Traveler, Do You Have a Dream?

cloudslikewings.org

Traveler,
do you have

a dream

you

long for?

Do you have

a dream

you have set aside,

thinking
you may have missed your chance,

and it can

never be?

Fly up!

Follow

that dream

into

your heartland.

The bird

knows

no limits

when she's

traveling

the sky.

for Mary's prompt : It's Time! at Poetry Jam. This is Poetry Jam's last post. Thank you, to Mary and all who participated at Poetry Jam. It has always been a wonderful site to visit. It will be missed.

Day 14!!

Sister of My Heart

karenstollznow.com

Dear sister of my heart,

When we learned nushu, 

in the time of foot-binding,

we vowed to be laotong forever,

and so I write to tell you

that my smallest son has died,

and the heart has gone out of my husband.

Write back to me,

before the first snows of winter.

Speak to me what is in your heart,

that I may be able

to go on living.

"We tell each other stories in order to live". Joan Didion

for Susie's prompt at Real Toads, to write a poem inspired by one of Didion's quotes.

* Nushu is the secret language women in the Hunan province of China developed, in order to communicate with each other - a written language no men could read

*laotong - a relationship of sworn sisters,  providing lifelong support to women, whose lives were circumscribed in those times within their traditional roles. Source: The Guardian


Dont miss Susie's poem, The Price of Poetry, about the secret women poets of Afghanistan. It is amazing, as is the background article about what girls and women go through to write their poetry, an outlet forbidden to them in their country. They write at risk of their lives.

Eight Lessons in Training a Goshawk

photo credit: Chris O'Reilly

I
First, I had to become invisible,
so she could learn to accept me.
We sat the difficult, patient,
excruciating hours together,
her hooded, at times, for calmness,
my eyes averted,
until she could be with me unmasked,
without fear.


II
Next, I had to make her hunger,
so when I offered food 

on my extended fist
she would come to me.
This was a dance that took some time
to choreograph.


III
I did not know,
until she laughed,
that goshawks were capable
of play.


IV
We walked the hill to the field in dread,
her on my arm,
she because she was terrified,
I because I feared
she'd fly away.


V

The hardest thing to learn
was trusting
she'd return.

VI

It took many fails a day
for a week,
her falling, hobbled,
to the ground,
angry and glaring,
and then we got it right -
she flew right to me.


VII
In the brambles,

her first time loose,
caught by the bracken,
her yellow eyes
looked to me
for rescue. Trust.


VIII
I thought I was training her
to be a goshawk,
but she was teaching me
to unite my wild and human parts,
until my spirit rose
from its bed of grief

and flew.


for Grace's prompt at Real Toads: to write a poem in the style of, or inspired by, Wallace Stevens. I loved his Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird so much that I tried to echo his format, though likely I am no where near his style. As I am currently reading a most wonderful book, H is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald, about the training of a goshawk, I stuck with birds.

Day 12 of the poem a day April challenge

Wolfsong

Wolf Paw and Human Hand by Alex17 at redbubble.com

My inner wolf stirs under the Pink Moon,
howling the possibility of a world of connection,
with the land, and with each other,
a world of social justice for all,
humans and ecosystems alike.

Wolf is Presence,
life on its keenest edge, honed.
She is transcendence; to her  
death is part of the cycle of life : 
renewal and sustenance.
Our eyes, now,  are opened;  
we see with a fearsome clarity
what is meant for us here: cooperation, 
connection, interdependence, balance.
They can shoot Mother Wolf from helicopters,
but she is wily. She will find a way to hide,
to survive, to outlive our ignorance
until we finally realize the truth.
We need her here. 
She is our wildish nature, our love of the land.
She is our deepest heart.

We grandmothers are the wisdom-keepers.
It is time, now, to speak what we know,
the deep wolfish knowing
that humankind has lost its way.
Time to remember the ancient pathways,
and follow them to the Source,
time to remember that from 
the tiniest bit of stardust in the galaxy
to the smallest sprout upon the forest floor, 
all, all, is part of the great wheel of life.
All has its purpose here.

Visit the closest tree you see. 
Place your hand on its trunk.
Do you feel it?
Endurance, Stoicism, Deep Being.
It breathes out. We breathe in.
We are the same.

Each breath of peaceful energy you exhale
stirs the molecules, adds its weight,
helps to right this tilting planet.
If a few billion of us breathe peace
at exactly the same moment,
will not balance, and hope,  finally arrive?


for my mini challenge at Real Toads : keeping our balance in an imbalanced world. Day 11 of Poem a Day April

Dear Great-Grandma Julie

Great Grandma Julie

Dear Great Grandma Julie,

My mother loved you so much.

You were "the two Julie's",

since my mom was named Irene Julia, after you.

You came from County Cork to the New World

to escape the potato famine.

You worked hard on the farm,

milking the cows, lugging pails of water,

chopping wood, soaking laundry in tubs

on top of the wood stove.

