The Greatest Gift

There is such quiet pleasure
in wrapping gifts,
each selected with love
for one's dear ones.
But I always remember
those across the world
who live with empty bowls,
without gifts,
often without their loved ones.

There was a little boy
in a village on the plains of Africa
who came home one Christmas Day
to find his mother cooking
the everyday porridge with vegetables,
that they ate daily.
He started to cry, because on Christmas Day
everyone in the village ate rice.
She was supposed to be cooking rice.
But his father had died.
There was no rice.
His mother's heart must have twisted
at the sight of his tears.
She must have wanted
to shower him with rice
and with every other good thing.

Now that little boy is a tall young man.
He is carrying home
to his mother in the village
a sack of rice,
and his good, shining heart.
There will be laughter,
and tears of joy,
and gratitude, and humanity.
There will be feasting and
the telling of stories.

And the knowledge
of that small happiness
will sit in my heart
all through the holidays,
through the unwrapping
of the gifts,
and the sharing of
the Christmas meal.

It will be the greatest gift
that I receive
this Christmas.

Gifts

[Sunrise over Kelowna - photo by my son, Jon Merk]

Ella's prompt at Real Toads is to write about gifts, or to write about the first poem that really meant something to you, after which your love affair with poetry began.

I began falling in love with words when I was very young. I have been carrying home an armload of books from the library weekly since I was five - that is a lot of books. I lost myself in them, and still do. I always have a book on the go, and twenty more stacked waiting by my bedside.

The first poem that began my writing journey was one I wrote myself. I dont know why or what sparked it, but I wrote it, and the floodgates were opened. A torrent of poems flowed through me, for the rest of my life. Many composed in my teens were written   in language that seemed to come through me from somewhere else, someone older, with some  understanding of things my teenage brain certainly wasnt yet capable of  comprehending.

I wote feverishly all through high school. The teachers were very good. They encouraged me and turned a blind eye to my feverish scribbling, which I could not help - when a poem was coming, nothing else mattered. I had to write it.

I hadnt read much poetry until then, but was drawn to the classic novels: Wuthering Heights (Heathcliff!), especially.  I loved all of the Brontes, books full of moors and turbulence and suppressed longing.

During high school I  was finally exposed to poetry and loved so many of the poets:  Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, e.e. cummings.

I remember writing these lines in class, then sitting and staring at them, wondering where they had come from and what they meant. It was 1960. My dad had died that summer before high school started, and I was just barely fourteen.

Each acquaintance on the road to Never
whispers through the soul
and leaves a soft thought to remember
when tomorrow dawns cold.
It seems each person that I meet
on this long journey to the end of things
is someone I can love
and I must tell him of my love
for if my heart stopped beating
e'er one more sky was streaked with dawn,
how would my many loves live on,
uncertain of this extra dream of life
only my heart, in love, can dwell upon?

Christmas Concert

Here's the face of a little lad who is bright as a new penny. Today I went to watch my great-grandson Damian in his first Christmas concert - he's in kindergarten this year. It is always so cute watching these concerts. I get a kick out of watching the teachers, who kneel in front of the kids animatedly and hystrionically doing all of the moves and gestures they want the kids to act out - sometimes dropping their heads into their hands in despair, sometimes just plain cracking up. As much fun as watching the kids! One teacher put such energy into her class's performance that her kids brought the house down. Such a joy!

Damian did very well, though he was a little on the shy side. They performed two concerts in one day, which seems to me like an exhausting schedule for little ones. I got tired just watching.

Christmas concerts remind me of Christmases past, when my kids were the ones in the concert, and when magic came to our house Christmas Eve once the kids went to bed and I set everything out under the tree. One Christmas Eve I was so excited I got the kids up at midnight and we had an orgy of gift-opening through the night. I didnt sleep at all that night, and by the time I cooked the dinner the next day I was exhausted. But what fun, when kids are young and Christmas is a magical time.

