The Last Star of the Morning

source

Traveler walks like a moving tree,

like a wind-whisper, singing,

like the breath of dawn.

Traveler is a part 

of the landscape;

she carries with her

a corner of the sky.

Traveler rises with the morning sun.

She is always walking towards

the next sunset.

There is the last star of morning

on her shoulder.

She wears the first star

of evening in her hair.

The moon is her mistress,

a songbird flies from branch

to branch beside her,

and a wolf-shadow

companions

her every step.

An old one from 2011, re-posted for the Poetry Pantry at Poets United, where you will find many beautiful offerings every Sunday morning! Come join us!

Begin Again

My great-grandson a dozen years ago,

with my sister's love-bug, Lukey

This poem
woke up this morning
to a new day.

It looked around
and saw much
to foster despair.
But we are alive
at this moment in time,
so this poem decided
to live today
the best it knows how,
while there is a today
in which to live.

This poem
is grateful
that we get another chance
every morning
to begin
again.

Shine

When you shine,
you light up
the space around you
the way a sunflower,
turning its face to the sun,
makes us happy
as we pass by.

There are dark clouds.
There is turmoil.
There is pain enough
for three planets
on this beautiful
blue-green orb.

But your smile
and your good heart -
your hand reaching out 
to help spread kindness
all around -
makes a difference; it
brightens up your little corner
of the world.

If you shine,
everybody's going to shine.


for Marian's prompt at Real Toads: Queen Lizzo's song "If I'm shining everybody gonna shine."

Safety

The news is distressing.
Wildlife is dying,
the poles are melting,
bears are being shot as they flee,
refugees find no welcome
at their last resort,
mass shootings are reported as
"the latest one",
and there is no safety
anywhere.

The safest place I ever knew
was my grandma's little cottage
on Christleton Avenue,
where peace was so profound
I could hear the clock
on the kitchen windowsill
ticking and tocking
in every corner of the house.

I learned peace
at my grandmother's knee
and created it for myself
and my children
in every home I ever lived in.

I feel it now
when I walk down
the apartment hallway
and turn the key in the lock:
my small rooms, my sanctuary,
place of peace and safety
in this mad, mad world.


for Susan's prompt at Midweek Motif: Safety

Going, going, gone

source

Where is safety
when the Arctic is melting
and Siberia is burning,
when the Pacific Island nations are under water,
and governments are deaf to mounting crises?

Starving polar bears and displaced black bears
wander into villages and are killed.
Whales grow thinner and die; 
they lose their young.

And humans driven from their homes
by things they cannot help
are met with no welcome anywhere.

For now, safety lives in 
our hearts and our homes,
but when will the waters rise for us?
When will the food run out?
Will we care then,
when our homes are washed away,
and crisis comes to our own village?

We are sadly lacking world leaders
strong enough to put planet before profit.
Women, guardians of life, 
would make the tough choices,
if we we were given the chance.

Patriarchy and capitalism have 
plundered the earth.
The poles are wavering under 
the burden of their melted ice.
Where is safety when Siberia is burning
and the polar ice caps are melting?

Gone, with the old ways of 
caretaking the earth, and each other........
gone like the hot lick of wind off burning tundra,
gone like the whales,
the bears and all the dispossessed,

           going, 
               going, 
                   gone.

**********************

Sorry, kids.

I have always been stubbornly optimistic and hopeful. I used to be irritatingly so. But I have a strong sense of justice and,  truly, as I am watching all that is happening - and all that is NOT happening - I am very discouraged. My words and my hope are drying up. I am grateful for the beauty surrounding me; we must appreciate what we have while we have it. But I am very nervous about what is happening up north. 

The Arctic is melting at an unprecedented rate, which will be hastened by the burning forests of Siberia. Those in power now are not equipped to handle a response to all this, especially once worse crisis hits. They aren't even faintly interested; it's business as usual (substitute "greed and corrupt power").

My last faint bit of hope is for the 2020 election. But it is faint. The 2016 election was manipulated; of course the next one will be too. He can apparently get away with anything. 

