Coals for Our Hearth Fires

Bedeck the lowing cattle

with yellow flowers,

and trot them round the meadow,

then send them out

to the far summer pastures,

as this soft azure evening

is falling.

All the menfolk are gathering

in the common,

to light the communal fire.

Let us gather round the flames,

faces flickering in its light,

and ask Fire for protection.

Deep peace, deep peace

is all we are asking.

Deep peace of the spring night,

filled with starshine,

and of tomorrow's golden morn,

fresh and new-rising.

I shall take my torch

and light it from the coals,

carry it safely home

to light my own hearth fire,

snuffed out by the last cold winter wind.

But first,we women-of-the-straggly-hair

must hoist our skirts up high

and take long-legged leaps

across the flames.

Set your intention.

If you make it across

the fire without being burned,

you are already blessed.

Deep peace of the first of May to you.

Deep peace of the bee-buzz in the roses.

Deep peace of the skybird's joyous call.

Deep peace.

In your heart of hearts,

may it be always newly spring.

During one of our staff trainings at the treatment centre where I worked for over eight years, we were told about the Celtic spring tradition of putting out the winter fires in all of the houses, and gathering on the common - where each family took home fresh hot coals from the communal fire, to warm their own hearth fires - something we were trying to do in the Centre - send the families home with some living coals to warm their own homes and hearts. This is sort of what we do at earthweal, sharing our words of grief and hope, taking away support, comfort, encouragement, renewed determination to keep striving for that better world humans everywhere want so much yet dont seem to know how to achieve. Putting down all the guns would be a good start, and disabling all the bombs. Removing terrible leaders who are not fit to serve - or lead.

for earthweal: The Commons

The Dog Pillow of Eternal Tears

 

All my life, I have been stoic. I once told

my boss I didn't cry, because I was afraid

if I ever started, I wouldn't be able to stop.

He said that was a telling statement.

It turned out to be prophetic, because

when my dog died, I began to weep

and I am weeping still. Not in public,

but in my quiet rooms, as I read my poems

about his leaving; read books where the dog

always dies; watch movies where human

emotion triggers a vast sympathetic aching

in my heart. Tears slide down my cheek

onto the pillow that has a black dog face on it:

the receptacle of my eternal tears.

It is Monday. This is what I know:

when it feels like one is dissembling,

it is just the parts we don't need any more,

falling away. The grief, though, is real,

and as big as the last free lion dying alone

in the wilderness. I carry it with me.

I carry it in my heart, with its many losses.

I feed it hope: at the shore, in the forest,

when the music takes me back

to those golden days of dancing feet

and dreams - so many dreams.

Like the lion, it is giving one last roar

before it is forever silenced.

Inspired by Laurie Wagner at Wild Writing, and by the poem The Lunch Counter of Eternal Tears by Nikki Wallschlaeger. The italicized words are from her poem.

SONG FOR MARIUPOL

 

A lament, a dirge, a cry from the human heart,

for the old folk of Mariupol, weeping in cellars,

without food or water, without hope,
old men and women, longing
for a hot cup of tea,
a warm blanket, somewhere to lie down.

They have been here before; they know

how this goes, as their loved ones disappear:
devastated towns, their dwellings in rubble,
mass graves, executed loved ones,
bombs falling indiscriminately,
with no care  for civilian life. "Shoot them all!"

the soldiers are commanded, and,

somehow, they turn off the switch

of humanity in their heads and

follow orders: tape hands behind backs,

shoot people in the head: uncles, grandfathers,

grandmothers. They rape the young women first.
Deemed  "casualties of war," these people
who never wanted war, but who do not wish
to live under a dictatorship.

(What happens when the soldiers return home
to their wives and children? Will their dreams
be haunted by ghosts of the dead,
arriving at two a.m.
to ask them "why?")

Mass graves and destroyed buildings

where once life thrived - the spoils of war,
perpetrated by those without soul or conscience,

to whom genocide will bring 

perceived glory: more land - full of rubble,

devoid of human life - a testimony

to moral decrepitude.

What song can we sing as bombs rain down,
on three month old babies?

As people starve, terrified dogs run loose

in the streets, or shiver violently in the rubble?

Are we beyond hope, as a species,

in this land of lost souls? How can we sing

a whole peoples' persecution, for no reason

beyond one man's depravity and thirst for power?
(as if any power or wealth can be gained
from a rubbled landscape
full of graves.)

I sang all my life, but in my old age,

after all I have seen, and lived, and lost,

I don't think my throat can muster

a single note of a song for Mariupol.

