The One Who Speaks of Pictures In the Sky

 

John Woods/Canadian Press photo

The One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky
can see the faces of the lost ones, the ones
who never made it home. Tears are sorrowing
for the children, whose pain, whose cries,
were not heard then, but are
still being felt and heard today.
He hears the voices of the ancestors,
grandfathers and grandmothers, on the wind,
crooning "Stand strong. Stand tall." 

With her papoose on her back, she sings
a soft lullaby for all the children
pulled from their mothers' arms,
taken to cruel, dark hallways far from home.
The small child on her back
waves a tiny hand. I think of
all the small hands and hearts
those years ago, and the black robes as cold
as ice who caused so much pain.

He speaks his pain with power and strength:
addressing the Monster that swallowed his youth
and tried to erase his culture. When he
returned, all grown, and stared at the school,
he did the impossible. "Monster,
I forgive you," he said. "This is where
I earned my diploma of survival."

I listen in awe at the stories of
a beautiful people, who have suffered
and overcome so much
and who still love to laugh.
I hear you. I see you. 
Your beauty, your courage, shines.
Your drum is the heartbeat
of Mother Earth. Your song is Truth.
May we mamalthni hear you well.

Today was the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation in Canada.

The Honourable Murray Sinclair, speaking at the event, was introduced as the One Who Speaks of Pictures In the Sky. He was chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation commission.

The Monster refers to the powerful poem "Monster", about residential school, by survivor Dennis Saddleman.

Mamalthni is the Nuu-chah-nulth word for white people.

Somewhere You Took a Turning

 

Beached pilot whales

Somewhere
you took a wrong turning
and others followed.
You lie growling and clicking
on the sand,
at the mercy of the same species
who are trying to help
as destroyed the world
you once swam through
with ease.

A bucket of water
for momentary relief
will never be enough
to make reparation
for our fouling of
the seas.

Somewhere
we took a wrong turning
and others followed,
and now we can't seem 
to find a way

back to the garden
of that better
day.

230 pilot whales beached themselves in the second 
mass stranding event this past week in the
Australian state of Tasmania.

Getty image

Scientists say noise pollution, overfishing and warming seas - all human-caused factors - contribute to the many strandings seen along beaches in recent years. Half of the beached whales above are still alive and rescue efforts are being made, but the scope of suffering for the whales is devastating.

Shared with earthweal where we are doing an ekphrasis challenge as Brendan prepares for a major hurricane bearing down on the state of Florida. 

When the World Was Young

 

In the lifetime before the lifetime before this one,

and again in the lifetime before that,

I danced under the blue sky in the sundance,

when I and the world were young.

The beat of the drum sang in my blood,

and my feet moved in joy,

and I danced

and I danced

as if it would last forever,

when I and the world were young.

The Old Ones smiled on me

with kind eyes, but with sadness too,

for their dreams foresaw suffering

for the people.

Over in the meadow, grey wolves flitted

in and out among the Standing People,

paws prancing high,

and the backs of the buffalo

carpeted the earth

in the days

when I and the world were young.

And now I live again

in an alien skin,

in a world grown cold.

The buffalo are gone and all that moves

is made of metal.

And I am an Old One

with kind, sad eyes,

watching the young dance

in a world gone mad,

and the ancient spirits are crying still,

remembering the days of

dancing under the sun

when they and I

and the world were young.

From 2015, shared with earthweal's open link. I wrote it after attending a Christmas concert at a First Nations school. The young lad above was one of many students, dancing for the animals in a circular dance called Everything Is One. So beautiful.

NINSTINTS

 

Ninstints, Guardians of Haida Gwaii
BBC photo

Weathered and leaning,
the guardians stand,
testament to the first people
of the land.

There are spirits here.
One can feel the energy
of times long gone,
and, when the wind is blowing,
one can sometimes hear

the wailing

of an ancient people, 

mourning

all that happened

here.

They lived here

when the earth was young,

laughing, happy

under the sun.

Their totems tell

their story.

When you step onto the sand,

walk with reverence,

and listen

to the voices

of the land.

