When I Come Back, I Will Be Grief

 

The Cameron Lake fire
outside Port Alberni, B.C.
Jacob Laxen photo

We start out whole,

losing pieces of ourselves 

along the way,

and then reclaiming them. 

That is the journey.

I am collecting the last few bits,

before I fly into the light.

I pick them up:

ah, there you are!

and add them to my pack.

When I return,

I will change my shape.

I will be cattails, 

standing dry, bent and broken

at the edge of the dried-up pond.

I will be wolf-pup, 

peering fearfully from my den,

knowing, to survive,

I must elude

Earth’s biggest enemy:

the predatory Two-Leggeds,

and they are

everywhere.

I fear

I will find a planet burning,

from Big Oil,

humans and animals 

on the run.

I will be Tree,

gasping for air,

a sudden irradiation

as the orange tongues

lick greedily at my corpse.

I will be deer,

fleeing the flaming forests.

I will be mother orca, holding 

my dead newborn calf 

above the water

for seventeen days, grieving,

unable to let her go,

saying to the humans:

See! See what you have done!

I will be grief itself,

watching the world I love

burning itself up. 

As I am now.

As I am now.

 

One from 2018, shared with Desperate Poets. And now the world is burning close to home;
I am already grieving. Due to the Cameron Lake fire, the only highway in to Port and the west coast has been closed for two weeks and is not expected to open until mid-July. Supplies are being convoyed through a rough back logging road. The apocalypse edges ever nearer.

On Gratitude and Grace

 

When everything I loved was gone,

and bitter words hurled at me in the taking,

I was left with the blue sky,

with the green shawl of the forest

draped across my shattered soul: with soft moss,

thick trunks, each old tree's beating heart.

When there was nothing left to gather,

there was grace: no possessions,
I was forced to

dig down deep to find something

to offer others, and discovered
I had love
to give away.

When there is nothing left to say,

at the end of all the losing 

- all the gathering, all the grace -

looking back at all that

I have loved so well, the glorious

years that fortified my soul,

there is only this: I have loved this world

completely, with my full

and ever-faithful
blue-sky heart, which beats

one note unstintingly,
with my spirit's call
to all the gods and angels:

 I'm so grateful
for it all.

For Paul Dear's wonderful challenge at Desperate Poets: where we are pondering wrestling with angels, grace and gratitude. And grit!

The Dreamtime

 

Uluru

connecting with the dreamtime

tapping into the deepest well

of our collective memories

with eyes closed, I call up

the Ancestor Beings,

here when this world

began, with its

mountains and rivers

and trees,

its air and fire

and water

when their work was

complete, they

traveled back

into the earth

and slept

sometimes their spirits

stayed behind

in rocks or trees,

and these became

sacred places

Today we're in

the Dreaming -

in the Now-

the only time

the aborigines

recognize

Feel the spirits

of the Ancestors,

as you chant

to the beat

of the drum

Look quickly

across the campfire

and you might catch

their shadows,

see their kind

wisdom-eyes

Hear them say:

"Right now one

of your eyes

is sleeping,

but one of them

is awake.

When you see

with both eyes,

we will awaken

from our dreaming

to join you,

and the world

will be made new"

We need those new eyes desperately.

From 2013. Inspired by Julian Lennon's wonderful documentary Whaledreamers, a wonderful film about a gathering of aboriginal elders from all over the world, who came together at ancient headlands above the sea in Australia, where in old times, the aborigines would sing out to call in the whales, and they would come. They gathered in this spot, to perform that ceremony and, breathtakingly, in response to their eerie song, the whales came. It was uplifting, mysterious and utterly wonderful.

Random thoughts about the aborigines, the deep pain of the elders who mourn all that has been lost to their culture, and the mysterious Dreamtime, informed this poem. Tofino is situated on ley lines, and is a power spot, much like Uluru. Ancient energies are aswirl here, in this place guarded by the Nuu chah nulth people.

shared with Desperate Poets' open link

How to Make Them Stay

 

My wild mind clawed its way out of the desert,

across the mountains to the western sea,

plunged itself into old growth forest,

saturated my heart with starfish and eagles

and herons and grinning joyous beach dogs,

plunged into the surf, discovered - breathlessly -

bioluminescence, fell in love with mountain,

sea and sky. This place was the entire answer

to my soul's question: why?

My wild spirit first had to flee abuse,

oppression, patriarchy, everything

that set itself to limit the expansion of my soul.

I found my wild heart's home in the green places,

with the wild ones. There is a certain landscape

that called to me, wherein I finally

grew whole.

Green fire! I find it among the ancient trees,

fierce love, as I try to save those who are left.

A wolf howl in my heart that grieves

all that is passing away; a faint hope,

flickering, that I can find a way

to make them stay.

I wrote this after I walked through Tonquin forest, half of it laid waste, the heavy equipment roaring so loud, past their depradations along the trail to the beach, where there is peace and calm still, and a diminished habitat for the wild creatures. Tofino Natural Heritage is doing all we can to try to save what is left.

Sharing with Desperate Poets, where we are contemplating our wild minds and spirits. 

