This wilderness wasn’t a wilderness until they arrived and called it ‘wild’.
They constructed roads, ran boats up and down our rivers, built bridges, fenced fields, built stone buildings, desecrated the curves of the land with square shapes and right angles, razor sharp lines that ‘tamed it,’ they said, but we said ‘destroyed it’.
Where now the spring salmon runs? The dam that put the river in chains drove all those fish away.
Upstream, down stream, towards the river and away from it, the four cardinal points brought ruin to our sense of direction.
Where now the land’s lost soul, the ancient paths our people walked?
In place of the circles we built from stone, the stones that pointed the time of sky, that tracked the seasons, and planting time and harvest time, they gave us clockwork clocks.
Yes, they tamed this wilderness, but they broke it down and we watched, helpless, as they stole its soul.
Standing in the sun, watching the leaves scuttling, skittering over the grass, listening to the trees, their dry tongues, chittering autumnal rumors of geese preparing to fly, their movements, as they gather, in accord with patterns hard-wired genetically into their minds.
Animate, they are, and more than that they are animated by ancestral spirits that grace grass and water, walking, delicate, between stark trees, calling, always calling ‘away, away’.
We too are called, called to follow the geese on their sky-way high-ways, where their arrow-heads point us all along the star paths of their migrant nocturnal ways.
Secret and sacred, this shadow world that walks naked in the inner chambers of the mysterious mind.
Here, in the valley, surrounded by whaleback hills, the horizon limited by fir and fin, I live without limits beneath a limitless sky.
Dream boats sail above me on a sumptuous azure sea and I am a mammal, feet rooted in the soil, dwelling at the bottom of a sea of air.
Mysterious, the circles weave their cycles – sunrise to sunset, moonrise to moonset – and in my dreams a photo of the rising earth seen from a cyclical satellite we call the moon.
I had forgotten the who, what, when, where, and why. A t first, I didn’t hear the cry, despondent, squeaky, like a mouse, timid until it climbed up higher, inspired by the grief within.
My own heart, paper thin, could not confine the sobbing that assaulted my own stronghold, the oubliette, where everything lay hidden, but never forgotten.
A pebble on the pond, the cry rippled onwards and out, became a whimper, grew into a shout. What’s it all about, I asked and took the cry to task for rippling my pond’s tranquility.
Words grow like flowers, invasive, cruel, beautiful, cutting, and when cut, they wither and fade, just like flowers. Catch them while you can, I say. Catch them, hold them tight, press them to you heart, for time is voracious and will soon devour them, swallowing them down in the black holes of forgetfulness, carelessness, and memory loss. Shine a light on your words. Underline them, grace them with stars, think about them, carefully. And remember, the word once spoken or written can never, ever be recalled.
Joy of Light
I wait for words to descend, soft, peaceful. They brush my mind with the soft touch of a grey jay’s wings. When they refuse to come, I know that silence is golden. Sunshine spreads its early morning light, upwards, under the blinds, into my room and my eyelashes radiate its rainbow.
Light from the rose window in Chartres once spread its spectrum over my hands, and I rejoiced in the glory of its speckled glow. I spread my fingers before my face and marveled at the suit of lights clothing my body. In such splendour mortal things like words cease to flow.
Words are inadequate. They cannot express what I feel when I breathe in color and light and my heart expands into an everlasting rose, as red as dawn, as bright as a blushing sunrise over Minister’s Island. Flowers burst into bloom. A sense of immanent beauty fills me as light, and warmth, and joy disperse night’s gloom.
The hollyhocks are back. A little bit late, but just starting to reveal themselves in all their glory. It’s been a strange spring, with frost warnings (and two actual frosts) in June, heavy rain, T-Storms, a tornado watch, extra hot days and, thankfully cold nights with the temperatures at +4C, even this month, July.
The yucca plant is flowering again, with three flourishing stems this time. It only started to flower late last week, but it, too, is full of promise. Somehow, while there are flowers, there is still some hope, some beauty, and some time and space for rejoicing.
Ah, daffodils, my favourite flowers.
Daffodils
Winter’s chill lingers well into spring. I buy daffodils to encourage the sun to return and shine in the kitchen. Tight-clenched fists their buds, they sit on the table and I wait for them to open.
For ten long days the daffodils endured, bringing to vase and breakfast- table stored up sunshine and the silky softness of their golden gift.
Their scent grew stronger as they gathered strength from the sugar we placed in their water, but now they have withered and their day is done.
Dry and shriveled they stand paper- thin and brown, crisp to the touch. They hang their heads as their time runs out and death weighs them down.
Vis brevis, ars longa – life is short but art endures. Maybe my daffodils will last longer than the yucca and the hollyhocks. They will certainly outlive this year’s bloom. Time and tide wait for no man, and flowers too are subject to the waxing and the waning of the moon. That’s life, I guess. Long may it last.
“Another long day but I completed the sky, then finished the wharf’s grey asphalt. Large areas are easier to spray with my air gun. It’s hard to paint them with a brush.
I also got the base coat on to the ever-greens. Much more difficult: I painted the inside of the cage around the ladder that leads to the roof. Fiddly work, time consuming, but nice to get out of the way.
No painting tomorrow, but Saturday and Sunday look good. As for Monday, I don’t know yet I’ll have to wait and see if it rains.”
rogermoorepoet 