Drift

Some day I will step on my ice floe

Drift away from the fevered world

Into the dark mist waiting

Far from every word

In peace I will ride the deep waters

In silence to what I can’t see

When I reach it I step across slowly

And kneel at my moss covered tree

And lie me down beneath it

Let my eyes travel up its dark heights

And my body go down to its roots until

I close my eyes on the light.

You are my

 

If

I ever am a river

I will flow to you

Like gravity you pull me and

The pull is never ending

And my destination true

If

I ever am a tree

I will grow to you

You are the sky that I will reach for

Every limb and leaf will seek more

Of the sunlight that is you

If

I ever am a planet

I will revolve around you

In sweeping grandeur hurtling

Through empty airless silence

Never doubting you my centre

Now only me,

I know this:

What would be this house without you?

Teardrops, dry leaves, vacant space.

 

In the soft light at the end of the night

Sleep slips away and I let it

Before thought begins I gird up my shins

Throw off the bad dream and forget it

Before the day's heat rubber boots on my feet

I walk to the dew glittered garden

The bending of back and the weight of the sack

Cancel all painful thoughts like a pardon.

Jephthah's Daughter Returning

Like Jephthah's daughter returning from the hills

I take each step, the pounding stills

It is over, then, the end is near

There’s no more room for dancing here.

My aged legs ache anyway

My knees are weak, I sometimes sway

And some I love have gone ahead

Where I must shuffle now instead.

The land around me still is green

I leave to others what might have been

The time is short and fleeting now

I move into the final bow.

They said deny it, escape it, flee

But they haven’t seen what I can see

The wildest dance of leap and bend

Leads only where all dances end.

And so I walk my head held high

My father’s word is I shall die.

That time I walked in the October night

Walk in the dark

You can’t see your ground

You keep taking steps

But with knees slightly bent

Prepared to absorb

An unexpected jolt

From a dip or a bump

You can’t see the ground

The stars in their beauty

May draw your attention

The trees waving peacefully 

Make you relax

As you walk in the dark

Remember your knees

Be ready for impact

You can’t see the ground

Shakespeare Out of Doors

To sit reading ancient poetry

On my leaf-pattered porch,

The wind glad swirling in the trees

Who welcome me with waves and dancing

(What better than to enjoy the trees’ goodwill),

I can tell to no one.

In solitude I have great company:

The bard brings tears and laughter.

My voice speaks his words;

His word my heart recites.

If this is how my fading life declines

I will let it slide,

Look old age full in the eyes

And find its pearl delights.

Cathartes aura

Slow dancing in the sky above me

Hovering, soaring,

Astonishing, the beauty

They pulled the heart right out of me

And left me feebly standing

Left behind on the dismal earth. 

If you can’t weep

Walking through the woods

When can you weep. 

The Walk

I saw the brightness of the lichen after rain

On small trees growing in the woods. 

I saw a river of whitetail deer, silently 

Flowing across the path a quarter mile ahead.

I saw a pair of cavorting robins

Looping near the ground

Before they flew away to be alone together.

When I get home I pick twigs

From the upper branches of my hair.

Healed by trees

Healed by an owl

Healed by solitude,

Walks in the woods

And wine

Healed by sunlight through the leaf

Healed by deer, by snow,

By chickadees.

Healed by rare wild flowers growing. 

Healed by vines to tops of trees. 

Healed by stars and falling stars

Healed by full moon

Healed but scarred

And knowing that there will be griefs

And hoping for more healing trees. 

Do you write down the words

That you hear in your head

Do you read them later

Surprised what they said

Do the words take over

And fling themselves down

Til you forget your own children 

Because you are bound

By compulsion to write them

To write them all out

And later you’ll read them

What’s that all about

As if some other someone has taken you over

But you remain faithful, you heard word lover. 

God’s heart is strong and made of steel

So it won’t break from the pain her children feel.

God’s eyes are red and blaze with woe

And ache from the constant tears that flow.

God’s hands are wrinkled, but reaching and warm

Welcoming, but within the storm.

God is old and always here

Her name is love and never fear.

God is far; God is within.

I miss you god; where've you been!?

Sometimes I will allow myself

A song of lament no one hears

Oh god oh god oh god

It goes

As I walk

As I think

As I hear. 

And lament, lament,

I sing as I walk.

The comfort is in the singing

Of the song no one may ever hear

Or Someone may hear, I not knowing

Sing and listen,

And listen and sing.

When the last person walks out of the room

I think about that I will die.

And it does not disturb me,

So I think I do not really think that I will die.

But sometimes I want to die,

And that does not really disturb me

So I think I do not really want to die.

So then I live.

I think I will walk home while it is blue.

A Manitoba January dusk.

So quiet are the woods

I wish it was my heart.

As if Christmas isn’t hard enough

With its all your family home

And you not telling

One will never come home again

Not shouting your anger

But pushing hard a silent smile

A week later there’s taking down the tree

Alone as it only can be

When the anger wells

And the sorrow flows

At each ornament dated in the beautiful past

And the remembered guilt when they put up the tree

How I turned away crying inside

And please god next year

May I be able to join and help deck out the tree

And make Christmas a joy

For those still gathering memories.

A Dream of Discussing God

(In a dream someone asked me)

"Don't you find that God is an arrogant child?"

("Listening to no one and running wild,"

I thought in answer.

I remember the weathered face and the piercing light eyes,

And how he smiled slightly as he talked.

As if he knew Him.)

Between Grief and Going On
To find a balance takes something.
The deep dizziness,
The indecision.
Blurred vision
Facing the future.
Life isn't over,
Though destroyed.
You can hardly stand
But you take a step.
Drag your feet
But keep walking.

I'll read the night and sleep the day

And so perhaps will pass away

The time I dread and cannot face:

Remembering the empty place.

The calendar returns the day.

The path we walked is still a way

I walk alone and see your face.

But tears and absence took your place.

Poems, stories, dreams, I waste the day,

Unconsciousness the only way.

I hide from and I seek your face

In memory or out-world place.

                    ***

I'm awash and aswim 

in the missing of him

and the sadness and darkness and pain.

And the anger rolls on

and over me on

to the ends of the worlds that I'm in.

Hovering however high

The feathered eye

Goes seeing by.

I upturned under-sky

Pale fac-ed eye

Crawl hardly seeing by,

Too tethered to

The surface soil

To view with wings askew

From bold unbounded blue

As eagles do.

Blank before God

I step out of the shower.

He hasn't spoken to me in years

Or so much as inclined his ear

What am I to think?

But I learned about love as a youngling 

and I remember how to be loved.

I learned to love as a mother,

And I know the permanence of love,

Unwavering in the face of imperfection,

Diamond and lasting forever.

Maybe in my soul no longer a child

I do not need what I knew,

All that was taken away.