Sanctuary

source

photo: Sergiy Gaschak

Thirty years after
the humans left this place,
thriving wildlife have reclaimed
the site as sanctuary,
a green and verdant forest
covering the land,
now one of the rare places
on the planet
where wild creatures
live undisturbed.

How sad,
that it takes a nuclear event
to provide safe haven
for wild creatures,
that it takes our absence
to make their lives
more possible.

After cataclysm,
after the ocean
covers coastal shores,
after flood, wildfire,
drought and famine,
after climate refugees
have walked a thousand miles
and fallen
off the edge of the world,

it gives me comfort
to imagine
- slowly, in barely perceptible 
increments of time -
greenness unfolding
across the land once more,
wolf and bear and deer
creeping back,
finding no trace of us,
making their way,
hesitant yet unhindered,
as in the earliest days 
of our collective memory -
the garden unfolding
all its beauty
under friendly 
benign skies
once more.

source

credit: Valeriy Yurko

for Bjorn's prompt at Real Toads: to imagine the world after a nuclear event. My thoughts went to Chernobyl. I remember I was afraid, back then, that a nuclear explosion would trigger other reactors in a chain reaction. Instead, it is rather unsettling to know that, thirty years later, because humans left the area, it is now thriving as a wildlife sanctuary, one place on the planet where wild creatures get to live undisturbed.

An article at Blue Dot Magazine states, "Humans, it seems, are worse than a nuclear disaster. A long-term study of animal populations around Chernobyl has found wildlife to be flourishing in the absence of human activity. A team of scientists surveyed the human exclusion zone surrounding the site, observing large animals like deer and elk to be in abundance despite lingering radiation."

source: http://www.bluedotmagazine.com/2016/01/30/chernobyls-exclusion-zone-is-now-a-thriving-wildlife-habitat/

MEMORIES OF JOY

Pup ~ March, 1997 to January 15, 2011

"There is no pain so great 

as memory of joy in present grief."

Aeschylus

Because men had abused my trust,

you came to me this lifetime

in a wolf-dog’s body,

but your eyes spoke to me

with human sensibility,

and you could read my mind.

Fate brought us together,

solitary wolf-woman and small wolf puppy,

lost on the mountainside.

I rescued you;

you rescued me.

Our bond went deep,

as wolf-bonds do.

We shared the wild.

I never knew how large

a presence

your absence would be,

or that it would continue

to the end of my life.

In the spirit world,

I know that you are conscious

how I grieve.

I can see the sadness in your eyes,

those eyes that never left me

in this life.

But you always went ahead of me

on the trail.

Now I am following

your padding footsteps,

listening for your call.

When next we meet,

there will be joy:

I can see you,

tail up, ears cocked,

with that old, wild gleam

in your eyes.

I have known those eyes before

for, lifetime after lifetime,

you have found me.

We made a whole, we two,

an unlikely but perfect partnership,

salted by sea-spray and forest trails,

peppered with loud barks and cackles…

Oh, we were wild!

And I never knew how deep

a grief could be

till you were no longer

walking, here,

with me.

from 2017, for the Poetry Pantry at Poets United.

LONG WALK HOME

I walked with my grandmother, 

looking up,

through all the years of my childhood.

Once, walking in the cemetery,

she asked wistfully

“Isn’t it peaceful here?”

and I was outraged at the thought

of her ever leaving me.

When she was old, she would walk 

down the street

from the nursing home she hated

-      her cane tap, tap, tapping –

to visit me in my house full of children.

She would sit under the grape arbor;

we'd chat as I weeded the garden.

Later I would walk her back

to the “home” that wasn’t her home

-         her cane tap, tap, tapping –

 a single tear

rolling down her cheek.

for Sumana's prompt at Midweek Motif: Walk

How the Land Transformed My Life

I lived in a grey little town:
grey skies, grey vistas, grey prospects.
My dreams died down,
became a lament, a longing.

Then in a last gasp of nor-or-never,
I leaped the mountain pass.
Surrounded by ocean, forest, cosmic energy,
artists, aliveness, adventure,
I was reborn at 71.

A place can do this to you,
when it is the place
where your soul is at home.

