SUNFLOWER II

 

While sunflowers
turn their faces to the sun
on sunny days,
they turn their faces
to each other, for support
when skies are grey.

Perhaps that's why we gather
in the streets,
when times are stark,
to feel our connection
against powerful forces
that feel so wrong and dark.

My spirit is heavy,
so I go forth
into the sun,
turn my face,
this golden day,
to each and everyone.

Our life and each other
is all we have,
when all is
said and done,
like sunflowers
turning hopefully
and forever
toward the sun.

for The Muse

SUNFLOWER

 

Her round baby face was my sunshine

when she was two.

She shone golden as the sun

as up she grew.

But then came her years of tears,

of betrayed heart and betrayed trust,

as she sought love

the way true seekers

always must.

We both love sunflowers

for their brightness

and their shine,

and how they dare 

to dream the heavens

as they climb.

There is no happy ending,

just our lives,

flowing through

the ups and downs

that oh so slowly

make us wise.

But her voice has laughter in it,

these days, when I call,

for she found the love

she had been seeking,

learned to trust it, after all,

slowly opening her heart

the way a sunflower

gently lets

each

golden petal

fall.

FOR THE SUNDAY MUSE

The Train of Social Justice

facebook image - no copyright infringement intended

"I hear that train a'comin',
a'comin' down the tracks...."

I hear all the people wanting to get on board,
hear their passionate words at gatherings,
at the Lincoln Memorial, during newscasts.
I hear the man who wonders if civil war 
will come again to the United States,
never so blatantly and impossibly divided.

How are we hurting and discouraged millions
ever going to get that social justice train
on the tracks and traveling towards
Martin's dream? We are long overdue.
This train is 50 years late,
its passengers never more imperilled,
never more out-shouted by 
the extreme radical right.
Ugliness has never been so unmasked;
we see now, clearly,
and cannot look away.

I can hear the whistle
faintly blowing,
from many miles away.
I have my bags packed
to hop aboard, when it
finally comes my way.

It isn't enough any more to simply know, and write poems of protest. Time to write to elected officials everywhere, to march, to vote, to speak out. If that dream is ever going to be, it is going to take all of us. Had the Dems backed Bernie, I would have a lot more hope. Joe Biden is a decent man, but his voice is too quiet for what we are facing. The same old political formula will not work any longer. We needed Bernie's vision to find our way out of this mess. I hope he keeps fighting, though he must be so tired. My faint hopes hang on November's vote, fully expecting the rampant and blatant corruption to impact the vote. If we lose, we will lose big. Including our democracy.

LA LOBA II

 

wolves by kiri stuart clarke

La Loba,

in your dark cave,

under the full moon,

sing.

Sing as you gather the bones 

of my brothers, my sisters.

Sing as you lay them down

on the ground.

Place them end to end,

tenderly, carefully,

piece by piece, 

until they are whole.

Then breathe life into them 

and watch them leap up,

joyous-eyed, tails arc-ing,

teeth snapping and smiling,

around the fire.

Sing,

as they take my heart with them

and run away,

beautiful, laughing and free,

into the welcoming

midnight forest.

La Loba, sing!

written in 2013 and re-posted here for Earthweal's open link.  I picture La Loba as a wild wolf woman, able to breathe life back into wolfish bones.

"There should be nothing here I don't remember...."

 

364 Christleton Avenue

"There should be nothing here I don't remember."

In my mind, it is always there: my place of safety,
of deep peace and familiar, reliable routine,
the hours noted by the metal clock
on the kitchen windowsill, the cottage so quiet,
its tick-tock could be heard
in every room.

When I was small, Grandma watched me
while my parents worked. After we moved away,
I spent my summers there.

My grandma moved so peacefully
through her mornings.
I woke to the slap of the hose
hitting the wall of the cottage
as she watered everything down
against the coming heat,
lowering the canvas awnings
like sleepy eyelids
over the front windows.

When I wandered outside, I'd sink
into the hammock under the weeping willow -
the willow tree of remembrance,
under which I read and dreamed away
the summer mornings of my youth,
as Grandma cleaned her kitchen,
started things cooking for lunch,
perhaps making fruit preserves:
stewed rhubarb that we'd eat with toast.
My bathing suit, draped over the clothesline,
was still damp from my last swim, 
when I pulled it back on for the next.

Sometimes, Grandma hosted canasta games
in the afternoon,
the ladies arriving in hats and white gloves,
card tables set up in the small living room,
tea in fancy cups and saucers, dainty sandwiches,
the ladies, all from the prairies, remembering
Saskatoon berries - no western berry
ever measured up, in memory, to the berries
of their young womanhood.
They called each other by their formal names
 - "Mrs. Marr, Miss Hicks", - and my grandpa
was referred to as "Mr. Marr", always.
It was said he never saw
my grandma's naked body
out of her flannel nightgown.
What horror for this modest,
turn-of-the-last-century woman to find herself,
at the end of her life, a body in a bed,
Depends being changed by strangers,
no modesty, no privacy left,
each change a violation.
She withdrew deep within herself,
waiting for the release of death.

"There should be nothing here I don't remember,"
and so, each time I go back to Kelowna,
I make that trip down Christleton Avenue,
to make sure the bedrock of my childhood
is still there. It is covered with stucco now,  
but the small houses along that street remain,
have not been knocked down and replaced
by giant houses. Yet.

