No Country for Old Women

 

Grotesque brutality and unfathomable

unkindness - how did our world arrive

at this place where cruelty and violence

abounds?

I am watching death and sorrow
on my tv screen.
I am seeing acts of hatred on the news -
humans harming other humans
in ways too horrible to name.

I remember meadows, and the smell of sage

and Ponderosa pine. I remember hollyhocks

in my Grandma's garden.

I remember peace on summer mornings
in the safest place I knew.

I remember when my dreams were certain

that all would turn out well.

This is no country for old women,
we grandmas who have achieved a peace
the young have yet to find. 
They seem so unforgiving.
They throw words around like shrapnel
that lies embedded in the heart.

This is no country for old women.
I retreat into my shores of peace.
I remember meadows, the smell of sage
and Ponderosa pine. I remember hollyhocks
in my Grandma's garden,
peace on summer mornings
in the safest place I knew.

I heard a journalist refer to putin's grotesque brutality and terror tactics. The phrase stayed with me. There is a lot of gratuitous unkindness around, even in places where there is no war. People seem on edge with all that is going wrong. They are extremely reactive. I retreat.

I'll Take Everything

 

This long journey has brought me

tears and laughter, hard times, and

golden times. It brought me Brock and Friends,

who led me out of a Siberia of the heart

into the sunshine. It brought me ten years 

by the sea in the place of my dreams:

wild waves, old growth forests,

the blockades of '93, a black wolf puppy.

It brought me heartbreak when I had to leave

such joy behind. And joy when life
brought me back again.
 It has brought me struggle

and how to grow a never-give-up heart.

It has taught me to Be the Observer 

of other peoples' jangly stuff. My heart

whispers: let it be. Time is the great teacher.

(My time is short. They may not learn

until after I am gone, but this is

their journey to make, as I make mine.)

Today, though I wish it otherwise,

brings a terrible war across the sea:

genocide, horror, sorrow, suffering

from which we cannot turn away.

(If they can live it, we can bear witness.)

Today also brings springtime blossoms,

another wolf-dog fixing me
with his pale blue eyes,

a bear wandering through the trails,

awaiting berries. A deer is nibbling
at the bird feeder, waiting for
the grass to grow. Across the sea,
under the same sky,
bombs are falling on grandmothers
and babies. Dogs cower in corners,
shivering violently, as the missiles hit.
Somewhere else, there are fields
full of baby lambs.

In poems, joy and sorrow are mates.

In a poem, it doesn't matter that my thoughts

bounce from light to dark and back again.

It is all life, in this aging body that's

bending towards the earth. Even the infirmities

are blessings; it is a privilege to still be here,

still traveling. This is the deal:

we never know what spoonful will be served

to us next. But we say, with faith and hope:

I'll take everything on the menu.

Inspired by Everything On the Menu by Ellen Bass. The italicized lines are hers.

Today's Sermon

 

Today's sermon is two ancient cherry trees

loaded with white blossoms.

It is sun breaking through clouds

after days of rain.

It is a sad wolf-dog, in need of love,

resting his head on my shoulder

and heaving a big sigh.

Today's sermon is appreciation

for the ordinary, the small pleasures,

the larger joys, in a world

spiraling wildly out of control.

Today's sermon looks for grace

in the places where it is hard to find,

and extends it to those

who need it most,

even if they don't know how 

to say thank you for trying.

Today's sermon says

count your blessings

because, on any given day,

everything you know

and everything you love

can disappear.

Inspired by Today's Sermon by Cheryl Dumesnil.

FOREVER WILD

 

Through three decades of

trauma and oppression,

caged, abused, in search of Me,

there was something in my spirit

that said one day I'll be free.

In those years of growing whole,

of refurbishing my soul,

nature called to me, her child,

told me I'd be forever wild.

I followed my heart to the ocean's roar,

was happier than ever before.

Forest and waves restored my soul.

Steeped in nature, I grew whole.

In years when I am watching

the world that I love dying,

all the wild things crying,

it is to nature that I turn

for solace, as the seasons burn.

Even though we treat her ill,

she is our Mother, loves us still.

Always, I am nature's child.

I'll always be forever wild.

For my prompt at earthweal: Everwild, inspired by Ingrid Wilson's wonderful poem Everwild.

In the Lobby of Hotel Zed

 

In the lobby of Hotel Zed,

there is a photo of activists

on the road in Clayoquot Sound 

in the summer of '93. I was there,

some misty mornings before dawn,

listening to the gentle beat of the tom-toms,

breathing in woodsmoke from the fire,

waiting for the big trucks to roll in,

and the police to come and make their arrests.

Let's name a few things: old growth.

Forestry. Clearcuts. Climate change.

Heat domes. Wildfires. Floods.

Instability.

Back then, we were warning
that time (and trees) were running out.

Today, we are past the tipping point.

Clearcuts are still happening,

along with all the rest.

In the lobby of Hotel Zed,

there is a fun cubicle draped

with curtains, that has a crystal ball

on the table, over which I crooked my fingers,

invoking the future, to make

my friend laugh. 

Then we drove into town,

past all the trees coming down,

and our smiles faded, the way
the fires went out when they shut
the Peace Camp down,
the way the land defenders
at Fairy Creek stopped singing
when the pepper spray
hit their faces, the way
we're still trying to save trees
when there are hardly any
forests left alive.

Inspired by In the Lobby of Holiday Inn Express by Jean Reinhold. Shared with earthweal's open link.

A Poem for Your Pocket

 

When I'm looking for light,
I read poems.
When I'm fleeing heartache,
I write them.
Maybe I look out my window
and see some small puff-ball clouds
slowly moving across my morning sky,
or two eagles, circling,
wind-surfing the thermals.

This is your poem.
I want it to speak to
that part of your heart
that has walked many miles
to reach it.

Perhaps you don't read poetry,
thinking it a country of no resonance
for you. Perhaps, if you give it a try,
it will surprise you, connect
with a feeling, a shared experience.
Maybe you will do a mental double-take,
realising that words can dance,
sometimes - albeit infrequently -
so nimbly across the page,
like young Jack leaping the candlestick
all those many years ago.

This is your poem.
If it bores you, no worries.
This poem's feelings cannot be hurt.
Like the tired heart
that composed it, it has seen enough pain
to not need to go down those roads again.

Keep this poem
in your heart's pocket,
and, one day when I am gone,
come back and find
me in it
once again.

Inspired by Poem for People That are Understandably Too Busy to Read Poetry by Stephen Dunn. Sharing with earthweal's open link. Heavens, has another week gone by so fast????????

Blossoms

Today I could do so many things:

wash the car, clean my rooms,

work on my memoir, wash the windows,

address an estrangement
I do not understand.

But Doing requires energy and, these days,

Being takes what little life force I have.

So instead I will sit in the sun, and rock.

I will commune with bees and hummingbirds,
breathe in the scent of cherry blossoms
and newly cut grass.

I will watch my small swiss chard

and kale plants turn their leaves up

to the warmth and straighten their small stems.

Today, it will be enough to be alive,

on a springtime morning,
on the edge of the sea,

watching the rest of the world

stroll by. 

Inspired by This Morning I Could Do a Thousand Things by Robert Hedin. This afternoon, while watching the news, and hearing more horrors, I look up to see two eagles, circling in the sky out my big window, and I feel blessed.