Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken

It is a gift to see with a wild heart -

this planet of blue and green,

so beautiful, so bountiful -

vision wide and all-

embracing,

until we narrow the scope

to human war and folly,

to all the suffering we heap

upon ourselves and other creatures,

to the damage we cause

to Mother Earth and the

beyond-human realm.

How do we keep our fractured hearts

from breaking?

(how can this be happening again?

I feel I've lived too long.)

I walk among the Ancient Ones,

breathe in the scent of cedar and salal,

part the ferns to see skunk cabbage

thrusting upward, salmonberry blooms

so pink and sweet. I count the waves,

measuring my breathing to their ebb

and flow. I stitch up the cracks and fissures

in my heart with poems, ease the ache 

of harsh words coming at me

with cups of tea and the comfort

of time passing. Springtime

is blossoming again in spite of us,

showering blossoms even as

bombs fall and families flee in terror.

(how can this be happening again?

I feel I've lived too long.)

They say wild hearts can't be broken,

yet mine has shattered and been healed

a thousand times. It stretches now,

like rubber, to accommodate

more pain, as unwelcome

in my exhausted old age

as it ever was, yet here it is

again.

The gold of wisdom and experience

fills in the cracks, the ache,

like kintsugi does old pottery.

But even hearts of gold

can break.

for my prompt at earthweal: Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken. But there are times when it feels like they can.

When the Walls are Weeping Tears

 

The walls are weeping tears
and then bombs.

This is where I came in.
How can this
be happening
again?

Yet somewhere, in the forest,
salmonberry are blooming
so pink and sweet,
and a wolf paces softly
down to the water
to lap a drink.

I have seen too much
that was never in my dreams.
My heart is weary
from holding all the pain.

And yet
in spite of us,
out front,
the cherry tree is budding,
and soon it will be covered
in white blossoms
once again.

for Carrie at the 200th Sunday Muse. Congratulations to all Musers! I'm retired, and I live on the West Coast of Vancouver Island in Canada where the scenery is pretty spectacular. It informs many of my poems. I have been blogging since 2010, and love this forum for sharing poems which otherwise would be languishing in a drawer somewhere. Smiles. I am very grateful for The Muse - such a fine group of people (and poets), who reciprocate comments, not always found elsewhere in the 'sphere. Stay strong, poets. Times are hard.

Like An Old Tree Bending to the Earth

 

Fellow traveller,

you have journeyed far.

Let your peaceful heart create

a spaciousness around you.

Let no one trespass

with all their noise and clamour.

Through the years, you learned

this self-protection. 
Journeying,

you grew both strong and weathered,

like an old tree bending to the earth

under the weight of what it cost you

to survive in the midst of so many

clamourous hearts.

You have the gift of listening, of seeing,
of tending a peaceful heart.

At sunrise, greet the day with joy.

At sunset, put it all away again.

Tomorrow, say thank you for the gift

of one more chance
to get it right.

Taking Inventory

Russian protesters: No war!

Has anyone counted the stars, the constellations,
the black holes? How many countries are we?
How many will we be after invasion?
How many thousands of Russians now stand
in the streets, risking arrest to say "no war" -
war waged against their neighbours and
family members just miles away?
How many Ukraine citizens are now
bearing arms to defend their country?
(What kind of world have we made
when citizens have to fight their own wars
out of other nations' fear a madman
will start nuclear war?)

In my village, we are counting the trees
that come down, and the ones that are left.
We count the number of residents in need of housing,
so much greater than the number of residences
available to house them. How many homeless
in a world-class tourist destination?
No use counting waves. I just measure my breath
to their ebb and their flow, till everything
quiets and slows, and allows me to carry
the weight in my head of a daughter not well
and a country invaded, people on the screen
crying, distraught, the pets they bring with them,
the many more left behind, alone in terror;
and the old people, too frail to leave their buildings,
so they sit and count bombs falling,
hoping their building will be spared.

How hard we try to make sense of the world,
take inventory, try to fit everything 
into its proper place. Too many things just
don't fit any more. They say God knows
every sparrow's fall. She must be busy now,
counting and counting the hairs upon terrified heads,
as the world approaches the lip
of unthinkable spiralling madness.

Inspired by The God of Numbers by Denusha Lameris of Wild Writing
Shared with earthweal's open link

I Ask the Unlistening Ear

 

quote by Margaret Millar

I ask the Unlistening Ear of world leaders:
can you hear the cries of the wild ones
who have lost their forest homes?
or the humans, now climate refugees,
on the move after war, and famine,
floods and wildfire?
Did your heart ache when you saw
kangaroos and koalas with burning skin,
running to we humans for help?
Do you understand that
the beyond-human realm
has feelings too?