The street still bears the reassuring imprint
of familiarity, the repository of my childhood
and young girlhood memories,
the place I return to in memory again and again.
Whenever I think of childhood, it is to this small cottage
that I come, the slap of water
against the side of the house
that woke me every morning, all the years
I spent my summers there,
smell of lake-scent and roses,  sweet pea and pinks.
I can almost see, in earlier years,  that four year old
still hanging on the front gate, 
under the arched rose trellis,
waiting for her parents to arrive
in the falling twilight to take her home.
And remember the nights
they did not come.

Inspired by "Looking for the Gulf Motel" by Richard Blanco, and Wild Writing by Laurie Wagner

Remembrance

 

There should be nothing here I don’t remember.

The ferry between Westbank and Kelowna
that, when I was little, I thought would have wings,
which made my father smile,
should still be plying the waters
between Westbank and
and Kelowna’s shores.
The ferry is long gone, but the shore
is still lined with the weeping willow
and tear-streaked dreams of my youth.
My mother was so beautiful then,
with her long blonde curls, and huge blue eyes,
like a movie star, but fraught,
at what alcohol did to my parents’ love affair.

There should be nothing here I don’t remember.

Our house looked out across the lake
at the Big Blue Hills. My first dog, Dinky,
a black lab, followed me everywhere
and two turkey gobblers walked with me,
one on each side, as we paced,
up and down the driveway.
Wings outspread, they hissed, chasing 
my mom back inside
when she came out to check on me.

The town was small then,
surrounded by miles of apple orchards,
white blossoms in springtime, the air sweet
with their blooming. Now, going back,
some of the houses we lived in are gone,
and all of the orchards, street after street
of condominiums mushrooming up
where once life was sweet
under the apple trees of summer
and the hot August moon.

I had so many dreams then
of how life would be, when pain
would have ended
and happiness would be mine,
finally, to live.

They did not come true.
But ones better than I ever
could have dreamed
arrived in their stead,
taking me on the most wonderful
and unexpected journey.

Life took me far;
there were so many losses,
pain and tears I held inside
all those years when I had to be strong
for those four who depended on me.
I had so many helpers and guides,
to show me the way, along a path
of awakening, bright as sunrise
over the mountains, I gasping
at the wonder of it.

Now, in old age, tears come more easily
than they ever have – every tender scene,
every lost love in movies and books,
every sad story on the evening news,
and I am awash at the joy and the ache of it.

Tears – for the beauty of the journey,
for the glory and wonder of it, tears
for the pain of all that has been lost.

And yet -
as the poet said, so reassuringly -
“All that is lost
is not lost.”

 

Inspired by “Looking for the Gulf Motel” by Richard Blanco. The italicized lines are his.

 

RAINBOW WARRIORS

On the Road in Clayoquot Sound
Summer of '93

Sally Sunshine, R.I.P.

 

The soul would have no rainbows
if the eyes had no tears.
     - Native American proverb

BLOCKADE. I remember:
dancing on the road, heart full to bursting,
as the big trucks rolled in,
the summer of '93.
Tears, as the forest defenders were carried off
by arms and legs, first a few,
then a few hundred,
then a thousand.

We saved some trees, here,
back then, in Clayoquot Sound.
But the clearcutting continued
on the Island. 
Only a little left, and not protected.
This week my grandson,
a Rainbow Warrior, is going to the blockade
at Fairy Creek, where logging roads
are slicing into one of the last
pristine watersheds, the last of the old growth
on Vancouver Island.
The last of the lungs
on our planet, should anybody care.

This week, the big machinery
turned around and left.
But they are tricky,
so a second blockade
is set up on the back road.

Pain: at the endless putting of profit
before planet, even as the Arctic
hits 100 degrees, melting beneath
the huskies' feet, so they are trotting
through water, instead of on ice.

"Money rules," the fat cats grin,
as if that's all that matters.

"Money rules, but the spirit
liberates," replied my friend,
back in the day. It was my bumper sticker
for years. Along with
"Money is a drug.
Heal the spirit."

Joy: that as my generation of eco-warriors
lies, gasping, exhausted after 40 years of fighting,
the young ones are stepping up,
with pure hearts, and hope, and energy
to save their vanishing world.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
My grandson was five when
I was on the road.
Now he's twenty-five,
and picking up my faltering torch.
I watch these rainbow warriors with pride,
and with guilt, that our generation didn't leave 
them a safer world.

My eyes have tears and rainbows,
my heart holds equal measure
of joy and pain.

Adjacent to Fairy Creek
Ancient Forest Alliance photo
Those few trees left? That's so they can say they're
"not clearcutting."

It is early days at Fairy Creek, but it is building. More people will come to the blockades, as they did in the summer of '93. Fairy Creek is ancient old growth on the way to Port Renfrew, south Vancouver Island. It is close to the mystical Avatar Grove - the huge trunks are amazing. To pulp this stuff for toilet paper is ludicrous; a crime. It is insane to truck this stuff out of the province and send it to other countries as raw logs. But the trucks keep rolling in. The warriors stand firm. Here we go again. But now the stakes are higher. There is not much left to save on this heating planet. Take a look at the beauties these young people are trying to save.

(for earthweal.com: Storms and Rainbows)

My friend, Warren Rudd, a well-known Tofino videographer, worked on this video. He is up at Fairy Creek right now. Check out the beauty that is in peril.