Damian's school is like a mini United Nations. I so love that. He is starting out being friends with kids from many cultural backgrounds and the wonderful thing is, at this age, kids dont see differences - they just see Other Kids. I so hope and pray this lasts their entire lives.



When I attend these concerts, it is great to see yet another generation of big-eyed children getting excited and happy about Christmas. It was fun to watch the various levels of confidence and shyness the kids displayed. At my age it is easy to pick out the kids who have lots of self-worth, and to spot those who need a lot more validation. Each single child just wanting to be seen and heard, each wanting to know they Matter. Each one wanting the eyes of the adults in their lives to light up when they walk into the room. To know they are special. And they are - every single one.

Humans, Being Beautiful

Hey, kids, here is a film to warm your heart. The children in the small Yupiq Eskimo village of Quinhagak, Alaska, put this together as a computer project. It was intended for the other Yupiq villages in the area but once it hit youtube, so far over half a million people have viewed it.

I so love it - humans, being beautiful!

An Imperfect Pilgrimage

[image from google]

Step upon step,
spinning the prayer wheels,
mumbled prayers rising,
pilgrims, we are making
our  imperfect pilgrimage.

Come with me
once around the sacred mountain,
and erase the karma of the errors of a lifetime.
Take me to the mountain,
holy one.
Make me clean.

The prayer flags flutter
on the precipice.
The search for the snow leopard
remains elusive.
Step upon step up the slippery slope,
each step on the path to enlightenment
icy, precarious.

The winds howl down the mountain
like ravening ghosts
and shake the candlelit tent
till it almost takes flight.

I'm tethered here,
but only for want of a perfect rhyme.
I hear the message
in those shrieking winds.
I feel the hoarfrost
on the hand of time.

When I die, holy one,
lay me on the plateau
for a sky burial.
Let the big birds come
and pick my bones clean.
Let the leopard gather them
and carry them off,
so I become
one with the mountain,
the air, the sky,
no more pondering how
or wondering why.

Return me to the mountain
of past lifetimes,
I beg you,
and let me
begin again.

[That's what watching Seven Years in Tibet got me :) !]

Wild Woman's Soul Whispers

Wild Woman looks at the state of the world.
"Believe!" her soul whispers.
"Inspire hope! Encourage all to dream!"

She believes. She hopes. She dreams.

But when she watches the news,
what her soul mostly whispers to her is
"I am so freaking tired."


for the Poets United Thursday Think Tank prompt: "Soul's Whispers"

Sombre News

This week the news programs have been focused on the Attawapiskat First Nations reserve in northern Ontario, whose Chief, Theresa Spence, declared a state of emergency last week on behalf of her people.

1800 people live on this reserve. There are 303 houses. Half the houses need major renovations or are condemned. Many families are living in unheated shacks (like the one in the news photo above), without electricity or running water. It is twenty below zero there this time of year.

Soon after the state of emergency was declared, the Red Cross was there, on the ground, bringing emergency supplies, water, sleeping bags, tents. There is urgent need for warm dry shelter for a large number of people.

This is an appalling state of affairs, not isolated to only this  reserve - others have now come forward, shedding light on the fact that we have Third World living conditions happening right in our own country. 2011, and the Haves never lower their eyes to see how the Have Nots are living.

The politicians are much more interested in deflecting blame and covering their butts, than they are in what is urgently needed - long term housing for people who are slowly dying in shacks while the MP's slam each other self-righteously across the floor of the House of Commons. Their statements are the usual - "We have spent millions, where did the money go?" They "didnt know" the situation was so bad until last week. Yet they "co-manage" that money between government and Indian Affairs, and had government people visiting the reserve regularly who could not possibly have been unaware of the state of housing.

Meanwhile, the elderly, the little kids, the families are bedding down tonight in mattresses on the floor, several people to a bed, in shacks without heat..........waiting for bureaucracy to stop squabbling and kick it into gear.

Thank God for the Red Cross who, in a state of emergency, ACT and leave the talking for later.

One more shameful chapter in the mistreatment of First Nations. And sadly, it sounds like Attawapiskat might be just the tip of the iceberg.