed the shore,
wondering how to make
my earth-bound body
traverse the space between us
without falling,

I think I will trust
that the air will support me,
entering that bright darkness
interested in discovering
what comes next.

Yes, I think I will trust.

My life has been a voyage
of wonder and amazement.
I have made this journey,
head tipped back,
and grinning at the sky.
Trees have danced for me,
dogs and babies smiled,
my heart brimming with
the dazzle
of this beautiful world,
who performed her best
sunrises and sunsets for me,
draping the mountains
with breathtaking mist,
always whispering
"watch this!" and then,
watch this!"

I have long loved
the stories of people
who rose - and rise -
from their heartbreaking situations
with hearts courageous as lions,
roaring their love of life
even as the hunter
raises his rifle,
not cowering,
walking into the darkness
with full hearts,
with dignity, with pride.
No surrender.

Yet when that dark angel
comes for me,
I think I will surrender.
I will ride that bed-boat
out into the cosmos,
transfixed by all the stars,
wrapped in clouds of transformation,
soaring through the heavens,
breath held in awe.

The river of amazement
will carry me,
as it carried me through this life,
to my next destination,
where I hope I will find loveliness
to equal or surpass
that of this world,
where I will meet
lost loved ones,
and furry tails
will thump in welcome.

At the end, I will say
that, all of my life,
I have loved most
this earth and its beauty.
In trust, I will step into
the ferryman's boat,
ready to see what lies
on that farther shore.


Ha. I may not be that brave at all. We'll see. For my prompt at  What's Going On: Love Letter From the Afterlife,  the luminous life of Andrea Gibson.

A second one on the topic, about which I have written many poems:






I HOPE WHEN IT HAPPENS........

I hope when it happens
I will have finished all the books
I still want to write, will have shared
what I want to share.

I hope my people will read them,
and say, "We thought we knew her,
but there was a large part of her
we didn't know, and didn't understand -
that part of her that other poets knew,
because they read the words from her heart.

I wanted to make something pretty
of my life, but with the ups and downs,
the lumps and bumps, I made
something interesting instead.
I took those things and polished them up,
put them into my poems and books,
left out most of what was black and traumatic
and full of loss. Instead, I remembered
all I was given, how I was helped
and guided, and the people who loved me
till I was better able to love myself.

I hope when it happens,
there will be time to say
all the "I love yous",
look into the eyes of those
I am leaving, say "thank you"
and "Be happy. Laugh lots."

I hope when it happens,
that it will be peaceful,
a soft tide slipping gently
away from the shore.


Based on a poem by Diane Seuss titled "I Hope When It Happens." The italicized lines are hers.

Monday, August 4, 2025

FOREVER GOLDEN




Chantel Moore with her daughter Gracie

"Stay golden," she always said,
to friends and family.
We wore yellow shirts
when we marched for her,
in her memory.

A death that never should have happened;
her mother's tears will never end.
Her daughter will always
miss her mother; broken hearted,
all her friends.

Where is kindness, in this world?
Where has compassion gone?
Why do police act with such
aggression, when kind words
would soothe and calm?

Before you know kindness, the poet said,
you must wake up with sorrow.
We wake with sorrow every day.
Where is our kind tomorrow?

I don't know what to make of it.
This is not the world I knew.
But I see there is a portal,
we are meant to travel through,
a turning from the rhetoric
that has caused us all such pain,
a path of transformation
to make us kind again.

She was afraid and called for help,
but help is not what came.
She will be
forever golden.
We will not forget
her name.



Marching for Chantel (and George Floyd)
in Tofino in 2020.


For Chantel Moore, shot five times by a policeman making a "wellness" check. The House of Commons was presented with a bill soon after to address systemic racism in the RCMP. One MP abstained, blocking the bill, which was supported by all the others.

for Susan's prompt at What's Going On - a Weekend with Friends