At the Broken Point

At the Broken Point

Do you feel the weight of the stars on your back
     And the pressure inside your skull?
Do you feel the air grow thick like a stew
     And the world flood in through your skin
     As infinity shrinks to a speck
     And eternity ends with a thought?
I hear it: the imperceptible breaking of a toothpick
     On the other side of the house.
I hear it: the sharp snapping of a frozen twig in the snow
     On a mountaintop miles away.
I hear it: the brittle cracking of a thin piece of slate
     On the long cracked concrete driveway
     Of a house I used to live in
     Years and years and lives ago.
I hear it in all of the beats of my heart--
     Staccato footsteps on a heap of broken bricks;
I feel it in all of the sighs of my heart--
     Staccato footsteps on a temple’s fallen walls.

Image credit: Hamed Saber, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Mirrorworld

Mirrorworld

"He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star."
- William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

With open eyes and bleeding heart
Take a hammer to the mirror
Of a cold and tired world,
And smash the dusty glass
Into billions and billions of shards,
The tiny gleams of light,
Like universes underfoot,
Then gather them one by one
With bloody fingers
And prickling palms,
And chew them,
Consume and subsume
The shattered light
Of a reflected cosmos,
The life and death
Becoming no more
Than ghostly forms glimpsed
From the corner of an eye,
Far beyond forgotten,
Long gone beyond the bounds
Of the mirror’s cracked frame,
And with burning bowels and fiery heart
Gaze upon the empty void
With eyes of flaming light:
For there are many new worlds
Just waiting to be made.


Image credit: Menetekel, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain image.

Green Books Campaign: Grey Owl and Me: Stories from the Trail and Beyond

This review is part of the Green Books campaign. Today 200 bloggers take a stand to support books printed in an eco-friendly manner by simultaneously publishing reviews of 200 books printed on recycled or FSC-certified paper. By turning a spotlight on books printed using eco- friendly paper, we hope to raise the awareness of book buyers and encourage everyone to take the environment into consideration when purchasing books.

The campaign is organized for the second time by Eco-Libris, a green company working to make reading more sustainable. We invite you to join the discussion on "green" books and support books printed in an eco-friendly manner! A full list of participating blogs and links to their reviews is available on Eco-Libris website.

We civilized humans are a complicated lot. Whereas most other animals are intimately connected to, and immersed in, their natural habitat, most modern humans have “cultivated” ourselves right out of the natural world to a large degree. Now, we have to go “back into nature” to experience anything remotely like the conditions that our ancestors faced for the majority of our species’ history. But we can get glimpses of that environmental immersion when we plunge ourselves into nature--and sometimes we can do more than just glimpse it. Some of us actually live a large portion of their lives and build a large portion of their identity around a naturalized, “wild” way of life.

Of course, their lives are still pretty complicated in many ways as far as being “in” nature goes, especially if they try to bridge the gap between wild nature and civilization. Archie Belaney, an English-born Canadian who was known to the world as Grey Owl, is a prime example of such complexity. In his new book Grey Owl and Me: Stories from the Trail and Beyond, Hap Wilson, the Canadian adventurer, guide, conservationist, and writer, engages with the legacy of Grey Owl, who was and still is a crucial mentor for him through his writings on the Canadian wilderness and the need to preserve it. Published by Natural Heritage Books/Dundurn Press, and with illustrations by Wilson and Ingrid Zschogner, the collection of essays comprises a narrative adventure into their shared homeland that is both personal and graphic (in more ways than one!).

Broken Bird

Broken Bird

This bird with broken wings
Is cradled in my hands
And lies as still as death
Against my aching breast.
Its heart is soft and slow,
Perhaps in peaceful sleep
With dreams as bright as life
Of flying towards the sun.
Perhaps it can forget
The sticks that broke its wings,
The hands that dealt the blows,
The eyes that turned away.
I hold it, share its pain,
And seek the proper way
To help this broken bird
Arise and fly again.

Image credit: Gaming 4JC, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Sub specie aeternitatis

Sub specie aeternitatis

A golden morning of autumn
Has passed into dusk with a breath,
And shadows beckoning midnight
Are murmuring dirges of death
With tears as parents of laughter
That shimmer as stars on the sea
While everyone restlessly slumbers
In dreams of what was and will be.

A cold winter's dawn is approaching,
Its heralds the withering leaves
In myriad costumes and colors
That cover the Earth when it grieves.
But spring and summer are waiting
In temperate climes far away
To come back again where they started
As green in a garden of gray.

Now the clouds seem to ceaselessly circle,
And the Earth seems to sleepily spin,
And the universe seems to grow smaller,
And a song seems to rise from the din
As we wander forever and after
And follow what paths we may please
With shuffling feet in the twilight
Through the leaves at the feet of the trees.

Image credit: Nikater, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons license.

Mysteries & Miracles

Mysteries & Miracles

In memory of Kristin Leigh Highfill
December 23, 1978 -- September 17, 2005

Hummingbirds twirl and flash around
Glistening flowers awake in their beds,
Catching the morning’s first light.
Who knows the taste of freshest dew
Rolling along their tongues?

Well-tuned bands of bees busily buzz,
Bumbling in blossoms newly born,
In praise of their conquering queen.
Who knows what treasures they find
Deep down where pollen hides?

A group of children gather to play,
Sometimes friends and sometimes foes--
But always children at play.
Who knows what secrets they spell out
In letter-blocks and finger-paint?

An old friend crosses the street
In the calmest hours of night
But does not reach the other side.
Who knows what she encounters
Or where her journey ends?

Spring, summer, autumn, winter pass,
Leading every thing to come and go.
Who knows what gifts are waiting
In nature’s gossamer shawl
If we would but hold out our hands?

Who can solve the mystery
Or analyze the miracle
Of the sunshine cupped in my hand?
Of the seed that has dropped from my hand?
Of the life that has slipped through our hands?

Image credit: EdyaT, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Hidden in the Harvest

Hidden in the Harvest

To Susan Stone

Sunrise:
Not a globe of fire climbing out of night to rage
But a brush tip spreading strokes of golden wash
Across the frameless canvas of the sky and fields
Till nothing lacks a coat of lustrous light.
And there is no horizon.

A drop of paint takes wing from the palette in a swirl,
Its flight another voice in the chorus of song
That is also a vision of myriad sparkling forms
And poetry written in strong resounding bounding lines
(Though words at their best are but seeds scattered in the wind
That just may, in their season, take root, shoot forth, and bloom,
With fruit whose sweetness depends on the tongue).
And art is a natural wonder.

The crops extend into a shimmering plain,
Prolific artists lined in even swaying rows,
Collaborating, blending colors in the stirring breeze,
And signaling that all may gather for the show;
In swift responses, weaving in between, the beat
Of furry paws, of hooves, of tiny insect feet
Reveals the first arrivals for another day.
And earth is alive with the movement.

Then next the men and women, holding children’s hands,
Come beaming bright with smiles and blinking eyes
Still heavy in the morning’s rising mist of dew
To dip their limbs in the light as it streams,
The building heat its energetic, ever-vibrant pulse
And sign of its health at the height of its life—
Kinetic and conductive and contagious, shared
Among the many bathing in its brilliant depths.
And still the golden bounty of the fields rears up,
Enough that every eye and every heart is filled;
And still the haloed heads of grain are raised aloft:
Sunrise.

For there is a light surfaces can reflect
While it waxes to noon and then steadily wanes,
And there is a light barriers cannot bar
Shining in shining out in a loving exchange.

Image credit: Lev Kamenev, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain image.