An Imperfect Offering

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
     - from "Anthem" by Leonard Cohen

Light the incense.
As the smokey vapours rise,
may they carry all our prayers
into the Otherworld.
Let the hundred candles shine,
illuminating and banishing
our dark night,
in this early morning, 
and so transitory light.
Scatter the petals of aging blooms,
making a carpet on which to kneel,
and pray whichever prayer
you feel.

When you are ready,
sound the bell -
one clear and solitary ring.
As our chants begin,
we meditate
on what we have to bring.
May the All That Is accept
in time
our most imperfect
offering.

for Brendan at earthweal, where we contemplate the state of the world, mutating covid, and summon up some hope to ring a solstice bell. 

Being Changed

 

It is a dark, stormy Friday,
and people are dying everywhere.
But, also, people are living,
as best we can in a pandemic,
heading towards our solitary Christmases,
trying to hold out hope
for a better new year.

Winter, Wild Woman says,
is a time of gestation,
from which we hopefully will
emerge transformed.

Wait! Wild Woman spoke
in the middle of her long nap?
Cool!

*This poem has come across vast distances,
has swum the sea, has hopped a plane,
to find you.

Let my poem be a prayer,
a song of hope.

Great forces are at work.
The Ancestors are near,
concerned, and whispering
words of encouragement.

**Our job is not to change the world,
the wise man says -
our job is (to be) changed.

*    Italicized line by Edward Hirscht

**  Italicized lines from "Occupation" by Robert Brighurst - I changed the bracketed words.

Inspired by Wild Writing with Laurie Wagner. Sharing with the good folk at earthweal.

SWIMMING THROUGH A WORLD OF BLUE

 

image from Sharkwater Extinction

The visionary swims through a world of blue,
awakened dreamer, with eyes that see,
champion of the deep sea creatures:
a ballet au deux, in the depths of the sea.

He aches for the creatures he loves so much:
fins sliced off, live bodies
thrown back in the water
to die excruciating deaths,
because humankind has lost its way
not realizing even now there is
a price to pay.

"I know how I will die," he said,
but he didn't know it would be so soon.
He died where he was most at home,
surrounded by the beauties he loved,
so he was not alone.

I watch him swim with these gentle beauties,
see the film he took of those dying in the nets,
their faces showing  agony
that hurts my heart,
because everything needs to change,
and we haven't even made a start.

Young dreamer, you gave your life
for the swimmers in the secret sea,
and because of you, we can only hope,
one day they will swim free.

for my prompt at earthweal: Sharkwater Extinction, about Canadian diver and filmmaker Rob Stewart, who died filming the sharks facing extinction because humans like shark fin soup. Sigh. Fishermen capture them in driftnets (along with many other creatures, all of them doomed to expire), slice off their fins and toss them back into the sea to die. How did we become so barbarous, so wasteful, so disrespectful of life? She asks foolishly.

RAVEN'S GIFT

 

allaboutbirds.org

Raven travelled the Sky Highway
to bring Wild Woman a gift.

"Here is a shiny key," she croaked
in her gravelly voice.
"Though I love its shine,
I have been told it is not mine."

"What doorway will it fit?"
I asked, rather afraid of the answer.

"The door of your heart," she replied,
"which you must keep open,
if you are to do any good at all.
Scatter the news that all is far from lost.
Grab a fistful of hope; creative forces
are swirling in the cosmos.
They are coming to help you."

"That is good news, kind Raven,"
I answered,
offering her crumbled biscuit
on my open hand.
She flew swift away,
bread in her beak, and happy.

A gift for a gift.

An oldie, shared with the good folk at earthweal's open link. May your weekend hold gifts, too.

Waiting for the Light

 

source

The dark creeps in early these rainy afternoons.
A squirrel scampers across the yard
hoping to find a secret nut,
to hide for his Christmas dinner.
What is sleeping now,
waiting through winter darkness
to emerge in spring?

I sow dreams of social and planetary justice;
may they take root in human hearts,
and flourish there. May hope come again
into the minds of humankind.

The animals burrow deep
in wet, cold earth,
hiding from rain, and us,
sleeping through the hungry months
of winter.
We pace our solitary rooms,
light candles, listen to tunes
of peace and goodwill,
songs of spirits rising,
songs of  forging
a future for all earth's children
and all creatures, great and small.*

Our hearts are resting, too,
like sleepy bears,
watching for light to reach
our dark, dank caves.
I have to believe we will emerge
from our long winter
our spirits fortified for the work ahead:
healing the many ills,
(both physical and societal,
oppressive and imposed),
mending the wounds of racism
and inequity, replacing toxic rhetoric
with words of respect and dignity,
binding Mother Earth's wounds
with loving compassion.

Before I leave, this is what
I want you to know:
Life is defined by what we let in,**
not by all that we
let go.

I turn my face to the east,
watch for that light
to climb the sky and usher in
a more enlightened
and transforming spring.

for earthweal, where the topic is Advent. The italicized lines are from:
*a book series by James Herriott and
** from a Wild Writing with Laurie Wagner exercise.

OLD TREE

Like an old tree,

I survived storm and drought,

the clipping and bending

and breaking

of my boughs.

I learned to stand steady

as winds of change

howled through my limbs;

thrust my roots down deep,

braced myself against

the slipping sands

under my feet.

Like an old tree,

I have endured,

weary of my labours,

branches drooping,

bark chipped and pocked,

the foreboding 

of an early frost

nipping at my toes.

I send messages

of encouragement

to young sprouts

popping up,

jostling me,

their growth encroaching

on my space,

as has been the grand design

through all of time.

They will carry my legacy,

my teachings, my dreams,

into tomorrow,

replacing my songs

with their own,

spreading their arms wide,

expanding in the sun,

all the while 

time

is bending me

slowly

into the earth.

An oldie from 2018 to be shared with earthweal's open link #47. Wow! Soon we will be one year old! And what a year it has been.   When I wrote this poem, the prompt was: what do I think of myself? I think: I am a tired old tree. I think: I have risen above my raising, yet been less than what I might have been. We do our best. It is all we can do. Today I walked a wild beach. The waves were breathtaking. I am bemused by the wonder of being back here - this place I missed every day of the seventeen years I was away. Gifts.

Red Fox

 

facebook image
no copyright infringement intended

She said if a red fox had crossed somewhere,
that area was safe.
Safe for whom? Not foxes. Not wolves.
Not trees, all shivering in fear
of the Mighty Two-Leggeds.

They say only the south wind
flattens the grass,
yet I found a circle of bent-over yellow fronds
in the field, where a soft-eyed doe
and her fawn bedded down last night.
So sweet.

There is a story of when the ice detached
and the people floated away,
a polar bear's dream, as she swims,
in desperate hunger, increasing distances
in seas that once were solid underfoot.

We are teachers to our grandchildren,
and what are we teaching them now?
That everything is a resource, put here
just for us? That time is money;
that money rules? But "the spirit liberates,"
my stubborn optimism insists,
refusing to let go of a more just
and sustainable world, 
(which can be ours, if we choose,)
willing it to come into the
consciousness and determination
of seven billion people and the leaders
who lead us - whether over a cliff, or,
at the very lip of disaster, who will
turn it around, legislate the tough changes,
so we can all start the hard work of healing
the sorrowing land.

for Sarah's cool prompt at dVerse: Travels in the Wild, a prompt I could not ignore. The italicized lines are taken from an essay about Alaska in the book Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie.