This Is What the Heart Does

This is what the heart does: it hopes -

that everything will be all right,

no matter how impossible that feels 

right now; that light will banish darkness,

love erase hate; that compassion and insight 

will walk the halls of power with kind

- not killing - eyes.

The heart wants what it wants:

a happy ending. Even better,

a happy beginning, and a smooth road

ahead. My eyes are too old

for fairy tales. It is two days till Earth Day,

and they say they can't plant trees fast enough

to make climate deadlines. They need
thirty extra years that
we don't have. The trees can't

grow fast enough to absorb the carbon.

And I wait to hear - but never hear -

that we need to curb emissions now. Because

that won't bring in enough votes,

even though people and animals

are dying, being displaced, suffering

in floods, and drought, and wildfires.
Even though climate refugees
- with and without fur -
are everywhere, and one day
it will be us.

How is it that every poem I begin

winds up being about earth's struggle

to survive with too many of us on it?

Am I hoping someone will hear

who will raise the alarm in a way

that will galvanize world leaders,

finally, to act?

This is what the heart does:

it hopes. 

This poem was inspired by the title of a poem by Jessica Lee: What the Heart Does. Happy Birthday, Mother Earth. And, hopefully, many more.

AFRICA

 

The actual balloon in this poem.

Africa,

land of my dreams,

landscape of my heart,

filled with all the wild ones

I adore,

we did not meet in person

this lifetime,

though we would have,

had life been more kind.

But my friend

once sailed across the Serengeti

in a hot air balloon

at dawn.

She said she thought of me, then,

and so, in that sense,

I was there,

gazing down on acacia trees,

zebras, elephants walking

ponderously across the plains,

my ears perked to hear

the call of lions

waking in the morning mist.

Her photos of a giraffe's long

eyelashes, taken close up,

and the elephants beneath

the baobab, struck my heart.

She sent me a box of photos
from that trip, to share
her joy with me.

I opened them with reverence,

saw my beloved Africa,

in image after image,

beauty captured through her eyes,
a dream come true

in the golden amber

of an African afternoon.

Some of these photos of the balloon ride can be seen at Lynette Killam's site, The Imaginative Traveler, here. But if you type Africa into the search bar, there is much, much more. Her other site, Imagination Lane , has some great stuff too. Lynette and I have been friends since our sons were seven months old, in baby buggies.......she is the one who urged - insisted - I start a blog, and gave it its name. I am forever grateful for how that opened my poetic doors, connected me with poets all over the world, and unleashed a virtual storm of poems I otherwise would not have written. What a trip it has been!

In the Season of Waterlogged Cherry Blossoms

 

Zoey

The two old trees out my window bloomed,

but days of rain have soaked the white blossoms, 

curled like small fists in the cold.

My sister's dog was sad when we said goodbye.

But "I'll be back!" I said, our rallying cry.

I always arrive with toys. The routine is,

she pokes her head into my cloth bag

and snatches them out herself. I tried

handing her a new toy this time.

She looked at me, until I put it back

in the bag so she could choose it herself.

A small autonomy, honouring 

our long tradition.

If the Hat Fits.....

If a hat makes the man

and a bonnet the woman,

make mine the beige knitted cap with visor

that i wore in the 80's,

tucking my long hair into it

to hide the dissarray.

I removed it once at the hairdresser's

saying "my hair....needs help",

wild locks falling every which way,

and the girl cracked up.

The cap disappeared suddenly. I mourned.

The kids told me later they threw it up

on top of the shed because

it embarrassed them. (I had to find

other ways.) That cap.....those years.....

my kids still young and laughing.....

I found a hat just like it in old age.

I never wore it.

Its time had passed.

For The Sunday Muse

Farm Reverie

 

First, our mother's farm, 

a dream realised. The pond,

a froggy chorus at nightfall,

chickens roosting in the trees,

our mother happily baking bread

and making big Sunday dinners.

Then my sister's, a succession of dogs 

in the yard and horses in the field, 

the arrival of a partner who made 

every inch of house and land 

even better. New horses,

the newest dog, patrol the grounds.

