Blessings

Raccoon

Raccoon

Two footprints on the dew damp chair
show that he has been here.

We know he visits at night.
The cat wakes up, jumps off the bed,
leaps to the window, and hisses.
Then she falls silent.

The raccoon steals food from the feeder
and shuffles the pottery shards
we leave out to gather water for the birds.

We never see him.
Sometimes we hear him grunt;
occasionally the wind chimes rattle furiously
as if caught by a giant gust..

We peer into the dark,
turn on the outside lights,
but his absence greets us
like a long lost friend.

Last night, nothing:
this morning, an empty feeder,
those footmark in the dew on the chair:
we know he was there.

Full Moon Fading

Full Moon Fading

Full Moon fading outside my window
still draws up water, attracts high tides,
drags the wolves by their drawstrings
struggling, bedraggled, out of my chest.
Soon to be invisible, they clutch and claw
as they climb the moon path’s golden light.

The piper has paid his rent and packed
up his pipes, leaving me at last alone.
A silence rules my lungs. Five deer stand
silent in the woods beneath my window
and I watch them as they watch the piper go.

My body’s house lies drained and empty.
The Fading Moon flushed out my body,
leaving it high and dry like a great white whale
abandoned, breathless, on a summer shore.

It’s all over now, the cough, the splutter,
the sharp reality, the aches and pains
that told me I was alive. I miss my music.
I miss the swish and roar of my incoming,
outgoing breath. I miss those Full Moon
fingers tinkling the tides of my inner being,
making me strive to keep myself alive.

Footpaths

Footpaths

Such a miracle:
the first steps of the cormorant’s flight
taken over water.

That first step heavy,
the second lighter,
and the third scarcely a paint brush
pocking the waves.

The need to take flight
lies deep within me.

“Journeyman,”
the Spanish poet wrote,
“there are no footpaths
across life’s sea,
just a wake to show
the way you came.”

Like a ship at sea
or a seabird over the waves
I leave white water in my wake
to show where I have been.

Sun and Moon

Sun and Moon

My poetry put to music: a new venture for me. This is Cat Leblanc’s version of Sun and Moon. I’ll add the words later. In the meantime: thank you so much for this Cat. Beautiful voice, beautiful music: a Fredericton, New Brunswick singer who is well worth following.

https://soundcloud.com/catleblanc/sun-and-moon

Old Eight Hoots

Old Eight Hoots

Winter has touched us
with this change of clocks
and darkness clutches now,
an hour or so too soon.

Old eight hoots watches:‑
he calls; I cough;
but he will not swoop.

He sits tight‑perched, out of sight;
chills me with his ghostly chorus,
hoo‑hooing me home.

Bright stars crackle the sky.
Frost crisps fallen leaves.
A mist weaves webs scarce‑seen.

And all around,
as cold ground creaks
its wordless tongue‑leafed language,
night‑shapes abound.

In Praise of the WYPOD

In Praise of the WYPOD
(Cheryl, Jude, Judy, Julie, Rachelle)
and
My Other Blogging Friends

How do I love you? Let me count the ways.
I love you when together we start to write
for although you’re always out of sight,
you’re never out of mind. So many days

we’ve spent sitting at keyboards, tapping
at computer keys. Is this the way to please
each other, a choosing of words, a squeeze
of meaning into a smaller space, overlapping

metaphors and images improved in ways
we never dreamed of on our own? Each
to his or her own, we say. Yet we reach
out to each other over time and space,

not joined at hip or lip, but with energy and zest,
sailing similar seas, and trying our very best.

Water 2

15 May 2002 Pre-Rimouski 277

Rain Stick

The bruja turns her rain stick upside down.
Rain drops patter one by one,
then fall , faster and faster
until her bamboo sky
fills with the welcome
sound of rushing water.

An autumnal whirl of sun-dried cactus
beats against its wooden prison walls.

As I look heavenwards,
clouds gather,
rain falls in a wisdom of pearls,
cast from dark skies.

The scales fall from my eyes
and land on the marimbas,
dry beneath the arches
where wild music sounds,
half-tame rhythms,
sympathetic music
like this rainstorm
released by the bruja’s
magic hand.

(bruja: witch, witch doctor)

Comment: Every afternoon, in the rainy season, as regular as clockwork, the clouds build up and by five o’clock, the rain comes tumbling down. Nothing can describe the welcome smell of cool rain on dry dust and hot sand, the sound of raindrops pittering through the trees to splash on dry leaves, or the hiss of water on hot cobbles.

When the rain doesn’t come, then the Oaxacans who believe in the ancient traditions resort to sympathetic magic. They ask the brujos for help and the witch doctors bring out their rain sticks. Sympathetic magic: the sound of the sun-dried cactus thorns falling through the hollow rain stick imitates the sound of the rain falling on the rain forest leaves. The clouds gather in sympathy and, sooner or later, the skies fill up with clouds, and down comes the rain.

Five deer!

I glanced out of the bedroom window, and there they were. So silent. “Five deer,” I whispered to Clare.

We watched as they moved through the trees at the garden’s foot. Step by step, silent, slow, ears pricked, cautious, the little ones up to their bellies in snow.

They couldn’t see me as I took these pictures, but I am sure their sharp hearing caught the click of the camera. The one on the left is looking right at the spot where I am sitting.

Sound and movement surround them: the clicking of branches, the whispering wind. They are so careful, so cautious, so suspicious. We look: but we can’t see anyone out there. Certainly we cannot hear the neighbors’ dogs.

There must be something, there. They start to turn. Will they go back the way they have come?

No: they continue to the road and we catch a last glimpse of them through thin branches as they prepare to cross the tarmac and vanish into the deeper woods beyond.

Poem from the Cree

Poem from the Cree

The Cree have retreated from the streets.
Their violinist has taken time out, leaving
his last notes dancing from a street lamp.
Only the Fire-Brave remains, inhaling thick
black oily smoke. He juggles twin balls of fire.

Bones gather together to gather dry dust. Hollow
metal buffalo: a cold wind blew and plucked out
his heart. Five climate controlled pedestrian
walkways cross the prairie, linking building
to building. A glass wheat field shimmers
and tinkles to the rhythm of air conditioning.

The black cow, cast iron hide set free from rust,
ruminates behind its plate glass window.
The night wind whisks white buffalo bones
pale across the sky. Oskana ka asasteki.

With these words, I will leave you, suddenly,
abruptly. A light going out. Now I am here.
Oskana ka asasteki. And now I too am gone.

Comment: Another Golden Oldie, re-discovered. I wrote this in Regina back in the nineties, last century, last millennium … how long ago is that? In our kitchen, an ear of wheat, purchased in the glass wheat field museum, still shelters in its gilded frame, a memento from that trip. So many memories, so many pictures, drifting … just drifting.

Butterfly

Butterfly

A butterfly
brushes against
my mother’s rose bush.

Pale and delicate,
much too frail to survive,
in this April wind,
he tears his wing
on a thorn.

The white of its shredding:
a sudden shriek,
blanched blood
drifting like snow.

“Why did you write those words?”
My mother’s voice
sounds in my head.
“Am I the butterfly?
Are you the echo of my cry?”

From this distance in time,
my mind bounces back and forth,
from image to image:
a stone skipped across
tranquil water.

Pictures pound through my head:
waves on the shoreline
where I scattered her ashes,
and every grain of sand
a grinding of small bones.

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