Bleached weatherboards burnt chimneys cold welcomes on this bone frosted morning, twenty years may never find acceptance in this place where rules exist but are never spoken, the first question clever enough was whose permission did I need to be myself here, the second question came from the trenches of my learning, when would permission unconditionally be given, the answer lay between not telling and my not asking.
At dVerse Mish is hosting poetics where she invites us to write a poem influenced by The Seven Grandfather Teachings in any way that you would like to approach the theme. You may choose to focus on ONE or embody them all. To see more on the Seven Grandfather Teachings follow the link below.
I have chosen – (ZAAGIDWIN) The eagle has strength to carry all teachings. Closest to the Creator. Has the sight to see all the ways of being from great distances. Loving parents that protect, teach and guide. Love must be unconditional. Eagle feather is the highest honour.
Indigenous Art by Michelle Stoney
Heavy Lifting
So gracefully falls the feather in dainty turns while its owner spirals on warmth, transcending its singular loss becoming cumulating dark clouds, memories storming as up and up the eagle goes on the strength of its feathered community, rising above pain floating lightly the thermals of love.
Some things stick in the mind like glue. I remember a few quotes like Einstein’s dictum that problems can’t be solved by the minds that created them, and I can’t argue with that – it’s playing out before me in environmental degradation, economic disparity, and war. Proust’s wonderful pointer that a voyage of discovery is not about seeking new landscapes but rather – having new eyes. O give me those eyes I secretly pray, but then I already have them. There’s also the somber recognition by Pedro Reyes that modern technology is captive to primitive minds. What gave it away I wonder? In their own way each one is a call to reimagine how to live, to be, to do, how to be a better human. I wonder if we can get to these thoughts and soon? I want to reimagine the world beyond this moment.
Photo: found on Twitter. ICE on ice, seems to me that both need to go.
Being Salt
When I was all of five my parents encouraged me to clear snow from the driveway for a few pence. Naturally, they were trying to occupy me, and given my age, it was a mammoth task. I had fun, got distracted, messed about. The snow was easy but its cousin was a little more tricky. Ice, once formed, was like steel and so slippery, so I turned it into a slide much to my mother’s consternation. Water will break it down. Salt is still used in many places to help turn it to slurry (though this is an environmental risk).
Around Candlemas or Imbolc people look for signs that a thaw is coming. A variety of methods are used, some more scientific than others. Groundhogs – shadow or no shadow, badgers on the move, certain birds returning. We always looked for the first buds on trees and shrubs with a sense of hope that spring was indeed coming.
Right now I’m not looking to groundhogs or badgers. Maybe salt is the only way. If we as people of the world gather with a view to compassionate action, if we become as salt, the flavour of compassion in our communities, then ICE and its cousins across the West will slowly but surely melt. Right now we need an early spring, and fresh life, vitality, creativity, hope. We all need an end to the evil that is ICE whose winter is symptomatic of the political moral collapse, principally in the US, but also across the world. The buds are showing and I’m optimistic.
buds appearing now the new spring offers fresh blooms pig sty cleaned ready
Note: I worked in suicide prevention for a few years and then it was part of other roles that I held, so this comes out of that experience.
Photo: unsplash.com
Form: Choka (5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7-7) with envoy Tanka (5-7-5-7-7)
hey do you like me questions lovability gauging his self worth was there just one anchor point a cleat to cling to heartfelt assurance today forgotten by morn attachment so tenuous prevention simply a yes
doctored drug regimes strategic interventions so many programs maybe helpful maybe not a hug’s worth a million pills
At dVerse Grace is hosting Poetry Form with an invitation to write a Spanish Lira (7-11-7-7-1) with one or two stanzas. For more detail follow the link below:
For gratitude to arise we must prise ourselves from a certain darkness that lurks in our poor disguise all wrapped as if a parvis, to all intents and purposes a carcass.
To rise we must celebrate discover in each other golden virtue eschew trends to calibrate resisting moves to abduce, the only violence love's soft repousse.
At dVerse Jennifer Wagner is hosting poetics with an invitation to be inspired by Ted Kooser’s ‘So This Is Nebraska’ and to write our own ‘So This Is … ‘ poem. For Ted’s poem and Jennifer’s supporting resource follow the link below:
Photo: Looking out over the Blackwood River at Hardy Inlet and post dawn, Augusta, in May 2021.
So This Is Approximately Augusta
The whales now roam free no more gaping wounds, though the King George Whiting are always fair game for the pub platter populated by those free of work such is their age - a quietude descends long before the witching hour, only the seasonal visits of coaches and hire cars lift the game from placid to hyper as they seek out colonial plaques that fail to tell the ancient stories of this pristine coastline, or remain gobsmacked by heaven's candy arching across the bay or the fairy floss sky at 5.00 a.m. as much as the dolphins playing in the river that charge the heart with gladness; here the country dance frisks no more, instead we dance to our freedom to be who we truly are.
Ever the hemp strands taking the burden of quiet streets and tidy lawns, but each day a little less, the first chafing wearing to dust a few fibres, now whole strands of this magnificent old rope are lost, peace teeters soon tyres will be lit rocks will be thrown at golliath's head, if the rope snaps how soon the molotov? We are exasperated we are riot.
parallax 