The trees still stand guard 

out the kitchen window

in their accustomed place,

reassuring in a world where

everything has changed.

The hills, the view, the peace

remain the same. So many years,

and still, when family think

of home, somewhere to return to

and gather, this is the place

we call the hub, our various

spokes poking out to

the wider world.

ETERNITY'S FACE

 

source

A few years ago, Paul Dear and I were paired to collaborate on a poem at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, a most inspiring writing site, where many of us wrote together for years. (I do miss Toads.)  I was remembering that poem today and thought I would post it, in honor of April Poetry Month, along with our discussion of our process in putting it together. Here is the link to the original post.

ETERNITY’S FACE

Into the dark I move.
Arms out, eyes blind for now.
Feeling for the way ahead
with feet and with hands.

Use caution, wayfarer.
This way, there be dragons.
Who sent you journeying?
What is it that you seek?
Do you have a question for
Wild Woman of the woods?

My senses are my caution
and dragons I have met and slayed.
I answered my own call
and so seek only truth.
This question I ask of you.
What is it makes you wild?

It is the song of the sea,
the howl of a wolf, the way a tree
tells herself to me.
It's the beat of the drum,
my heart's answering thrum.
It's the ancestors speaking
inside of me.
How does the land speak to you,
fellow pilgrim?
What secrets whisper to you
on the wind?

This land speaks to me with a voice
older than time itself.
An elemental whisper of the aes sidhe
carries itself within my soul
and sings to me of the temporal nature
of things.
I walk here now in the green.
I will also be gone
and only an echo remain.
What lies beyond oh wild woman?

I have peeked up and over
the brow of the hill
on the way to Eternity.
The ancients, ululating
a welcome song,
beckoned me with gnarled fingers.
I tried not to see.
There was a barren desert beyond,
and a river.
I heard the ferryman paddling
around the bend,
singing as he came for me.
Then I came back into my body.
Not time yet. Not yet.

Then it comes clear, my task
and the source of my beckoning.
I am to walk beyond the veil
into the land of my ancestors.
Into the ferryman's boat must I go
and across the great river,
and you, wild woman of the woods,
you must guide me there.

Death is that river, turbulent,
catching us up and
roaring us through rock-walled chasms,
green with weeping.
It plunges us into the maelstrom,
dashing us onto the rocks
so eagles may feed.

It swirls us 'round, then settles us,
lighter, and relieved of our earthly burden,
in peaceful ponds along the shore,
where coyote and wolf
may find us.

I will meet you there at twilight
on the last day.

Well met it is then and will be on that last day.
I am all swept up in that turbulence now.
Those eddies spin me beyond any idea of retreat.
So it is then that I must loosen this blanket of life,
so that in death I may come to the answer I seek,
that final truth which calls me across the waters,
and it is the knowing that I must die and relinquish
all which bears me forward to face my own face,
born and dead.

Part II

I am dead. It is done.
I have crossed over the water’s threshold.
Life exists only on a distant shore now
and here a dark unknown surrounds me.
My faith was strong enough to leap but
now my heart crumbles and I am alone
with this void, this fear and an echo of my life.
Silent tears call out in vain. Where now?

Traveler, when there is no path,
the Way is the path.
Turn your face towards the void;
seek a glimmer of light.
In trust, we walked our earthly shore,
and now our quest is to discover
something More.

These words torment my mind.
Zen circles that spin me endlessly.
The void is all there is.
How can I face all ways at once?
My faith is lost and with it all trust.
Damned I am to dwell in darkness.
If the way is the path then my path
is to nowhere. I am lost.

Traveler, you are All Soul now.
Spirit sees in all directions
and will find its way.
Listen into the Wind.
Somewhere, there is an opening.
When you find it, you must enter,
for there is no going back.

Then darkness is my opening
and in that I now see the light.
I am made of nothing and of everything.
I am the wind and the space
into which it must blow.
I am the question and the answer.
I am life and death.
That one face, born and dead.


