A Poem for Your Pocket

 

When I'm looking for light,

I read poems.

When I'm fleeing heartache,

I write them.

Maybe I look out my window

and see some small puff-ball clouds

slowly moving across my morning sky,

or two eagles, circling,

wind-surfing the thermals.

This is your poem.

I want it to speak to

that part of your heart

that has walked many miles

to reach it.

Perhaps you don't read poetry,

thinking it a country of no resonance

for you. Perhaps, if you give it a try,

it will surprise you, connect

with a feeling, a shared experience.

Maybe you will do a mental double-take,

realizing that words can dance,

sometimes - albeit infrequently -

so nimbly across the page,

like young Jack leaping the candlestick

all those many years ago.

This is your poem.

If it bores you, no worries.

This poem's feelings cannot be hurt.

Like the tired heart

that composed it, it has seen enough pain

to not need to go down those roads again.

Keep this poem

in your heart's pocket,

and, one day when I am gone,

come back and find

me in it

once again.

for my prompt at What's Going On - an open link to celebrate April Poetry Month.

Blessings

 

Gathering of Allies
photo by Marcie Callewaert Photography
I'm in the middle, front row, raised fist,
cane, blue plaid shirt

Sitting in a rocking chair in the sun

Giving treats to passing dogs; their smiles and bright, happy, glowing eyes warming my heart

 Cherry blossom scent on the breeze,  small hummers drinking deeply, so thirsty after the long winter of anticipation

Thinking of yesterday's rally of Tla-o-qui-aht and allies, showing up for Mother Earth, celebrating how Wah-nah-juss was saved from clearcutting 40 years ago, when the First People Just Said No

Remembering passionate early mornings on the blockades, how alive we felt back then, making change, standing on the road for the trees

Turning off the bad news; turning on morning, and birdsong; recalling waking in the night to see a full round Grandmother Moon, golden and smiling in the sky, and looking right at me

Watching a juvenile eagle making random circles overhead, breathing in all that is peaceful and hopeful, beautiful and sun-kissed, all around; nothing left to wish for but more days just like this, sitting in a rocking chair in the sun

Except a world healthy enough to sustain the young eagle, and all of earth's young ones, into the future

A list of blessings for Shay's Word List

Poet In Search of a Poem

When life has worn you into

an unthinking shell

without words

and you sit, blinking into space,

in a place of No Thought,

tap the lifeline

of poetry

that lifts your heart

out of its everyday concerns,

into the realm

of midnight moons

and hungry ghosts.

Look up into the raven sky

and chart the silver moon goddess

as she trails mystery

like a gossamer cloak

across the heavens.

Poetry

remembers that life

is more than bread and worry,

that it is beauty and aliveness

and gilt-edged miracle.

It is the suspension of disbelief

and the fastening of one's heart
on Possibility
and Promise.

It is the lifting of one's eyes

above the "raveled sleeve of care"

to remember music,

the dance of language,

love,

and the silver shining sea,

forever ebbing and flowing

upon a shore lined

with old growth,

and then fastening
one's heart

and vision

and belief

firmly

upon that.

For Susan's prompt at What's Going On - What IS it about poetry?  The quote is from Macbeth.

No Solace at Lost Shoe Lake

 

source

I looked for solace at Lost Shoe Lake,
vividly picturing that long-ago settler,
desperately slogging the muddy slough -
bitter as his shoe was suctioned
off his foot, and gone,
a catastrophe unlikely
but, alas for him,
too true.

I imagine his chagrin, thoughts
of the rocky miles ahead 
circling his brain like blackflies,
his journey
caught between disbelief
and dread.

No solace for him
for a hundred miles
at least.

No solace for me
as I walked the lonely shore,
without my beloved
grinning
big black beast.

for Shay's Word List

Bird

 

Source: Getty Images

I imagined a gathering of magpies

in the tops of the alder grove,
as I sat in the sun,

breathing in the scent
of white cherry blossoms.

There was an outbreak of loud chattering, 

all bird voices speaking at once.
What manner of bird was this?

What new song were they

trying to sing? What alarm
sent their chatter into
such brief furore?

I imagined a murmuration,

a stupefaction, of small noisy birds.

As their voices crescendoed,

then subsided and grew still, I pondered
the brief raucous uproar. Perhaps

the loudest among them had won

the fattest worm. Perhaps an elder bird,

dignified in tophat and cane,
had fallen asleep

and toppled off his perch.

Hopefully, his bird-folk had caught 

and steadied him firmly
on the branch
just in time.

While there are magpies elsewhere in BC, they are not in evidence in Clayoquot Sound. But as this was all imaginary, as I rocked in the sun, I had a bit of fun contemplating what might have caused all the ruckus. I identified strongly with the senior bird, needless to say. Smiles.

Seeing Double

 

Kwiisahi?is
Brave Little Hunter
Photo by Zeballos Inn

How to hold this April morning,
on the West Coast of Canada
in my one human
overloaded brain?

The cherry trees in bloom,
rhododendrons opening their pink buds,
blue sky, the eternal waves,
beauty as far as I can see

while, elsewhere on the planet,
bombs fall, children hide among
the rubble. I fill my porridge bowl
while innocents starve

and the disconnect,
among those who govern
with power instead of humanity,
between their agendas and
the horrors of reality,

creates a two-level existence:
the one I am living
and the one I am all too aware of
across the globe.

Meanwhile,
one small orphaned whale
circles the lagoon in which
she is trapped
while humans take too long
to set her free.

Everywhere, the innocent are suffering,
our hearts too full of grief
to bear the pain.

for Sumana's prompt: April. 

It is a schizophrenic existence these days. April out my window is beautiful and blooming. On this side of the window is the daily news, horror upon horror, no enlightenment, no relief anywhere. And the small whale is still alive, but tenuously so, while rescuers contemplate their response. They are doing their best, but time is of the essence, as they know. The most hopeful plan is helicoptering her out into open ocean, and containing her in a net until her pod - hopefully - swims by, then releasing her. I would prefer them lifting her close by her pod and releasing her, but this has been ruled out. It will be traumatic for her, there is little doubt.

It has now been seventeen days since her mother died. She is diving for longer periods and still calls for her mother every fifteen minutes. We don't know if she is eating.

I am trying, with my entire will, to keep her alive until  rescuers can get her out of the lagoon and set her free. Surely we can get ONE thing right in a world that has apparently lost its collective mind. One small whale, alive, is not too much to ask.

Traveling Through Time

 

An armchair traveler she is now,
traveling
traveling
all the way back

to those soft sweet summers
at the very beginning
of time.

These days

all her running is done in reverse,

spooling backwards through 

the Land of Memory

to that wartime cottage,
seventy-three years gone,

flowerboxes at the windows,

wildflowers and weeping willow,
pinks, sweet peas
and hollyhocks
out back.
And roses twined over the arched trellis
out front, where she'd swing
on the gate, late afternoons,
waiting for her parents
to come.

One did not need valerian then;

the silence and peace indoors,
and the loud, ticking clock,

put that small child to sleep

through long hot midday hours.

She remembers well
how safe she felt,

and cherished, the comfort of

her grandma's big, womanly body

next to her in the bottom bunk

as she drifted off
to dreamland
in the one place on earth
where she was never afraid.

for Shay's Word List: Spill Simmer Falter Wither