Batian

Batian, 

the eyes of love and trust

Batian

I see your tawny hide

shimmering golden in the setting sun,

see you leaping with joy

to embrace your beloved Gareth,

who raised you to be free

in the Tuli veld.

You were beautiful,

loving,

peaceful,

padding the grassy land,

providing for your sisters

and their cubs.

Born to be free,

you enjoyed life

for three short years.

Trophy "hunters" lured you

into a trap.

You heard the recorded sounds 

of jackals eating,

you smelled meat,

hung in a tree.

You were wary,

there were no vultures;

something was not right.

But you were hungry,

and so you came.

From the blind, shots rang out,

and you fell. 

Laughter and backslapping,

as your beauty

was snuffed out.

A trophy to decorate their walls,

blood money paid,

satisfaction all around.

Now you are gone,

and one sister and her cubs are gone,

shot one year later.

Only Rafiki is left

of the Adamson Born Free lions.

Because man thinks he rules the earth,

that can never be ruled,

because he thinks, in his arrogance,

that his wants mean more than others' lives,

the lions are disappearing from Africa.

Our world and our

aching human souls

are forever diminished

by that loss.

Gareth and Batian,

murdered at age three

I am just finishing reading With My Soul Amongst Lions by Gareth Patterson, who stepped in to raise and return to the wild three lion cubs orphaned when George Adamson (Born Free) was murdered.  Those three, and their cubs, have now  all been shot by humans, except for the one remaining sister, Rafiki, with whom Gareth  had to sever contact for her protection.  (The population wished both he and Rafiki gone from the Tuli lands. He raised awareness of the lions' plight, which did not sit well with those who exploit and profit from them.)

My heart breaks yet again,  and I wept all the way through this book, with the poaching and killing and horrible arrogance of man threaded through this heartbreaking story. Gareth fights on for the remaining lions of Africa.

Thirty years ago, says an article in the Daily Mail in the UK,  there were 200,000 wild lions. Now there are estimated to be only 15,000. There are no lions left in 25 African countries, and populations are barely surviving in ten others.

We think we're here to rule the earth. But we are guests here, connected to every other life form. Eventually, we will suffer, too, the fate of other species, as greed continues to destroy this planet we love so much.


sources: The Daily Mail and The Lowveld

Shinrin-Yoku

photo created for me by TUG, 

The Unknown Gnome

I walk under soft, dark greenness.

Peace falls on me like rain,

The fiddlehead fern of my being

slows,

softens,

opens,

gently unfurls.

I breathe in cedar,

moss,

fungi,

spores

that my Inner Old One

remembers

from centuries past.

Shapeshifters

dance

among the trees, unseen,

but felt,

perhaps in the dust motes swirling

in patches of golden sunlight

filtered through ancient cedar.

Somewhere,

an owl utters

a sleepy "who-hoo?"

Somewhere, a black wolf

watches

through the veil,

his eyes speaking

the language without words.

I feel them

in my soul.

*Shinrin-Yoku is the Japanese practice of forest bathing

A Whisper On the Wind

photo source

A small monk

in a crimson robe

releases his prayer of peace

on the back of a pure white bird

in the Himalayas;
it soars up and over the peaks,

floats along on a silver cloud,

hitches a ride on a chugging freighter,

is passed along on the lips of refugees

in a teetering boat,

plays hopscotch among the stars,

then rises with the morning sun,

blanketing this whole, shimmering,

magical green and blue globe

with love.

Can you feel its whisper on the wind?

for Bjorn's prompt at Real Toads: the Butterfly Effect, how something as small as the movement of a butterfly wing can set off a chain reaction that impacts things far away. 

OWL WOMAN

source

Owl Woman has soft gray chicks

nestled at her breast.

In her brain lives the spacious sky,

dappled silver, shining.

Through her feathers, 

Sister Wind woos her towards flight,

beckoning from

the Four Directions,

for when she soars, she is free, joyous,

safe from harm.

She will teach these chicks

to fly.

Down her throat runs clear river water,

life-giving, replenishing.

The forest lives in her eyes,

green and golden,

and full of talking trees.

Her journeys 

are the flight-paths of the ancestors,

imprinted within her being.

The spirits fly with her

and whisper to her

the way that she must go.

Owl Woman is earth-bound,

for a time,

but ever dreaming of

the sky.

A poem from 2014, my friends, for the Poetry Pantry at Poets United, where you will  always find great reading on a Sunday morning.

Canuck the Crow

Canuck the Crow lives on Vancouver's Lower East Side. He was helped by one of its citizens when, as a baby bird, he fell out of his nest. Now he is well-known in the community, alighting on peoples' shoulders, and even riding the Skytrain.

On this morning's news, it was reported he got involved in a tense police standoff, where a young man wielding a knife was being taken down by police. Canuck rushed to the young man's assistance and made off with the knife. Police gave chase and eventually did recover the knife. They say the crow is "known to police."

Cracked me right up.

source: cbc.ca and Canuck the Crow, who has his own facebook page. Check it out!

Picnic

justenergy.com

"Life's no picnic," is the lesson

I was given as a child.

And yet, all these years,

that is exactly what it has been.

I find a grassy mound,

spread out the red checkered cloth,

lie back, look up, and take it all in:

blue bowl of sky, perfect puffy

storybook clouds,

birds on the wing.

The basket of goodies

changes every day:

the wonders of Choice,

and Delight.

I peek under the cloth;

every time: Perfect.

Just what I wanted.

The guest list keeps changing,

depending on who feels like a picnic

on that particular day.

The chore list changes too,

"from each, according to his ability,

to each according to his need".*

Some of us get to do more chores,

while others eat cake off a golden saucer,

because that is just the way of it.

The afternoon grows dreamy,

we replete with the perfection of the day.

Butterflies flutter by, bees buzz,

and no one is frightened of being stung.

We thank them for the honey.

They dip a wing,

and circle the hive.

Animals cavort and frolic 

all over the meadow,

unafraid and safe.

On my picnics, no animal

is ever harmed.

The homeless, the refugees, 

the outcasts, the disenfranchised, 

the suffering, the lonely,

are invited guests,

welcomed with love.

We open the basket,

distribute the choicest treats.

There is room for all of us here.

*Karl Marx said this, according to Wiki, though I did not know that when I remembered the quote.

for Susan's prompt at Midweek Motif: Picnic. A metaphor for our world, the way it could be, the way we would so love it to be.

Begone, Swan of All-That-Is-Not

A lagoon in Port Albion I once 

was privileged to live beside

When ripples disturb

the surface

of the sleepy lagoon

that is my life,

when skunk cabbage and stinkweed

elbow their way in

and wave their smelly fronds

in my face,

when the waters grow turgid 

and the channels clogged,

as if the pond floor has become

an uneasy agitated beast,

May I focus on

the lotus blossom

in the center,

let the ripples flow

off and away,

breathe in the peace and beauty

of the flower's waxy bloom.

May the swan of All-That-Is-Not

carry itself to the farthest bank,

making way for 

the small fuzzy ducklings 

of gratitude and serenity,

thankfulness

for All-That-Is.

A poem from December 2012, posted for the Poetry Pantry at Poets United on Sunday.