Ninstints is a small island off the coast of Haida Gwaii. The ancient totems are guardians of the land, now uninhabited by humans, and protected. In 1981, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A friend visited there and when I said "you must have felt the energy there" she replied "I could hear it, too." She said she could hear wailing, the spirits mourning - the entire village was wiped out by smallpox after the white man passed through.

For Brendan's prompt at earthweal : A Map of History's Mysteries

Link: https://earthweal.com/2022/09/19/earthweal-weekly-challenge-historys-mysteries/

Flying Free

 

Marriage was anesthesia to my soul,

an overdose of entrapment. I was a caged brainiac

living on Third Avenue in a marital straitjacket

while, only one block up, on Fourth, blissful hippies

in tie-dye, smelling of patchouli and some

strange weed, wandered up and down,
as born to freedom as any bird. And I

wondered, how did they ever learn
to be that free?

A ghost of my inner self began to stir
and bang upon its cage.

The stack of Ms magazines grew
wise and tall
and, woe to the status quo, I began
to understand it all.

Helen Reddy and I sang Hit the Road, Jack,

with gusto while my husband scowled.

"We did okay 'til you started thinking

you were a person," he said, and,
in that moment I emerged

from the wasteland of my marriage,

on a leafy sidewalk in the West End of the city,

and flew free.

for Shay's awesome word list - check it out! I used the word axe, too, but reconsidered in the interests of political correctness. LOL.

Celebration of Life for Ice

 

source

Blue ice,
your other-worldly beauty
sparked our dreams, 
drew explorers to you -
the romantic Far North -
frozen-solid tundra,
sled dogs joyously yip-yip-yipping
across the miles,
sled riders wrapped in layers of fur
against the glacial cold.

People of the reindeer, the Sami,
lived a hard life, yet a happy one,
the only life they knew;
the snow, crystalline beauty,
the hard-packed, treacherous ice,
icebergs standing tall against the sky,
their blue mysterious caverns
glowing under the moon.
Blue, mysterious caverns,
and crevasses where one false step
could end your life.

The majesty of the frozen north,
known best by those who
made their lives upon your snowy breast:
polar bears, caribou, seals,
the Arctic fox, and wolves,
a sad procession, now, of endangered
almost-ghosts, hungering
and dying, because we are too many,
and our appetites more fierce.

In only 50 years,
our carbon-tainted fingers
found you:
warming seas gobbling your icy shores,
habitations crumbling,
spongy taiga, melting tundra,
turning soggy underfoot,
revealing skeletons buried for
a thousand years.

And your blue ice,
is now crumbling into the sea
and melting underfoot,
sleds replaced by skidoos
roaring fast to outrun the melt,
and boat tours urge Come see the ice
before it's
going going gone.
Making money from devastation
is what our economy thrives upon.
(Those of us with hearts
will never buy the con.)

Polar bear,
I see you on the edge
of your small floe,
spying your dinner too far
across the way,
and yet the hunger is still there,
as the pounds melt away,
so you stagger weakly into town,
confused, wondering where
the life you knew
has vanished to.

The seas warm year by year;
the oceans rise.
We sorrow at being the cause
of your demise.

Source

for earthweal: A Celebration of Life for Ice

The Song of My Life

Moonrise over the Broken Group Islands
photo by Jon Merk

The song of my life is the summer breeze

dancing within the rustling trees

it's the murmuring shore, the waves' ebb and flow

it's the beauty of nature wherever I go

it's the call of the mountains, the tumbling falls,

it's the riverbed green, and the canyon walls,

it's sunrise and sunset, the golden glow

of a fall afternoon as the sun sinks low

it's the smell of smoke on the evening air

it's the howl of the wolf, the growl of bear

it's the cackling hen and the warbling wren

the fox's leap over the cattle pen

it's the translucent light on the sandy shore

glorious beauty spread all before

it's the moon that crosses the midnight sky

 the beauty that forever draws my eye

it is, most especially, the song of the sea,

ever drawing away, then returning to me.

for earthweal's open link, I clicked on September 10, 2014, and found this. I forget most of my poems after I write them, as I write so many.