No More Frogs, No More Sad Songs

 

Small roadside tavern,

I put  quarters in the jukebox

but you didn't dance with me.

Your eyes were busy

Looking Elsewhere.

No wonder every song
I played

was a sad song.

When I traded you

for a dog,

my songs got

 SO much happier!

LOL. My first quadrille, with big congratulations and thanks to DVerse on their tenth anniversary. Brian and Claudia are in the house. Yippee! Thank you to the wonderful founders of dVerse, and thanks to Bjorn and Grace and staff for keeping this awesome site going.

When Hope is a Broken Elephant Heart

 

Hope is an elephant with a long memory,
who is the wisdom-keeper of her tribe,
carrying the collective memory of
those old golden days when 
there were more wild ones than humans,
when elephant families, prides of lions, 
zebras and rhinos and chimps roamed the land
in breathtaking numbers, and men walked
warily around the edges of the savannah,
outnumbered and mindful that they entered
this wild world as guests.

(This was before the wild ones were so few,
and humans so greedy and power-mad
that they herded the last few remaining beasts
into "hunting compounds" where brave white hunters
could shoot a trapped lion for $30,000
and a piece of their soul they were too clueless
to ever miss.)

Who are the beasts? Who the predators?
Who are the unleashed ungovernable, who have 
no concept of the rights and the place
of the beyond-human realm
in the ecosystem we call Earth?

My heart feels as heavy as an elephant's memory,
who remembers being torn from his bellowing mother,
screaming, stuffed in a ship's hold
and carried across the sea,
to live out his life in a concrete enclosure,
or stand on his tippy-toes in a circus ring
to make people laugh (those who are
not weeping.) 

When humans get too big for their britches,
natural consequences hold them to account.
Witness: wildfires wiping out a town overnight.
Witness: unprecedented heat, freak storms,
pandemics, floods, shifting ground,
cliffs falling into the sea, buildings built on sand
collapsing with all the living bodies inside,
who only moments before were making coffee,
watching tv, thinking about
what to make for supper.

And the hidden toll: billions of beings:
dying in warming seas,
wild ones who cannot outrun the flames,
those starving and displaced who wander 
into towns and are shot or who drown
swimming from island to island in search of food,
because we are too many and, now,
they are too few?

My hope becomes a sad old broken elephant heart
- endangered, sorrowing, heavy,
longing for the time that used to be,
when the wild ones roamed the savannah
and the white man trod its edges carefully.
When we knew what was wild and required respect -
before we became the wild, ungovernable ones,
and lost the respect of all other creatures
for our absolute and utter failure to care.

for earthweal where I try to contemplate hope while feeling rather hopeless. The west coast is burning from California on up. 301 wildfires are burning in B.C.  Vernon, a large Okanagan city, is under threat. Last week Lytton burned down to the ground, people escaping within minutes of losing their lives. One survivor said had it happened at two a.m. the town would be a graveyard now, as they barely got out in time. And a long hot summer ahead.

In the Wildwoods II

In the wildwoods,

do you hear the keening 

of ancestral voices

through the trees?

Ghost riders

on the winds of change,

they wait to see 

if we choose the way

Mother Earth needs us to go,

or keep repeating
the folly

that we know.

In the wildwoods,

listen to the talking trees;

they will teach you

how to heal, if you listen.

The Mother Tree will show you

all her offspring,

and how she nurtures them

under the ground,

how she helps all others,

the Mother Tree as giving

as any other mother.

In the wildwoods,

wolves walk soft-pawed

and listening, alert

to any danger,

big ears upright

and attuned.
In the wildwoods,
my spirit wolf
is between two worlds,
new-mooned.

He always went 
before me

on the path,

and I would follow.

Sweet wolf,

I'll not stop looking

'til I find you.

Keep waiting;

I am not that far

behind you.

shared with earthweal's open link

LOONS AT PORCUPINE LAKE

 

A loon at Porcupine Lake

The loons are calling at Porcupine Lake,
haunting cries as one flits across the water,
swift-winged, after his mate,
and I think of you, old pal of mine,
how we walked so many miles
of shoreline, explored so many
forest trails, you ahead, always,
tail up, eyes bright, your wild heart
thrilling as you visited
your wilderness home.

I knew you always wanted to stay.
You'd pick up a piece of driftwood,
carry it back to the car, climb reluctantly in,
dejected till the next time
I pointed the nose of the car
towards our lost home.

Then you'd bark, so excited,
and leap from back seat to front,
from front to back, your big tail
whapping me across the face
with every jump, me laughing,
your eyes full of joy,
heading home. Heading home.

Now I am here without you,
old pal of mine, and the lonely cry 
of the loon flying after its partner
is my heart winging its way to you
across the years and miles.
(How many miles is it from here
to the Rainbow Bridge? Too many
for any but hearts to make the passage.)

for Pup.