Well. This is depressing. But it is what poured out with the word "safety". None to be had anywhere - especially for hungry bears and displaced South Americans. 

A mama bear and her two malnourished cubs were unable to access their usual forest route, as humans had blocked it off. They wandered into a neighbourhood in Coquitlam last week. They were not acting aggressively. They were FLEEING wildlife people, trying to find their forest, when they were shot dead. Wildlife officials said the bears were "not cooperating" - should they have stood still for their execution?

Locals who were yelling "Don't shoot the bears!" were ARRESTED and their video of the shooting confiscated. (Bravo to them for speaking up.) EIGHT bears have been killed in Coquitlam in July. 

I have such a big problem with the killing of displaced wildlife. It is not their fault they have no habitat. We are too many.


for Susan's Midweek Motif at Poets United: Safety. With my apologies for all that has gone so wrong on this beautiful, suffering planet. Not sure who I am apologizing too? God? Mother Earth? Wildlife? Immigrants seeking safe harbour? All of the above.

SONG OF RIVERS

Sandy McRuer photo 

from Heart of Vancouver Island

Sing to me with Raven's gobble-cry,
with krak! of heron, hoot of sleepy owl.
Sing with the current slipping fast away,
the traveler's path, high heart  and wolfish howl.

Bear walks into the river, palms a salmon,
sits in the water, eats from his mighty paw.
Eagle, fierce of eye, in topmost tree,
waits for the leavings, as I watch in awe.

Such is nature as she's meant to be:
a cyclical return: salmon through bear
and back to nurture earth.
Sing me misty riverbank, and green,
a wealth of beauty ours 'tween death and birth.

Sing me a song of rivers flowing to the sea,
wolf howls at midnight under the full moon.
Sing its song of homecoming to me,
for, like the river, I'll be returning soon.



I found this in drafts, written in 2016. I can read it two ways: in 2016, I was still waiting to return to Tofino. Checked that one off my bucket list! Also, at my age, there is the natural returning of bodies to the earth to contemplate. The photo is of the foot of the river at Stamp Falls, where bears often come, as it is on the salmon migratory route. I went there often when I lived in Port Alberni, and sometimes saw bears and eagles there.

Sharing with the Tuesday Platform at Real Toads.

Stitches Made by Fairy Fingers

When I walk into the forest, the big old tree trunks lean their ears towards me, listening. I am singing the Forest Song……song of cedar, draped with Old Man’s Beard, so fine and soft-spun, it looks like small wingéd fairy folk may have stitched it onto the trees.

Perhaps they are peeping out at us, now, from under some mushrooms.

Who decorated the rock with green lace? Who planted the seeds that grew the flaming flowers sprouting on the rock-face?

Moss and seagrass are soft and sweet. Brother eagle, once he has woven his nest of twigs, will gather some to line his nest, so his chicks will have soft beds.

Magical beings live in the forest. Some we see; some hide themselves away. When all Two-Leggeds have gone home at the end of day, and the forest is returned to them, the creatures all come out. Wolf and bear pad softly along the forest trails.

This is the time of fairy-folk, who tiptoe about stitching moss and old man’s beard onto tall branches. Perhaps it is they who lay soft green along the rocks, on which to spread their fine china for fairy repasts under the light of the moon.

Brother Eagle was busy all day building his nest. He is tired now. But Sister Owl keeps watch from a fat, wide branch, her yellow eyes like lamps through the darkness, ready to alert the forest folk should unwelcome guests arrive.

When I visit, next day, the fairy dishes have long since been cleared away, and all of the creatures have hidden themselves, except for Brother Eagle, still working tirelessly at his nest. Strong and wide, it will last for generations of young eagles, who will take that mighty leap from its edge, springtime after springtime, as long as there is earth and water,  sky and tree.

************

313 words for Magaly's Telling Tales Pantry of Prose prompt at 
Poets United:  Stitches. 

I didn't have a photo of old man's beard handy, but it looks JUST like an old man's beard, thin and scraggly, draped among the branches throughout the forest, like angel hair on a Christmas tree.