I live midway between
despair and hope,
between a cackle and a howl.
My heart paces falling forests,
swims with the whales
in warming, rising and
polluted seas.

Five years left to lower emissions,
they say, yet nothing changes.

Leaders set ten year goals
in a five year crisis,
so someone else can deal
with this thorny problem.

(Slow down all the clocks.
Speed up our evolution,
transform our environmental consciousness.)

She asked me where I see myself
in ten years. I live by rising seas,
in an old growth forest that is being clearcut,
with summer heat domes and the threat
of wildfire in a rainforest.

In ten years I will most certainly
be underground. My grave, it seems,
will be floating underwater.
I will be one with the sea at last.
I will be One with Everything.

For today my sad refrain is
Nothing changes.
Nothing changes.
Nothing changes.

for Ingrid at earthweal: The Global Assembly, our concerns about the climate crisis, and how we are impacted where we live. 

Impacting life in B.C.:

*Only 1% left of old growth in B.C., and it is still being clearcut. Locally, trees are coming down for housing because we are too many. Provincially, it is coming down for corporate greed, aided and abetted by talk and log politicians.

*I live on a coastline, with the threat of tsunamis, and rising sea levels.

*In summer, we now experience heat domes and the threat of wildfire - in a rainforest! The climate has changed drastically in the last 30 years.

*B.C. already has climate refugees from several towns laid waste first, by wildfires and then flooding.

*Climate refugees are struggling to survive across the globe.

And nothing changes. Nothing changes. Nothing changes.

A HEART TOO FAR

 

Wild Woman's heart lives

halfway between a cackle and a howl,

waiting for the moon to rise,

for the owl in the wildwood

to murmur a chook-chook-chook to the chicks

nestled beneath her feathery wing,

listening for the wolves to sing

as the darkling sky winks its million stars

across the mountains and back again.

The waves are singing their siren song,

somewhere too far, out where

the wilds things are.

My heart, remembering,

is waiting, too, like the moon awaits

its moment to rise,

like the owlet perches on the edge of its nest,

summoning the courage to fly,

like the shore anticipates the lip of the wave

advancing, retreating, and returning once more.

Wild Woman's heart lives

somewhere between a cackle and a howl,

displaced, too far

from where the wild things are.

I wrote this in 2015, when I was missing the wild shores of Clayoquot Sound. And now I am here. Yay! When you don't give up, even the most impossible dreams can sometimes come true. Mine came true, not once, but twice. It was my dream to live here in 1989. I made a mighty leap, based solely on trust, and lived here for ten ecstatic years. Illness forced me to sell my trailer and move away. I was homesick for seventeen years. Longing to return, I focused my belief that the universe might grant me this final gift: to live where my soul belongs. And, after a time, it did. I remain forever grateful.

shared with earthweal's open link

Things I Have Loved

 

The sky, ever-changing in colour and mood,

in sun, in starshine, in midnight moons.

The river wild, remembering my old

wolf-dog's eyes looking helplessly at me
as the current caught him,

and he started drifting away,
me getting ready to

plunge in after him, till an outcropping 

caught him, returning him to me.

For I have loved him best
in this world.

I have loved mornings, the certain smell

at the farm that takes me back to

summer mornings as a child; and that

golden time in late afternoon, when 

the light changes and turns the trees

to amber; and that smell - petrichor -

just before the first drops of rain,

and once more I am back in childhood,

listening to a thunderstorm
in the back room

with my Grandma.

Sunrises and sunsets, which I miss 

in my elder years, because I am always

still tired, when I wake up, and
too tired at day's end.

But I remember, I remember, skies

that looked like the floor of heaven,

me sitting on a log, wondering

if the one I loved loved me.

He didn't, but my wolf-dog did;

he showed me how love was
meant to be done.

I love the tiny purple crocuses 

out on the lawn, brave forerunners,
as spring tiptoes in,

just waiting to spread her skirts

of white blossoms across 

the two old cherry trees
in the yard. I love

sitting out front in the sun, and rocking.

I love the big window through which

I watch the world walking by

with its children and dogs and canes.

I love when they wave and I wave back.

I love that on Valentine's Day

I woke up to discover that

someone unknown had taped small hearts

all across  the front windows - love,

to make a stranger smile.

I love the narcissus and tiny pink rosebuds

on my desk, bringing spring right to me,

with months of wonder yet ahead.

I love ancient old growth: thick weathered

trunks and old man's beard, moss and lichen,

and feeling in the forest like I once did

long ago at morning mass:
silent, peaceful,
reverential.

I love long sandy shores stretching

to forever, and the way my wolf dog and I 

walked them, wildly, joyously;
never again
would I feel so whole, so free,

after he was gone from me.

Inspired by "Things I Didn't Know I Loved" by Nazim Hikmet