On Puppies and Their People

 

facebook image
no copyright infringement intended

Today's sermon is a blue-eyed wolf dog

who needs to run, but is never let off his leash

because his owner has not trained him,

and is afraid he won't come back;

I long to snap the chain and let his long legs lope

along the shore, and through the forest. 

Wild things need to run.

Today's sermon is a confused black puppy,

eight weeks old, who sits down because 

his owner is training him too much

and he doesn't know what he is supposed to do.

"No touch, no eye contact," the fool man says.

"It teaches the puppy to be calm."

(It teaches the puppy to be depressed,

quelling that puppy joy that

being a puppy is all about.

I want to abduct the puppy.)

Today's sermon is puppies found abandoned

in dumps, in frozen wastelands, inside tires

and dumpsters; it is the one survivor puppy

found with his litter frozen dead beside him.

Today's sermon is humans who lack humanity,

who think animals don't matter.

Today's sermon is rescued dogs

who approach, with fear and trembling,

but who learn, over time, 

that humans can also be kind.

Today's sermon is well-loved dogs

with happy grins, loping along the shore,

and chasing each other in joyous circles.

In a perfect world, every dog

would have a life like that.

I'm dragging grace around

like a rusty wagon,

pretending it's whole,

the poet says.

I'm old. I know some things.

I know what makes children and animals

feel safe and happy.

My penance for living this long

is to watch the heedless young

who think they know more than they know:

yet don't understand how fragile

small and helpless beings are.

I watch them learning everything

it took me so long to learn,

watch them breaking hearts,

including their own.

I'm dragging grace around

like a rusty wagon,

pretending it's whole.

My heart has dents and bruises

on it; such grace as can be found

hasn't got a lot to say.

What good does all this Knowing do,

when only old people, babies and dogs

can hear its sorrowful song?

A poem from 2021. Inspired by "Today's Sermon" by Cheryl Dumesnil, and Wild Writing with Laurie Wagner. The italicized words are Cheryl Dumesnil's.

Will share this with Desperate Poets open link.

A Sip of Rain

 

Canadian Geographic photo

Waking to grey sky, tiptoing out to check 

on my petunias, I discover the first tiny drops

of precipitation we have had in a very long time.
Just a sip, a taste,

to make my petunias happy,

but not enough to slake the thirst
of the dying hedge.

The grass has been yellow and crunchy for two weeks

and it is only June. The rhodos are struggling;

the rainforest has no rain. I can almost hear roots

calling desperately for water. We are already

in stage two restrictions here. But who

will watch to see if the million tourists take

fast showers? 

Across Canada, 200 wildfires burn. Towns

are evacuated, homes are lost, men struggle

in the heat to douse the flames. The wild ones

flee in terror in a world on fire.

And no leader speaks of the urgent need

to lower emissions. As if this summer is

an aberration, instead of a look at

what's to come, as summers get hotter

and hotter
every year.

BLACK DOGS AND BUDDHAS

 

The Black Dog of Joy

"We're in this together, the wild, the domestic, the wormy, the laughing ones and the weepers, black dogs and Buddhas....all of us dancing in the stream of everything."
from Trauma Farm by Brian Brett

I am a small inconsequential speck in the vastness of the universe. I am united with every single other organism on the planet. I am insignificant, and a part of Everything, in the selfsame moment, which keeps me humble, and feeling connected to the All That Is, at one and the same time. I gaze at the mystery of the night sky and I know, somewhere up there, is my path Home, through the clouds into another world, where I will journey one day. The mourning dove sings to me in the evening, and the hummingbirds dive-bomb the feeder as twilight falls. In the morning, the horse's whicker in the fields and the blue jay's call at the seed stump serenade my waking, and I step out to breathe in lake-scent and willow, which brings me full circle, from my earliest rememberings to Now, and I am, in fast-forward, that round-eyed child and this faded-eyed crone, and every age in between. Tell me that Heaven will be as beautiful as this planet and I will set aside all fear. Tell me there will be an ocean, and ancient cedar, and dogs. Yes, let there be dogs and I will not fight those final breaths. A neurosurgeon, a scientist who had no faith in anything unproven, died to the world for seven days, and when he finally woke, he said he had visited heaven. What made my heart leap is that he saw dogs there, leaping and running joyously with the people. I always believed dogs would be there, but now I know it. I will see my boy again. That big black wolf will run joyously to meet me and we will tumble together with the force of our reunion, as he used to throw himself upon me after every absence. And then we will point our noses towards the nearest sea, and walk again, as we did for so long....as I have not been able to do since he's been gone. "Black dogs and Buddhas"........yes, that will be my heaven and, meanwhile, the thought of it comforts my sojourn here, the thought of all that joy, just waiting for me up ahead, in a country I have not yet walked through, yet feel I know so well, so often have I read stories brought back by those who have briefly left this world, and then returned. For me, Heaven is a big black laughing dog.

***

I just finished reading  Trauma Farm, whose wonderful quote inspired my prose poem. And then began Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey Into the Afterlife, by Eben Alexander, M.D., whose tale of seeing dogs joyously leaping in the heavenly realms made my heart go pitter-pat.

Written in 2013, shared with Desperate Poets Open Link