Birthday Girl

She is one of

the Shiny People.

She glows.

She sparkles.

In any gathering,

she is the one

everyone flocks to.

She has beauty, sensitivity,

humour, grace,

spirit, gratitude,

and compassion.

She is a blithe spirit

in combat boots,

and she is loved

much more than

she knows.

This girl has walked

a thousand miles

of laughter and tears.

When she falls,

with great courage,

she gets up and

keeps on Keeping On.

Her spirit is

Forever Rising,

and,

when she soars,

it is a beautiful thing

to watch.

She is one of

the Glitterati.

                

Happy Birthday, Lisa!

You make me proud!

A Gallant Soul

Bill, Rest in Peace

Shown here with his faithful Lara

when Bill was still well enough to sit up

Remember Bill and Faiza, kids, and their dog, Lara? Some of you have been following my visits to them. I provide them with  home support. We have grown very close over the past year, and I knew that I had been sent their way for a reason, that my hospice training and no fear of death would come in handy.

On Thursday I saw that Bill was rallying a little, as folks often do near the end. He wanted water, endless sips of water. The dying feel great thirst - in the end, all one wants is a sip of water. It is our last and strongest desire.

On Thursday, he had his blue eyes open, and gave me his big smile. He even joked a little with the nurses. I knew the call would be coming very soon.

Faiza called me this morning to tell me he passed peacefully at 5 a.m., no choking, strangling, or  struggling for breath, mercifully. She told me last night their dog, Lara, so sensitive, so aware of what was going on, sat beside his bed - she hated that hospital bed as it raised him up too high for her to be near him - and she kissed his hand. She knew.

I went over and listened to Faiza talk for a couple of hours this morning, she needed to go over things, to be reassured she did everything she could - and then some - to honor his wishes to die at home. And that she did. Day and night, she stood by his side, helping him clear his lungs, giving him sips of water, her own back and legs in terrible pain. Those two had such a love!

Faiza's friend came to be with her for the day, so I took their poor sad dog for a walk in the forest nearby, then told Faiza I'll come back tomorrow. It was good walking in the forest with Bill's dog.

I may be a basket case when my dog dies, but when it comes to humans dying,  I am a handy person to have around. I become strong and steady as a tree, in order to give support and comfort, to get everyone through. My body gets still and sort of feels like a tree trunk. I am not afraid - either to be around death, nor afraid to speak the words of comfort  that are needed.

Bill was a gallant gentleman, in his day, in his cream colored suit and jaunty white Fedora. He was the soul of kindness. He and Faiza were married in 1972, and shared  a close love such as I have never seen. Faiza said she told him just an hour before he died that if he was worried about her and Lara, to rest assured that they would be all right. She said he relaxed then. Soon after, he was gone.

Such a long journey, this life is,

and, at the end,

not nearly long enough.

The Elephant I Carry

Heavy - by GeeeO at deviantart

Kerry, at Real Toads, has offered us a marvellous assortment of
pictures as prompts this wacky Wednesday. The genre is called Magic Realism and, apparently, I love it. Who knew?

These are the words that "just came" when I looked at this photo. As usual, the message in these channeled poems makes me realize I know more than I seem to know, or choose to listen to. Do click on over to Toads and read the other brilliant reponses to the prompts. You will be so glad that you did.

The elephant I carry

keeps trying to slip off

my shoulders and take flight.

He is tired of curling up

around my neck.

He wants to see the world.

I ply him with teacakes

and blackberry jam.

That placates him

till the last crumb

has been swallowed.

But then off he goes again,

trying to soar,

and I have to reel him

back in.

Why is it,

when we both long to be free,

that we just dont seem able

to sever the tie?

Love Song to Clayoquot Sound - a poem

Friends,the amazing and talented Shawnacy over at Real Toads, issued me a personal challenge (ack!) to write about the longing for, or absence, or finding  of Home . This is a topic I have lived intensely, so I gave it a shot. You can find the entire challenge, and my response, here,  but I am posting it on this site as well, for my non-Toad friends.

Here is some of Shawnacy's poetically-worded challenge: "It is a feeling of an almost objectless nostalgia so deep and abiding that we cannot express it save through a physical and psychic ache that is as much a sense of loss as it is a response to a call we can almost, but not-quite, hear. It is the swelling of our inmost soul at the moment the sun slips behind the horizon. It is the breath caught in our throat when we are struck at the right moment by a particular progression of guitar chords. These things resonate within us with a profound feeling of Home.

Your challenge: tell me of 'Home'"

Of course, this entire exercise made me wildly homesick.

     *****     *****     *****     *****

Oh, untrammelled coastal beaches
of Clayoquot Sound,
you sang a siren song to me
for years before I journeyed there,
long before I ever saw
the perfection of
your beauty.

Trapped inland, like a beached whale,
I never stopped yearning
for the sight and the sound
and the smell
of your wild shores.
The ache of longing never dimmed,
throbbing like a sore tooth
in the center of my being.
I felt the pull,
I heard your call
that could not be ignored.

