Wild Woman Busts a Move

I picked my mate
just short of the pearly gates.
In the nursing home so grim,
who'd have thought
I'd find HIM!
Our walkers clashed
with a crash
as we sprinted through the gloom.
We arched speculative eyebrows:
did we want to Get a Room?

It was tricky;
life can be - in a word - rather sticky.
Temporarily off our rockers,
hastily we parked our walkers.
Hobbling our eager asses,
we put our teeth in glasses.
(Is this endearing or revolting?)
Easy, fellow! (he was bolting).
All the buttons, oh, the zipper!
We began to hasten quicker
before the thought diminished.
Oh, are we already finished?
Luckily the lights were dim
and our intentions focused, grim.
We emerged smiling from the fray
and he skittered fast away.

As he looked like all the others
out from underneath the covers,
when it came from push to shove,
(I never had a velvet glove),
sadly, I misplaced My Perfect Love
- oh wretch! oh pounding Gloom! -
somewhere in the common dining room.


LOL. Magaly made me do it. Her hilarious prompt at Real Toads is to take one of the outlandish titles offered and write a poem or story about it in 313 words or less. So my mind Went There prompted by the title "Dating for Under a Dollar: 301 Ideas" by Blair Tolman.

We Will Be the Change

Silpa Suarak, an Inuktitut language expert,

one of the Indigenous women profiled by CBC 

for International Women's Day

Jennie Williams photo/ CBC

source

"A nation is not defeated until the hearts

of its women are on the ground."
A Cheyenne saying


Aho, Wise Grandmother says,

it is time for the women

to raise their voices:

in song, in council, in power, in truth,

to speak for social and 

environmental justice

for all the living.

Huff, puff, says the big bad prez,

we are going back 50 years

to the Good Old Days

and women may not speak. 

We are not, in fact,

entirely convinced you are people.

Aho, you are foolish.

We have dealt with men like you before,

and better.

We have grandchildren, 

and we need to leave them

a world that is alive.

You will find us a formidable force,

for we are half the earth,

we hold up half the sky.

In strength, we bear

your sons and daughters.

Our life's purpose is

to keep them safe.

Our hearts are strong,

and no where near to 

being on the ground.

You can drive us 

away from the river.

You can lock us up.

More of us will follow,

for water is life

and we do not respect 

the ways of death.

Your addiction to oil

is polluting sacred waters.

Your addiction to money

is melting the polar icecaps.

Your willful ignorance

is imperiling the planet.

We refuse. We resist.

Our wolfish hearts rise up.

We march for 

our grandchildren's grandchildren,

and for yours.

We are of Life, of Breath, 

of Memory, of Tomorrow.

In sisterhood, in motherhood,

we sing the Earth Mother's song.

Our hearts are weary

but our minds are wise.

We speak for the voiceless, 

for the refugees,

for the wild, for the animals,

for the air, the soil,

the ocean, the rivers, the lakes

and for all creatures.

This gives us strength.

We will not be moved,

      or silenced

         or overcome,

and our hearts are 

no where near to

being on the ground.

Happy Women's Day 2017. For Sumana's prompt at Midweek Motif: Be Bold for Change

Forest Bathing

Tip-toe-ing, I enter nature's house of prayer: leaf rustle, leaf crunch, soft sighing breezes, bird-chirp, chipmunk chatter, thick friendly trunks covered with moss and old man's beard. Staunch, enduring, arms pointing to heaven, the forest is teaching us how to pray. My footsteps slow. My ears attune to Deep Listening. My heartbeat slows to join that of the Earth Mother. I breathe in Peace. I breathe out thankness. My prayer: that a world this beautiful will continue to exist.

Forest green and gold, 
I take your deep peace with me
out into the world.


for Kanzen Sakura's prompt at dVerse: to write a haibun about Forest Bathing, the Japanese art of immersing oneself in the forest to increase inner peacefulness. Something I do often.

Against Racism

Valarie Kaur, Sikh-American activist, speaks eloquently about what this present darkness might be bringing forth - "Perhaps not the dark of the tomb, but of the womb. Perhaps this darkness will bring about America's transformation."

May it be so.

Please watch. She brings me to tears. She brings me hope.

THE LAND OF BONES

A trail near my apartment

Through gates of wisdom we,

most hopefully, step.

It is time for the dream of our life

to be coming true,

for the being of all that we truly are

to flower.

Why wait?

Time is fleeting, faster

by the hour.

I passed through the valley of elm and ash,

their branches entwined to form a protected path.

At the end of this path is the portal

to the land of bones.

I have the feeling

I am not alone.

Internally, I am shown,

where my journey lies.

I must cross this littered landscape,

with a seer's eyes,

find and pick up 

a backbone, a wishbone, 

a funny bone and

a hollow little bone*--

only the ones that are my very own.

Perched on a quaking limb,

a single prodigious egg sits in a nest.

I hear it crack, and then my quest

is blessed.

A thousand cranes lift up, into the sky.

I am granted the gift of Wonder,

and put it in my pack.

There be spirits here,

and there is no turning back.

Raven sits before me, huddled on the path.

She speaks a single gobble-cry,

turns into Flight

without a sound.

Her flight path has teachings in it

for who we are:

citizens of earth,

grounded, yet sky-bound.

When she lands on a topmost scrag,

she points her wing into the forest dark.

I quake, but have no choice,

my inner guide informs.

When I pass through Night so dark,

I emerge into the morning light

transformed.

It is frightening:

Nothing will ever be the same again.

It is liberating:

Nothing will ever be the same again.

When Raven calls to you, 

and points her feathery wing,

listen closely for the

message she will bring.

*Indigenous people believe these are the foundations of our being: backbone for strength, wishbone for dreams, funny bone for essential humour and a hollow little bone, for trust and faith in the Great Mystery.

It is also believed that all women came from the elm, all men from the ash.

I wrote this in March 2015, and am sharing it for the good folk at Poets United, in the Poetry Pantry.

Softly, Roses

source

The bier, formal, pristine,

worn hands folded primly 

on the crisply folded sheet,

her face serene, untroubled,

all pain eased, no more grasping at life

or plucking at blankets:

her spirit had flown free of its fetters.

Though it was mid-winter,

windows closed,

the soft fragrance of roses 

suffused the room,

perfuming her passage

into the land of souls.

for Susie's prompt at Real Toads: Perfume

I have heard family stories about the scent of roses accompanying some souls as they passed over, though there was no earthly explanation for it.

Wolf Mother

source

Wolf mother
hears the whirring blades
of the helicopter
coming over the rise.

She moves quickly
to herd her small cubs
into their den,
then makes a desperate dash
for survival
across the field.

There is fear, for the smell is Man,
and Man brings danger and death.
There is desperation;
her cubs need her alive
in order to survive.

The shots ring out.
We will not know
whether she fell or not.
It is pain enough to bear
that men are shooting wolves
from helicopters.

Wild Woman's fear
is the death of Mother Wolf,
her cubs,
the ecosystem,
and the planet itself,
a hastening strangulation
by corporate greed,
Mother Earth trying so hard to live
as the Black Snake coils itself
around her neck.

May humankind awaken
in the midst of this bad dream,
and march to demand a safer world
for our wolf and human babies.


for Susan's prompt at Midweek Motif: Fear

I had a plethora of choices: apocalyptic futures, Armageddon, climate disaster, global war, mass starvation.........my heart is never very far from the wolves, so I chose Mother Wolf's plight, which is also ours,  this time.