What Keeps Me Awake at Night

 

What doesn't keep me awake at night,
is the real question. The climate crisis
is worsening; creatures are going extinct
at an unheard of pace; emissions are not
being reduced, even though the scientists 
warn time is running out.

I stare into the darkness of two a.m.
thinking of the old growth falling,
temperatures rising, floods, tornadoes,
hurricanes, wildfires all increasing;
"heat domes" and "cyclone bombs"
occurring randomly and often. 

And no one connecting the dots;
nothing changing.

Government-speak addresses
climate change: words, words, words
at conference after conference,
where no targets are being met.
Not enough action follows.
Canada funnels 12 billion a year into
fossil fuels and FOUR billion into
climate change.
Corporations still hold
all the power, and they are
killing us.

Half my neighbourhood forest
is coming down, ripped from the earth
by a giant claw: as if the wisdom teeth
of the planet are being pulled.
It will be an even hotter
summer in 2022.
And even before they finish
clearcutting this half, they are
talking about cutting the rest.

At night, as I worry, thin hungry bears
and cougars and wolves stalk the village,
in search of food. Their habitat is now
too small to support them.
They travel farther to find a place
where man is not.

The other night, a hungry bear pounded
the lid of the garbage can in frustration.

What will this world be like
for my great-grandchildren
and their children?
Will they walk hot dusty streets
like hungry bears?
Will water cost a hundred dollars
a gallon? Will wars be fought
over water as they were once fought
over oil?

I stare into the dark.
It gives me no answers.

for earthweal. Inspired by "Things That Keep Me Awake at Night" by Laurie Wagner of Wild Writing.

Strokes of Luck

 

I drove my neighbour to the CoOp and we made it there and back right between two rainfalls.

This week, I am watching the wild geese flying over, so heartened by the honking of their homeward song.

Yesterday afternoon, looking up and out my big window, I saw a heron fly over, looking for all the world like a skinny matron, her purse clutched under her wing, off to go shopping in the sky.

I have a stack of books waiting to be read these rainy afternoons. And cups of tea awaiting sweetener from my less-than-shiny spoons.

I have the gift of being grateful for small things, which makes my life seem very rich indeed.

At writers' group, when they asked for a poem, the one I found folded up in the back of my journal was one that they liked. 

The winter waves are silvery grey at the shore, pounding in like wild horses, so loud their thundering roar.

Memories that once were painful are now softened by the wisdom of my years, shining golden the time when both the world and I were young and all our songs were up ahead, still waiting to be sung.

I have lived 75 years on the planet and am still here tapping at the keys. I am quite pleased.

I have lived enough stories that, if I tell them all, it will take several books and the rest of my life. 

My spirit guides were whispering to me all the way along. They told me everything would be all right. And they were never wrong.

Inspired by "Fifteen Strokes of Luck" by Ellery Akers

Here's a good quote by Mary Karr: Poetry is when you start in a sacred place and then get ziplined to something truer.

In Praise of Remembering

 

The Vaquita

We humans have perfected
the art of forgetting. We forgot
the woolly mammoth, and the sabre-toothed tiger,
barely registered the passing of
the Dodo and the Great Auk.

The Tasmanian tiger tiptoed quietly
out of our dreams, vanishing  silently,
the way the snow leopard
pads elusively the snowy peaks,
keeping safely hidden, and rarely seen.

Did you know the vaquita,
the most critically endangered
marine mammal in the world? There were
only a handful left when last
anyone looked, disappearing before
I even learned their name.

We have perfected the art of forgetting,
turning away from the uncomfortable,
retreating into our privilege,
the warmth of our houses, turning on
our technical distractions, so we
dont have to remember that,
in Madagascar, a million people
are eating cactus leaves to survive
because of drought and climate change.
We just don't want to know.
"Too painful," we shudder. "I just can't."

If we were to remember all the death
and destruction our species has caused,
even in just the last hundred years,
it might topple us out of our ivory towers.
(Plus - ivory. I could write a whole
other poem about that.)

A poet once wrote a poem in praise of forgetting,
but we humans are already too good at that.
What is hard is remembering -
the lost ones, the scorched earth,
the choking and turbulent sky,
the warming seas, the struggling creatures
on land and sea, eating their own version
of cactus leaves, as they silently grow thin
and fade away.

We humans are way too good at forgetting.
We could write a whole encyclopedia
with the names of the lost.

for my prompt at earthweal: The Great Forgetting

Inspired by the poem "In Praise of Forgetting" by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach

Kindness in the Time of Covid

 

I was thinking about the way
we have been huddling in our houses,
feeling cut off from the rest of the world,
other than the horrors we see
on our tv screens, yet how kindness
still weaves itself through our days,
in the way the clerk at the store
calls me "love" because I am elderly,
and no one else has called me that
in decades. It shines in the story
of someone leaping into icy waters 
to rescue a dog the tide carried out,
just before he succumbs; or
how our eyes kindle as they meet
those we know, standing in line
patiently at the Post Office, because
only two can go in at a time;
and how careful we are to mask up,
to stand six feet apart,
to protect ourselves and each other,
because life is so precious,
so suddenly finite.

Old age is the highway of empathy.
By now, we have suffered and recovered
enough times to have compassion for
other struggling humans, not as far, yet,
along the path. We have surpassed
those rushing, impatient years
when we wanted everything at once
and the world, in its wisdom, said "Wait."

So, we beam at small children walking past,
exchange hand waves with infants
in their parents' arms, side/side, side/side,
like the Queen; carry a pocket of treats
for village dogs, who get to know this,
and drag their owners over every time
they spot us. These small moments
of interaction, which now comprise
the social entirety of our lives,
are enough to send us home, heart happy
and smiling, and loving this village,
this Island, this winter-wild ocean
with its roaring waves. 

