To the Forest, Dark and Deep

Owl in a Port Alberni back yard

I thought I'd put my heart into a poem,

and take it to the forest, dark and deep,

find the mossy path, the broken limb,

a perch from which to read the trees to sleep.

So sonorous, all words verdant and green,

so soft the moss, the pages all between.

I turn them, leaf and fern, salal and flower,

sweet and protected, in my leafy bower.

The dark will tiptoe in on doe-like feet,

will settle tenderly upon the boughs,

and I softly away, and smiling sweet,

the forest safe and dreaming deep, for now.

Oh forest dear, my sanctuary blessed,

it is to you I come, when I seek rest.

I was sitting here, blank-headed as always, when the thought arrived to attempt a sonnet. How distinctly odd.

for Fireblossom Friday

by W.T.Benda

Ack! I had already taxed my brain by writing a poem that rhymed, before I saw Shay's prompt at Real Toads: Fireblossom Friday : write a rhyming poem with one of two rhyme schemes.  I chose  abab, bcc The illustration that sparked the poem is by W.T. Benda.

Life to life, in goodly guise,
love to lover plights her troth.
A true love cannot, too, be wise.
Love or ease - one can't have both.

Remember, when you make your oath,
you give serenity away,
to burn with angst both night and day.

(Yes, I'm old and jaded. Hee hee. I would have liked one more line, to add a note of hope, but rules are rules.) 

Watch This and It Will Change Your Life

Make it Possible from Animals Australia on Vimeo.

Kids, our friend Rosemary, the Passionate Crone, posted this today on facebook. If you watch it, it will be impossible to be unmoved or unchanged. It hit my heart, which already, as you know, suffers for the animals. I have kids and grandkids who are raw vegans because of the cruel treatment of animals in what are euphemistically called "factory farms". The fact this is allowed is mind-boggling. The fact that we ingest this trauma on our dinner plates makes me think no good can come of it. 

At the very least, those of us who care need to lobby for humane lives for animals raised for food. And we need to use our purchasing dollars to buy only food that has been humanely produced and raised and to simply refuse to eat anything that comes from a factory farm. We have choices. We can buy our eggs from local farmers, our chickens too, if we eat meat. The only thing that will change agro-business is the bottom line. If there are no profits from warehousing cages of animals, maybe they will stop. At least, we wont be participating in this gruesome business any longer.

Watch this film, if you can bear to.  It hits the heart and once you know, you cant un-know. Then it becomes about choice.

In Love With the Sky

freeclipart.com

I never wanted to climb 

that ladder to Success:

the stepping-stone path up the levels

that bring big bucks,

great clothes, 

monster house,

new car every three years,

a decorated home, and an RV.

I was always more in love with the sky,

comfy in my thrift store clothes,

grateful for simple pleasures,

happy with my down-scaled 

trailer park life.

I took one look 

at that fork in the path,

saw the lives of those 

in pursuit of More

- More of Everything - 

bigger, better, newer, 

faster,snazzier, -

shook my head

and took the poet's path.

And that, as another poet said,

has made

all the difference.

Posted for Susan's Mid Week Motif at Poets United: Success

The Traveler Series

John Mayba for the AV Times

A Port Alberni creek during the recent cold snap.

HeatherThomson, AV Times

Our local flock of swans, along the Somass River.

Kids, some of you have asked about my Traveler series of poems. The series began with a journey I took with my sister poet Elizabeth Crawford, of Soul's Music,  in April 2011. From time to time Traveler poems still pop up at critical moments. (Elizabeth's poems from the Soul Card Journey can be found at the link above.)

I finally have managed to put the series together on a page of their own on my site. If you wish, you can find  The Traveler Series here, or by clicking the link on the side bar to the right.

Life Without Limits

huffingtonpost.com

When this man says

"there is no boundary" -

no limit in 

space, 

or in living -

when his rich life of the mind

discovers the outermost reaches 

of the universe,

while he is entrapped

inside his body,

you have to tell yourself:

there are truly

no limits -

to any horizon,

to any dream,

to any goal,

at all.

I just watched Stephen Hawking's dvd about his life, and am in awe. 

Just no excuse for not following our dreams, for making every moment count.

Play It Again, Toads!

community.babycenter.com

GLORIA

The lab tech and the pretty Filipino nurse fell in love.
The other Filipino nurses all loved Roger.
"He is our brother," they said.
They married soon and, some months later,
Gloria gave birth to their baby boy.

They had time to exchange a thrilled, ecstatic kiss,
and to name their baby boy Brian,
before Gloria suddenly hemorrhaged, and died.

Roger walked around for weeks,
white and stunned as the walking dead,
clutching his baby, kissing his cheeks
till they spotted with rashes,
from being kissed too much.
The only thing he knew was,
he could not  put the baby down,
could not unwrap his arms from him,
for he was all he had left of Gloria,
the gift she had left behind, departing.

The Curley family fostered the baby for seven months,
while Roger confronted his grief, his altered life,
his banished dreams.
But then they said that
they and the baby were getting too attached 
and it was better for him to be with his father.

Suddenly, a wedding was announced.
The baby needed a mother.
There was another Filipino nurse -
pretty, warm, loving,
-so like Gloria - 
who loved Roger;
and one other - reserved, more plain, quieter,
a more pragmatic choice.
I think Roger felt it would be a betrayal of Gloria 
to choose the warm pretty one -
the one he maybe could come to love.
So he chose the quiet one,
so he could keep his son.

Of course, it didn't work.

I passed their house, one afternoon,
Roger standing in the window,
clutching baby Brian, sad eyes looking out
at a dismal landscape: no hope, no dreams, no joy.
She wrote me, the following year,
that she had had a son,
and that the family was two camps:
Roger and Brian,
and she and her son.
That her heart was broken.

Sometimes love goes happily.
Sometimes it hurts way too much.

I wonder how it all turned out,
if they stayed together,
or if there continued to be two camps 
of parents and sons -
those two innocents, born into a world of hurt
and misplaced hearts.

Sometimes, love hurts.

Posted for Margaret's Play It Again prompt, where we are asked to choose a prompt out of three selected from the Toads' archives. Cool! I chose Shay's "Lights, Camera, Love!", where we are to write a love story. Sadly, this is a true one.

It happened in 1967, in Alert Bay, BC, a teeny two by five mile island, off north eastern Vancouver Island, where I lived when I was first married. The death occurred one week before I gave birth to my first child - he almost died, too, and I had a traumatic experience in the tiny hospital there. I remember the Filipino nurses, at Gloria's funeral, wailing and stumbling with grief, and how one touched my belly and assured me, "This wont happen to you". I remember the doctor saying to me, as I lay on the birthing table, "It was so sad, watching her die. There was nothing I could do." Dr. Pickup. I just remembered his name.