Your ley lines
drew me to you
as surely as a murrulet
is drawn to its nest,
a migrant whale
to its feeding ground.

Then, one day, it was Time
to either make the leap
onto your unknown shores,
or set the dream aside.
And I knew I couldn’t live
without a dream.

When I rounded the corner
that first night
at Long Beach,
a huge red fiery orb was going down
behind the hills -
my first sunset.
My heart rose to meet it
like a lover,
just now waking
after far too long a sleep.

I pulled into my cabin on the beach,
stood on the deck and breathed it in:
waves galloping into shore
like white-maned horses,
sun slipping down beneath the sea
like a blessing
on everything beautiful.
In the curving bay,
a small whale surfaced,
to tell me that my lifelong dream
had at last come true.

In that moment, the questing,
seeking voice within
was stilled,
for, at long last,
after such a long journey,
I was Home.

My spirit lifted like a soaring bird
set free from its cage,
joyously riding your air currents,
windsurfing the sky.
I flew higher than
I’d ever flown
there, on your wild shores,
where my spirit
finally
came into its own.

My eyes drank in your beauty
everywhere:
so many misty, fog-shrouded mornings,
Meares Island wreathed in cloud,
tall spires poking through,
or its hillsides blushing rose
late afternoons,
like a matron
surprised at her toilette.

They gazed on
thousand-year-old cedar,
on eagle and  raven,
on herons picky-toeing their way
along the mudflats,
on seabirds wheeling free
over shining waters.


I carry the memory
of seaspray damp against my face,
the smell of seaweed and plankton,
the feel of the packed, wet sand
underfoot.
I remember
the roar of the waves
against the dunes out front,
the crackle of the wood stove,
wind and rain lashing
the winter cabin walls
at midnight,
and the mooing
of the foghorn
at Lennard's Light.

I remember mornings
after the storm had passed,
stepping out onto the beach
to see what wind and water
had drawn upon the shore.

Joy, unparalleled, was mine
those ten glorious,
never-to-be-repeated
years.

Is it worse to find and lose Home,
or never to have found it?


When I had to leave,
missing you came
to live inside me
like a second pulse.
Inland, once again,
one hour and another world away
from everything I love,
I am once more Making Do
with so much less
than all of my longing.


But losing is the other side of having,
sorrow the price we pay for joy
and worth the cost.


Now those years live
within my heart. They live,
like the siren song of the sea,
like the cry of the gull,
like the sound of my beloved waves,
forever advancing and retreating
in my heart.

Now the Sound inhabits me,
as once I inhabited the Sound.
Love for your wild beauty never stops
singing inside me.
I carry that song within me
like a gleaming treasure,
like a song of love
whose refrain reminds me
that none of this is ours to keep.
We are all, always,
only passing through.

Sometimes, at dusk, now,
I see faint color
behind the hills
which ring this gray little valley,
that lets me know I am missing
yet another spectacular sunset
at the beach.
On those nights,
my eyes turn toward
the west.
I yearn. I long.
I remember all those sunsets
that once were mine.


As the world turns
from burnished gold,
fading soft to sunset,
and the coloured remnants streak
across the evening sky,
I look to the mountaintops.
Behind them,
on the West Coast,
glorious sunsets are unfolding,
these richly coloured evenings.
On tiptoe,
I can almost
see them shining.

I had already written my Love Song to Clayoquot Sound in prose form some years ago. It was included in the anthology Writing the West Coast: In Love with Place, a topic dear to my heart.


The prose version can be found by clicking on the above link, for anyone interested in reading the story of the amazing midlife journey I took all through the ‘90’s, when I made a huge leap to the home of my spirit, Tofino, B.C. on the wild West Coast of Vancouver Island. You may enjoy the story of my ten years there, through the time of the Peace Camp and the blockades – the most alive, joyous and fulfilling years of my life. I stole some lines from that piece for this poem, because they came straight from my heart and could not be improved upon. I had not thought to write this as a poem before. So thank you, Shawnacy!

Winter Tree

Winter tree,

your skeleton

of bare brown branches,

unadorned,

looks lifeless,

yet you are only waiting

for the cycle

of buds and blossoms

and soft

spring rain.

You're like a winter heart,

furled tight and

frozen against the pain,

that is finally

blessed by sunlight,

and blooms

again.

The Middle Way

[image from google goddessgift.net]

Kwan Yin, goddess of the Middle Way,

in this distressed, turbulent and over-wrought world,

help me to keep my balance.

One Step at a Time

This photo of the Great Wall of China was taken by Richard Schear, husband of Kay Davies. Richard's photos grace Kay's blog An Unfittie's Guide to Adventurous Travel.

The Sunday Photo Challenge at Real Toads is to write something inspired by one of Richard's photos. As I would so love to walk the Great Wall, this was an easy one.

Inscrutable journey of a thousand difficult miles

 is accomplished only

one step at a time.