We Are All One

"We are not solitary waves."*
Wickaninnish in blue.

II.

We are all one, sing the beings of earth,
their song wafting through the forest
and along the shore.
But we stay too noisy to hear their song.

We are not solitary waves.*
We are a drop of ocean; and we are
ocean. We are small, but many,
and are learning late to walk
with soft footprints, to take
and to restore with careful hands.

We walk in fragile beauty with blind eyes.
We accept unthinkingly all that
Mother Earth so generously gives,
even as the planet heats,
birds fall from the sky,
and the life-giving trees
keep coming down.

Flames lick across forests and towns;
terrified wild ones flee, and
whole towns burn.
The sea warms; octopuses
walk out of the waves to die upon the beach.
"Too hot!" gasps Salmon, as small fry
shrivel on dry riverbeds. "Too hungry!" says Bear,
thin and gaunt along the water's edge.
"Too many of you!" says Wolf,
habitat gone, and with no place to hide.

We are waking in the middle
of a nightmare, learning late: 
we are all one;
what happens to one will
happen to us all.

We walk in fragile beauty, with blind eyes.
What we need to change is
Everything.

for Brendan's challenge at earthweal: Interdependence.

* A line from the song "Solitary Waves" by the wonderful Wyrd Sisters.

A man from Lytton being interveiwed on the news about his flight through the flames from his town that burnt to the ground that night, said "We're the canary in the cage. It's coming for us all." And still corporate criminals have such control over the government that politicians mouth empty platitudes and do not take the strong and immediate actions needed in our existential and very evident crisis. 

CONNECT THE DOTS

 

Lytton, Now and Then
Fire Department photo

I.

What will it take for us to understand
that the health of a river, a forest,
a species, is deeply connected
to our own - that our physical
and spiritual selves,
our cities and villages,
air, and sky, creatures and plants
large and small, are all interwoven,
that we struggle and suffer and die,
or flourish,  bud and grow,
in equal measure to how we humans
live upon the earth?

We walk in fragile beauty
with blind eyes. We accept
unthinkingly, all Mother Earth
has to give. 

The temperature climbs up and up.
The trees keep coming down.
The sea warms up, and octopuses
walk out of the sea to die upon the beach.
"Too hot!" gasps Salmon, as the small fry
shrivel on dry riverbeds. "Too hungry!" says Bear,
thin and gaunt along the water's edge.
"Too many of you!" says Wolf,
habitat gone, and with no place to hide.

"We are all one" indigenous elders say.
"Trees and animals are our relatives.
Water is Life, and sacred. 
If we protect the earth,
she will protect us."
They watch with sad eyes 
at the planet burning up,
at wildlife fleeing the flames
in terror. The rest of us
make a lot of noise,
so we can't hear; we stay
too busy, so we can ignore
the mounting peril.

It is becoming too clear
to deny: we have passed
the tipping point.

When we understand that one day
our town, too, will burn; when
grocery shelves stay empty because
the crops all died; when water
is our most essential need 
and it is scarce - will we then
connect the dots and moan:
"Too late. Too late."?

Stay tuned. Humankind
is waking up in the middle
of a bad dream.
What we need to change
is Everything.

Our best hope is to unite our voices across the planet, in numbers significant enough that governments can't ignore us; to speak with force considerable enough to out-shout the corporate criminals who now hold governments in their sway; to vote climate deniers out and climate warriors in. Right now, it's not looking good. My friend holds onto her belief that the transformation of consciousness will occur in response to the crises coming towards us one after another. It is a shame we didn't transform in time to prevent what is unfolding. Humans have always been slow learners, for all we think we're so smart. 

LYTTON, R.I.P.

 

Lytton Then and now
photo by Lytton Fire Department

"We're the canary in the cage,"
he said.

"It is coming for us all."

He fled the burning town through flames,

running for his life. Now he owns

his vehicle, his t-shirt and a pair of shorts.

The wildfires ate his town.

Some people are unaccounted for.

I think of the wildlife trapped in the flames,

the burning, the pain, the terror;

the heat waves still to come,

the other towns at risk
through the long summer,

the planet heating more each year

until we all are fried,

while legislators talk in circles

and the status remains quo.

"We're the canary in the cage,"
he said.

"It's coming for us all."

The town of Lytton, B.C. burned down night before last after the heat wave B.C. experienced last week. There are 230 active wildfires still burning, some towns on evacuation alert. Lightning strikes overnight have helped to spread the conflagration. 23 fires span more than ten hectares; ten are bigger than a thousand hectares. This means even less trees to counter the rising temperatures. Even replanting now wont help us. They MUST NOT cut down what forest remains. I will continue my letter writing campaign to elected officials. How can they not connect the dots? Gah.