WILD WOMAN LOSES IT COMPLETELY

Wild Woman was feeling discouraged.
No one was "getting it" - the message
everything in the natural world has
been trying to say, for years.

Then, she met a happy, bouncing black lab
in the park and gave him a treat.
It made her happy.
She watched some Canadian doctors singing
"We Rise Again". They made her cry,
and remember how beautiful
most humans can be.
Top that off with an hour of uplifting stories
from Canadian front lines,
and a cross-country video
of schoolchildren singing Oh Canada,
and she is done for.
Tears, heart all squeezed
and bunchy -
and springing back to life and hope again.

Wild Woman wants to invite
all of her American friends
to move to Canada.
Please. Come up. Be happy
and cared for.
It's nice up here.

Orange Folly

Hanging In There

Wonderful art by Catrin Welz-Stein

with permission

Wild Woman's spirit is flagging.
Awaiting the transformation of consciousness
on the planet
is proving exhausting.
Humans are slow to learn,
even when all the facts are clear.

There is an orange fool
whose reality tv show
Narcissist Emperor of the World
would not be believable
even as fiction.
Sadly, this folly is only too real.
His lips flap every day:
ever more outrageous.

"Make it stop," Wild Woman pleads.
She is barely hanging in.


for Day 15 at Real Toads: Folly. Didn't have to look far. Given the thousands of people who have died because of the orange fool's incompetent handling of the corona virus, it is a bit much to hear him criticizing the World Health Organization. But that is what he does: accepts no responsibilty, deflects by blaming others. Make him stop. Vote him out. Please. Consider it a public service to the world. Smiles.

I can't get over the yes-men around him, evasive eyes, uncomfortable nervous smiles, abdicating their responsibility to the people, allowing him to run the U.S. right into the ground.

My Muse is flagging, given the weight of all that is happening - that will continue to happen if governments and people worldwide do not change our ways. It is a relief to be old, at this point.

Small Bat, Humming

source

A small bat flew low and
whispered in Wild Woman's ear:
"They are barbecuing my relatives,
and other creatures, and are blaming us
for the pandemic."

"The pandemic is not your fault,"
Wild Woman assured her,
offering her a bell-shaped blossom
so she could sip some nectar.
"Humans have been interfering
with wild creatures for too long,
and now we are paying the price."

Small Bat looked relieved.
"What can we do about this?"
she asked, sounding doubtful
that she could do anything at all.

"We humans can leave wild ones in the wild,
and close all the places where animals suffer,"
Wild Woman replied.

"Oh, that sounds good," smiled Small Bat,
stretching a foot up, curling it
around a branch, swinging softly
upside-down, and humming.


I am discouraged that, even though experts are calling for the closing of all global wild and exotic animal trafficking, and even though the virus began in the wet markets of Wuhan, that the markets reopened the minute the lockdown in China was eased. Experts say there will be another pandemic
if all such markets are not closed. Can you imagine? Another pandemic on the heels of this one?

for my prompt at earthweal: the connection between wild animals, us and the pandemic.

Sunset

Back then, I would see you at sunset,
walking along the shore with your camera
and your dog,
as I was walking along with my camera
and my dog.
I was smitten, but we both were shy.

Once you sat down beside me
at the Alley Way,
and I bolted, too awkward and admiring
to sit and stay.

One day, on the bus, both of us heading
to the city, you confessed
there was a woman you had really loved,
but you had not been ready to commit
and so she did not stay.
"Now I am," you said, "but I have
a long-distance love."
"And then, there's me," I thought,
but did not say.

Now you live across the hall from me
in this old building. Isn't life strange?
We have both settled into the solitary lives
we did not plan.
We are both happy, maybe a little lonely,
resigned to our dogless existence,
still walking solitary shores at sunset,
cameras in hand.

Do you know that I once dreamed of you?
That when I ran away, that day, I've always wished
that I had had the courage and the confidence
to stay?


for Day 12 at Real Toads:   to write to someone who doesnt know we love them. Ha. He lives right across the hall from me, because life is ironic, like that.

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.