Sunny Days

Easter Sunday: a wide-brimmed hat with streamers
down the back, white gloves to the wrist,
a polka-dotted dress - everyone filing in
to the small white clapboard church,
hushed, reverential. The priest and altar boys
came out, the census swung back and forth,
the incense wafted. Up in the balcony,
we sang the Magnificat, hearts swelling.

Later, we all went to Grandma's,
for a family meal, men congregating
in the front room,
women busy in the kitchen.

No matter how carefully we set the table,
Grandpa always sat down and "played
checkers" with the salt and pepper shakers,
thumping them one way or the other;
we could never get them right.
The women would crack up laughing.

I remember coloured baskets, with chocolate.
Then, when I was raising my own kids,
there were easter egg hunts in the back yard,
Stephanie finding the low-lying candy,
Jeff skidding along on the ground,
to grab as much as he could.

Then we'd climb Knox Mountain
and fly kites on the grassy field
overlooking the lake.

Sunny days.

Rabbit

I once grew a garden

when the world and I were young,

rows of food to feed my

 smiling, leggy children,

all those summers in the sun.

Fat rabbit,

you wandered down the rows,

eating as you pleased,

then you'd lie down for a snooze

beside me

as I plucked weed after weed.

You grew and grew,

and then one day

went missing from your cage.

I suspect a neighbourhood hunter

came and carried you away.

I remember my summer garden

when the world and I were young,

and a soft fat gentle rabbit

lying beside me

in the sun.

for The Sunday Muse

METAMORPHOSIS

Print by Maria Sibylla Merian

Like the fat, busy spider,

we spun our webs

intricately,

to keep us from seeing

too closely

that the choices

we were making

were weaving

an unbalanced world.

Now the wild world

which we have so long abused

has bitten us back.

We are left with a choice:

to continue along

a path of destruction,

or to begin to restore and heal

Mother Earth and ourselves.

66 words for Words Count with Mama Zen at Real Toads.   Mama Zen, we miss you!

The link between the wild exotic "wet" markets in Wuhan, the virus and humans has been proven.  The markets were closed at the beginning of the pandemic. My heart sank when I learned they were re-opened as soon as the lockdown lifted. It seems we learn nothing.

The Two Faces of Spring

source

Springtime is showing two faces this April:
birds building nests, blooms popping the surface
of warming earth, as, at the same time,
people gone too soon are being
tenderly placed in the ground
of a world gone still and quiet.

We are all waiting for this to pass.

Wild Woman never thought
she would be living through
such a schizophrenic time:
nature's beauty is as golden as it ever was,
at the same time as people are
fighting an invisible monster
that lurks on every surface and strikes
randomly, at will.

Heroes and madmen walk the earth,
their speech as adverse as their characters.
A girl sings a song, sweetly
hoping for better days,
and brings Wild Woman to tears.


for the open link at earthweal.com

A Poem for the Pandemic

Tom Toles - Washington Post

A kind man asked for a poem
to console us in a time of pandemic,
to give us hope that we will emerge from this
better than we have been.

I remember:
a line of military trucks moving slowly
down Italian streets,
come to collect the dead;
a hallway in a U.S. hospital,
filled with stretchers, each one
holding a body in an orange body bag;
a doctor, sitting on the floor,
head in his hands, weeping;
a terrified old man looking at me
over his face mask:
never did we think we would be
living through a time like this,
after everything we've survived already.

But I also remember:
smiling Italians standing
on their balconies, singing,
faces golden in the evening sun;
a Canadian girl on her porch singing
the national anthem;
a row of police cars and fire trucks,
lights and sirens on, slowly rolling
past the hospital,
a thank you to exhausted doctors
and nurses, in tears, but smiling bravely,
outside the hospital doors;
Dr. Bonnie, who has become a folk hero
for flattening the curve in B.C.
with her humble, clear, daily reassurance
and guidance.

The best of us comes out at such times:
people are helping others everywhere.
We re-learn what we sort-of knew:
that we are all connected;
what happens to one happens to us all.

If we have made poor choices, as a species,
we can learn from this and make better ones,
elect intelligent leaders, demand earth-friendly
stewardship of this blue and green boat
we sail through space.

Mostly, I take comfort in
Mother Nature herself,
generously unfolding another beautiful spring
outside my window.
When we act with love
towards each other, this planet
and all its creatures,
earth is already beginning to heal.


for Bjorn, at dverse: he asked for a poem for the pandemic that would offer some comfort.

Wild Woman, On the Move

Wonderful art by Catrin Welz-Stein

with permission

Wild Woman walks in a world of wonder.
Small singing birds fly over and under;
they lead her into the forest wild,
where she's been at home since she was a child.

Wild Woman speaks with talking trees,
strides along the shore in the playful breeeze.
A spirit-wolf guards her as she goes.
She cannot see him, but she knows.

Wild Woman has a secret world,
that all the wild ones have unfurled.
She knows and goes where the wild things are.
She doesn't have to travel far.

Wild Woman, why is there such trouble
in the world? Each day it doubles.
Hide in the forest, children mine,
and don't come out till suppertime.


for Poem a Day in April. And for Brendan at earthweal.

Climate Change and the Pandemic

Tom Toles - Washington Post

Alike as two peas in a pod:
climate change and the pandemic.
Mother Earth has sent us a memo:
we have made her ill
and infected ourselves as well.

They say we are the virus;
the corona is the vaccine.

As we are distracted by
our fight for survival,
in the background,
protections and safeguards
are being stripped away
by the corrupt. Their agenda seems to be
the complete destruction
of everything good
about North American life.
If this qwere a reality show
instead of reality, one might suspect
a Russian plot:
to assist the election of someone
who'd screw everything up.
Are they grinning in St. Petersburg?

What comes next?
Economic collapse? Gunfire in the streets?
Mayhem?

Once the virus is over,
Mother Earth will still be ill,
choices will still need to be made,
choices that should have
been made decades ago.

Will those who are still here
have gotten the message?
Will we move forward into
a more sustainable world?

This crisis has shown us
how swiftly Mother Earth recovers,
if given the slightest help.

Summer lies ahead: wildfires.
People too ill to fight them.
More wildlife dying
along with a gasping, strangled population
of suffering humans.

How quickly we find we are as helpless
as the people of the Middle Ages
when a plague comes to town.
Only there are now
so many of us.
Not enough masks.
Not enough respirators.
Not enough test kits.
"I'm keeping mine.
No help for you."
Exhausted health care workers
who make decisions
they should never have to make,
and wear their heartbreak home each night.

We hang suspended, like a tightrope walker
over Niagara Falls, each step fraught
with danger, asking the question:
will there still be a rope
under our next footfall?

Stay tuned.


for Brendan at earthweal: Climate Change and the Pandemic