I offer  instead my poem and my tears,

for this song is just way too sorrowful

to sing.

A sad song for The Sunday Muse

Weight

 

I read that wild creatures now form

only two percent of the world's population.

Humans, factory cows and chickens

make up all the rest.

How does a human heart encompass

the weight of that? How do we compute
genocide occurring
across the sea - the brutality 

making us wonder how a human being

can allow himself to behave like that.

What fissure in the neurons occurs

to make such hatred, such
grotesque brutality,  even possible?

Keep the pain on the main road, 

my friend said, and travel with it.

Grief is like the covid vaccine,
she told us.

It innoculates us so we can

better withstand all that happens,

all that keeps happening, no respite,

even for the aged, whose hearts

have stretched like pulled elastic,

just this side of snapping.

Some days I can act like

my heart isn't breaking.

Some days I can't.

There are so many reasons

to treat each other with kindness.

We each carry something.

We never know the weight of

another person's load.

Inspired by  comments by Laurie Wagner of Wild Writing. 

No Country for Old Women

 

Grotesque brutality and unfathomable

unkindness - how did our world arrive

at this place where cruelty and violence

abounds?

I am watching death and sorrow
on my tv screen.
I am seeing acts of hatred on the news -
humans harming other humans
in ways too horrible to name.

I remember meadows, and the smell of sage

and Ponderosa pine. I remember hollyhocks

in my Grandma's garden.

I remember peace on summer mornings
in the safest place I knew.

I remember when my dreams were certain

that all would turn out well.

This is no country for old women,
we grandmas who have achieved a peace
the young have yet to find. 
They seem so unforgiving.
They throw words around like shrapnel
that lies embedded in the heart.

This is no country for old women.
I retreat into my shores of peace.
I remember meadows, the smell of sage
and Ponderosa pine. I remember hollyhocks
in my Grandma's garden,
peace on summer mornings
in the safest place I knew.

I heard a journalist refer to putin's grotesque brutality and terror tactics. The phrase stayed with me. There is a lot of gratuitous unkindness around, even in places where there is no war. People seem on edge with all that is going wrong. They are extremely reactive. I retreat.

I'll Take Everything

 

This long journey has brought me

tears and laughter, hard times, and

golden times. It brought me Brock and Friends,

who led me out of a Siberia of the heart

into the sunshine. It brought me ten years 

by the sea in the place of my dreams:

wild waves, old growth forests,

the blockades of '93, a black wolf puppy.

It brought me heartbreak when I had to leave

such joy behind. And joy when life
brought me back again.
 It has brought me struggle

and how to grow a never-give-up heart.

It has taught me to Be the Observer 

of other peoples' jangly stuff. My heart

whispers: let it be. Time is the great teacher.

(My time is short. They may not learn

until after I am gone, but this is

their journey to make, as I make mine.)

Today, though I wish it otherwise,

brings a terrible war across the sea:

genocide, horror, sorrow, suffering

from which we cannot turn away.

(If they can live it, we can bear witness.)

Today also brings springtime blossoms,

another wolf-dog fixing me
with his pale blue eyes,

a bear wandering through the trails,

awaiting berries. A deer is nibbling
at the bird feeder, waiting for
the grass to grow. Across the sea,
under the same sky,
bombs are falling on grandmothers
and babies. Dogs cower in corners,
shivering violently, as the missiles hit.
Somewhere else, there are fields
full of baby lambs.

In poems, joy and sorrow are mates.

In a poem, it doesn't matter that my thoughts

bounce from light to dark and back again.

It is all life, in this aging body that's

bending towards the earth. Even the infirmities

are blessings; it is a privilege to still be here,

still traveling. This is the deal:

we never know what spoonful will be served

to us next. But we say, with faith and hope:

I'll take everything on the menu.

Inspired by Everything On the Menu by Ellen Bass. The italicized lines are hers.

Today's Sermon

 

Today's sermon is two ancient cherry trees

loaded with white blossoms.

It is sun breaking through clouds

after days of rain.

It is a sad wolf-dog, in need of love,

resting his head on my shoulder

and heaving a big sigh.

Today's sermon is appreciation

for the ordinary, the small pleasures,

the larger joys, in a world

spiraling wildly out of control.

Today's sermon looks for grace

in the places where it is hard to find,

and extends it to those

who need it most,

even if they don't know how 

to say thank you for trying.

Today's sermon says

count your blessings

because, on any given day,

everything you know

and everything you love

can disappear.

Inspired by Today's Sermon by Cheryl Dumesnil.