                  ***

When our names were first paired, I was intrigued. Paul and I didn’t know each other well, and our styles are very different. I expected our exercise would be interesting, but I think we were both somewhat astonished at how easily it came together, and the direction it took. We plunged deep.

The tandem idea was always interesting to me and Sherry sent an email that landed when I was delivering a training program in Kuala Lumpur. Sherry and I had not had much contact other than poem comments and so this was a blind date of sorts. There followed a short email conversation and finally after some gentle nudging I sat down to write when I landed back in the UK. I was jet lagged and unsure about how to proceed so I began where I was. In the dark.

The beginning was open enough that it left me a lot of scope for a reply. And then the poem just took off.

We enjoyed this exercise so much that, once we reached what we thought was the end of the poem, we continued the conversation a bit further in Part II.

Paul: I was happy to begin the tandem poem as I tend to work very often from a place of ‘not knowing’ what is going to come when I write. Beginning felt natural. Then it was really just a statement of where I was in the process. In the Dark.

Sherry: When I received your first stanza, it left me wide open to respond and, instantly, the words began to flow. My Wild Woman persona showed up right on time, and began to speak. I just stepped out of the way.

Paul: Here the door opens to the poem. Now I’m on a journey and am quizzed about my motivation. In response I have to learn more about this Wild Woman. Who she is and what she is made of? Her answers evoke myth in me and ancestral voices. I mention the 'aes sidhe' who I have encountered in Irish mythology (my own heritage). This ancient race and our connection to the Earth are interwoven into my own story and so the idea brews now in my head of the ‘otherside,' the land beneath the sidhe, the otherworld. So I ask that question at the end of the stanza.

Sherry: I am of Irish heritage as well. Your reference to the “ancestral voices” spoke to me. That question was a great hook for me, as I have contemplated death and eternity many times in my work these recent years, when time is ever more finite. It was a pivotal question in the direction the poem took. Wild Woman was in full roar now, and I waited with anticipation to see what your character would say, and how she would respond. For it was clearly Wild Woman at the keyboard, and not me. Smiles.

Paul: It gets interesting here because the response lines up with the feeling that had been evoked in me earlier, and I now see that a threshold is present and must be crossed.

Sherry: Paul, I am curious about your closing line in Part I, the “facing your own face, born and dead”. Can you explain a bit about that?

Paul: Sometimes when I write a line I have no idea what it fully means. It just sounds or feels right. Later meaning may come. With this line that was very much the same. I remember thinking 'what do I really mean here?' Then you actually asked me!

After some thought and a little exploration of a few myths that were brought into a more conscious view, I think that this line for me is looking at the idea of Katabasis.

Born is where I am at this point....at the threshold....Dead is where I must go to find 'that other', be it a person or, as it turns out, an ‘awareness’.

Sherry: It reminds me of the Buddhist teachings about our “original face”, the one we had before we were born. I assume this is the face we reclaim after death, the Soul-face or Being that is our eternal essence, in life and in death, throughout our many lives.

It was with astonishment that I watched this poem become a journey into death and beyond. It was quite magical. It soon seemed necessary to both of us to continue with a Part II. One cannot leave a journey incomplete.

Paul: I agree. Part II wrote itself out of need. The whole process of exploring the unknown only to discover we were looking at life and death was incredible. The writing of the poem mirrored the journey we wrote about. For me, in the context of the final piece, death was a liberation, complete and total, and whilst we talked about a possible part III, a return of some kind, I felt that the final stanza was final and Sherry concurred. There was nowhere to return from...or to.

How to Stay Steady in a Spiralling World

 

photo by Erin McMullin

Deep breaths.

Take a walk in the forest, to observe

the eternal trees and ponder

longevity.

Look for the bright, inspiring young,

speaking truth to power, even when

it costs them everything. Recognize

their passionate raised voices

as hope.

Receive the blossoms of spring

as earth's promise that she

will try to live, in spite of

all we have done to harm her.

If all else fails, find a beach 

full of ecstatic, whirling dogs,

and watch joy in action.

Robert Brewer's prompt today was to write a "How to" poem.