Maybe these moments 
are, as the poet said,  
the true dwelling of the holy 
in our lives, our own fleeting temples.
They feel so, to me, this extending a smile
of kindness, the glance that says "I see you",
breathing silent blessings as we hold open the door
and  our fellow human walks through --
small gifts of goodwill
to fellow beings hungry for such gestures
of grace and connection, that remind us
we live in a wonderful world,
one that we share together.

I've been thinking
of this all day.

Inspired by "Small Kindnesses" by Danusha Lameris. The italicized words are hers.

LION

Ingwavuma

Not long ago, you were the mightiest of the mighty.
Your roar declared your kingship.
At sunset you lay high on the veld,
the sun shining amber on your golden coat,
peaceful, surveying your domain,
your eyes serene and proud and unafraid.

Other creatures feared you, made wide berth
around your passage, hid themselves
when you came near.

Then the Great White Hunters came,
the Two-Leggeds, beings who smelled 
of blood and death,
more savage and less just
than the lives they stalked.

They decimated your tribe, forced
those of you still living
into “canned hunting compounds”
where, for $35,000 and a piece of their soul,
they could shoot you, take you home
to lay your hide underfoot,
wear your claws on leather thongs,
hang a picture of their mighty conquest
on a wall for all to see how bloodthirsty
they are, grinning like ghouls as they
hold up your heavy head, your lifeless form
to the camera. 

They backed you into a corner.
Were you afraid? No, you stared them down
with an expression that looked very much 
like disgust, contempt.
One raised his rifle; you did not cower,
but stepped towards him, roaring
one last mighty roar
as the shots rang out,
majestic to the very last moment
of your life.

Lion of my heart, for my species
I apologize.
In all our years of domination and plunder,
we have not grown kind and wise;
have yet to learn how to live
with dignity and compassion
- with justice -
on this earth,
a species whose best hope 
is extinction and
rebirth.

for my prompt at earthweal: The Great Forgetting.

This poem is based on the life of a mighty lion, Ingwavuma, who reacted this way when cornered in a canned hunting compound. Some of his descendants, the last of the white lions, are alive today in a lion sanctuary run by the Global White Lion Trust in Africa, begun by Linda Tucker. Her book The Mystery of the White Lions is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. Ingwavuma carried the gene that birthed his white-skinned descendants. Shaman Credo Mutwa prophesies that when the last white lion is gone from the earth, mankind will vanish too.

DONA NOBIS PACEM

 

Peace, a state of being

whose time has come:

for heart-shattered humans,
all over this suffering world,

for starving salmon, whales,

wolves and bears,

for old growth trees, the Ancient Ones,

falling to satisfy corporate greed

in a time of accelerating climate crisis.

May we hear the wisdom

of indigenous elders, who are warning us

to change our ways -

we, in our daily choices,

governments in the tough legislation 

it will take courage for them to pass,

corporations in realizing

you can't breathe, eat or drink money.

May all remember

that every being on this earth

just wants to live.

Peace is Possible.
Believe!

Well. It is a big wish we bloggers have every year, along with  Mimi Lenox and her annual Blogblast for Peace.

It takes courage to keep believing in times like these. But we are poets and words are what we have, so we use them in hopes they will add some positive energy to the universe - and send some love to the beings in the natural world who are suffering, unable to ask us to stop torturing Mother Earth. Peace, my friends, as this tired but beautiful old world turns and turns.

There Are Spirits Here

 

The portal of the night illuminated by moon

and silvery-etched clouds promises cosmic mysteries

to the dreamer who navigates by the stars.

The faint inky outline of the mountains,

huddled along the shore like sleeping giants,

casts a shadow across the land

where once the Old Ones walked.

There are spirits abroad in the land

this night.

I can feel them close, but just beyond

my sight.

Grandfather Cedar towers,

black against the starlit sky.

On the fencepost,

an owl's yellow eyes

are fixed on my passing

like a messenger

from the other world,

oracle,

harbinger,

soothsayer,

feathered prophet.

What are you
trying to tell me?

I ask.

What is it that I

need to know?

"You already know,"
she says.
"The time for listening
is over.
Now it is time
to act."

Looking up,

all is beauty,

all is peaceful,

all is silence,

all is promise.

Yet I feel
our Mother's pain.

I feel the spirits, near,

the eyes of the ancient ones

looking at me with unspoken request.

I see the world as it was in the Old Ways,

shift my vision to what we have become,

weep for the displaced,

the dispossessed,

fur beings and humans alike,

who wander this disintegrating planet

in an endless quest

for sustenance and peace.

Nearby and all across this island

are razed, desecrated slopes

where the Standing People

once stood green and thick and proud.

My thoughts turn to

the creatures that fly and slither,

that swim in the oceans

and lakes and rivers,

waters that now are ailing;

and to the polluted air,
birds falling from the sky,

the melting icecaps,

the damaged ozone.

My heart sends an apology

to the air and mountains,

earth and sky,

that we Two-Leggeds have

so afflicted.

Mea culpa,
to all the hungry bears and wolves.
Mea culpa,
to all the clearcut slopes.
Mea culpa,
to all the creatures
who have silently disappeared
under our watch.
Mea culpa,
that we never even noticed.

Owl tells me:

Place your hands upon

the trunk of Grandfather Cedar.

Sink your roots deep into the earth.

Sing your song of love

beneath Grandmother Moon,

and send it on the midnight wind

to the ancient ones,

who will carry it

to their sweat lodges

in prayerful ceremony.

Yes, there are spirits here,

inviting us to broaden our vision

from the seen

to the unseen,

to clasp hands with the ancestors

who have come to help us heal

Mother Earth's

deep wounds.

Sigh. For Brendan's challenge at earthweal: All Souls