                 *****

For millennia, the Nuu-chah-nulth people
lived here as caretakers of land and sea.
They had regulations, strict protocols,
responsibilities, for how they cared for the land.
It cared for them in return.
In their culture, each life is as important
as every other, from plant to lowly slug
to upright bipeds.
"Everything Is One; All Is Connected
in the web of life," they teach us,
watching in horror as we desecrate
and plunder the land and waters
we depend on for life.

The elder's face has deep lines,
born of deeper pain.
He says "The land has enough
for our need,
but not our greed."

If only those who make decisions
could hear, and understand.


Sadly, they dont. In the midst of environmental breakdown, Trudeau is still ramming through a pipeline. Fracking is destroying everything; it continues. We need the trees to breathe; there is barely any old growth left.

"Human behavior transforms the environment", says Scott Yabiku (ASU) but the landscape also transforms us. It transformed my life, when I changed locations.  The environment informed the lives of the Nuu-chah-nulth people, who lived here for ten thousand years. They had strict protocols and regulations in the way they cared for the land. Now they watch in horror as wild salmon become diseased and infected by fish farms - the salmon that is the lifeblood of this area, the forest, and their culture. Our whales are starving and dying, their stomachs full of plastic. OUR plastic. Bears, displaced of habitat, wander into towns in search of food, and are killed.

The Arctic is melting. Everything is accelerating. The effects will be felt in the lower provinces sooner than expected. Humans have transformed the environment in one hundred short years of wilful greed and plunder. But nature will regain the upper hand. Perhaps after cataclysm, humans will learn another way to live with the land - those who survive.


for Kerry's prompt at Real Toads: Human-Landscape Interactions

A Wonderful Adventure

Heading Out

Tofino is very good to its seniors. We live in a village that is incredibly rich culturally, full of artists, writers, carvers, sculptors, and poets; the villagers support and appreciate the arts to a degree I have not experienced anywhere else. Not to mention the spectacular scenery, which inspires us all. Yesterday some of us seniors boarded the Browning Passage vessel and headed out to Freedom Cove, an off-grid floating paradise where, for 25 years, artists Catherine and Wayne Adams have lived, created art, and developed a floating paradise of gardens.

Before we left, this little fellow, a river otter, galloped along the float to wish us bon voyage. Some porpoises appeared along the route, also,  but they dove under before I could capture more than the ripples they left behind.

Arriving

Wayne welcoming us

Catherine and two of the three dogs

Whale ribs 

Burrowbird, inspired by a bird of 

Wayne's homeland, Norway

The floating island runs on solar energy. All materials are salvaged or recycled. Wayne says the floathome came first, then Catherine asked for "Just a small salad garden, honey"!

Things grew, as we can see.

Even apples!

This burl is 600 years old. I love their fire pit.

Wayne has a Man Cave

The stunning art studio

and beautiful art.

One year, 40 eagles arrived to feed on the herring,

and left behind these feathers, 

which became the first mask they made.

There is even a floating "beach", with sand.

Browning Passage boat in background.

Sister Margaret, on the left, is soon turning 100

wonderful years old. She is a trooper

and inspires us all.

Sister Anita is on the right.

Catherine and Wayne's message to the world is

LIVE YOUR DREAM!

They are, and hope others will see

it is possible, and will live their dreams too.

On leaving, we each were invited to choose a candle.

Mine was this wolf. This was the icing on the cake,

                                            and made me so happy.

Altogether, an amazing day.

I came home replete.

My Garden of Greens and Children

Weeds, weeds, everywhere

in Kelowna's thriving soil.

Hot sun, smiling boy.

From small seeds and hopes,

we grew more than we knew then.

We grew tomorrow.

Smiles in summer sun;

not knowing the tears to come:

it's better that way.

When I planted seeds,

I grew children as well as

the food that filled them.

for Susan's prompt at Midweek Motif: Gardens.  I had a huge garden when my kids were growing like weeds, in an effort to keep their hungry tummies full. I loved growing things: gardens and children both. Those were happy years.

Puppy Love

I built a bridge from my head to my heart,

crossed it heartache by heartache.

I built a bridge and, step by step,

it opened my heart wider.

I built a bridge from my head to my heart,

let down my defenses, invited love in.

I built a bridge, and started across,

and on the other side was you.

Last week's Midweek Motif was Bridge. This popped into my head a week late. I read somewhere that the longest and hardest journey, in this pain-filled world, is the one between our heads and our hearts.  On the other side, though, I fell in love with the whole world, companioned by a wild wolf puppy.