Your husband lay track for the first railway

across the nation near your homestead in Montana.

My grandma told me how he got drunk

and danced with the jug of moonshine

in the kitchen, but then got riled 

and chased you both out of the house with the rifle,

and you hid in the barn till he fell asleep on the floor.

You were both terrified but, in her nineties,

my Grandma had to laugh at the memory of him,

clutching the moonshine jug to his chest

and dancing around the kitchen.

My mom and Grandma Julie

My mom told me how you lived with her family

in Saskatoon when she and her siblings were teens.

She told me when your pension came in,

you shared your tobacco, the three sisters and you,

who all shared a room, puffing at the open window, 

in the freezing Prairie winter air,

all your cigarette butts lined up 

along the window ledge,

and how you all dithered about in a panic 

when my grandma's footsteps sounded on the stairs,

coming up to check.

My mom said you were cool.

One night you all got wild in the bedroom,

thumps and shrieks heard from the parlor downstairs,

and my grandma sent my grandpa up

"to settle those girls down, they're disturbing Ma."

He went up, rolled up Saturday Evening Post 

in his hand, silence fell, 

and he came back down, smiling.

"Well?"

"They were having a pillow fight,

and Ma was right in the thick of it."

I am smiling, too.

Somewhere in my sister's boxes, 

is your small black housedress

covered with  a small floral print.

You were a tiny woman, with formidable strength,

to have come through the potato famine,

through raising kids and homesteading 

at the turn of the last century.

You lived through the Depression, widowed,

going from one of your children's houses to another,

with your small black cardboard suitcase.

My Grandma loved remembering your years

with her young family.

But how she regretted the many times 

she was too busy,

when you'd ask her to come do her hair,

or join her in some activity or other.

"I'd be flying around the house like a scalded chicken,

and Ma would call me - 'Florence?' - and then say 

'Oh, I know: No time, no time, no time.'

How I regret that now. Now it's my own children

who are too busy and have so little time."

And now, Great Grandma Julie, 

it is my turn to be old.

Because of you,  my own grandma, 

your daughter, and my mother,

a lot of strength runs through 

these old bones of mine.

I think I have your strong, determined chin.

For sure all of the women in this family

have your strength and your spirit.

And some measure of that humor

that had you up on the bed, in your seventies,

having a pillow fight with "the girls."

love, Sherry

for Mama Zen's cool prompt, at Real Toads, to write a letter to an ancestor, or to a future descendant. I had thought to write into the future, but Mama Zen did that to such perfection, I chose Great Grandma Julie  instead. 

This Poem Is an Elf, a Grandma and a Cup of Tea

This poem is a conclave of elves 
This poem is a fairy tale, 
told to a small child by her grandmother
This poem is a cup of my Grandma's tea

This poem is chock full of elves
clustered under a speckled toadstool in the forest.
They are hiding from a small girl-child,
peeping out from under the toadstool's rim
with eyes that winkle and shine.
This poem is a conclave of elves.

This poem is a small girl sitting in front of the fire
listening to stories, on long, quiet winter afternoons.
"Watch the blue fairies, dancing in the flames," 
her grandma says, and she looks,
and sees the fairies.
This story has no beginning, and no end.

This poem is a song sung by druids
in the springs and groves of a woodland dell,
as violet shadows lengthen at close of day.
This poem has standing stones in it, and ghosts,
myth and blarney from County Cork,
laced with a spoon of golden honey 
in a shamrock teacup of amber verbena,
a cup of my grandmother's tea.

This poem is a conclave of elves, 
winkling and shining in stories of long ago.
This poem is a fairy tale told to a small child
by a Grandmother who knew 
small children need mothering.
This poem is a cup of my Grandma's tea,
in a time whose memory shines more brightly than today

* Celtic and Welsh meanings for the word druid are seers, and sorcerers. Poets may be numbered among this group. Smiles. They played an important part in ancient pagan Celtic  society according to Wikipedia. 

This poem is (mostly) patterned after Hannah Gosselin's wonderful Boomerang Poem form, whose instructions can be found on Hannah's site at this link.

Day 9

Art as a Gift

Wild Woman created by Ellen Wilson of Ella's Edge

My face superimposed on a wolf's. I love it.

There is even an angel in the top right corner.

When friends care enough about your dreams

to create art to support you in your dreaming,

that is when you know

the connections that art makes

transcend all time and distance.

This is when poems reach across borders

to create

a family of friends.

Beach Glee - This is a composite of a few of my photos 

of the path to Chesterman's Beach, merged for me 

into a wonderful piece of art by TUG, 

The Unknown Gnome, 

of the website of the same name. 

Note Pup's face, in the bottom right corner!

for Ella's prompt at Real Toads: to write about a piece of art that means something to you.

With thanks, not just to Ella and Steve, but to everyone who takes the time to read and comment on my poems. Because of your encouragement, I have written two thousand poems since 2010 that would not be in the world without you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.