Nature

A Glimpse in Time

lillian5 Comments

I press my hand into the rock
this cave dwelling of yesteryear
and yesteryears before that
hand in hand, exactly
living inside solidified.

Bending still,
my eyes turn upward
seek the crevasse,
its light
and breath of breeze.

Clouds stir
create, reform
amorphous ambivalent shapes.
A spirit courses through my fingertips
perhaps rides the wisps above.

And I understand. I feel. I know.
Those before me, before them
all are dear to her,
threads of life intermingled
tied to the earth’s core.

photo 2-3    photo 1-2

Me in 2003 — at Walnut Canyon, Arizona. The Sinagua people lived in the cliff dwellings within the mountain sides.  This is me, putting my hand into a print in the cave wall — I was so moved. My hand fit exactly. I’ve never forgotten it.  The second “picture” – my words, written next to the picture in my scrap book….”It is an amazing feeling of connection to humans of another time.”  All these years later, still remember that feeling and it motivated this piece.

We the Voyeurs

lillian7 Comments

We fly in this metal cylinder
to escape the city frenzy
and we still sit in the midst of it.
Hear metal belt click shut
and engines roar
feel the rush of air
from round blow holes overhead.
Nothing natural in this enclosed world.

Binoculars hang about our necks
a noose we choose to use.
Instead of trekking high,
step by step, from tree line to the sky
we ride a four wheeled bus,
now dusty from its assault,
on roads carved deep
into your very core.

We crane our necks
at white dots on mountain tops
adjust a rubber eye piece to our face
seek to magnify without a fuzzy blur.
Specs become horned dall sheep,
heads down to graze upon the rocks
unaware of human spies
with black binoculars eyes.

Last night, we communed with earth
faces up, we stared
into the cold black diamond sky.
One star jarred loose,
arced its way across the sky
as if to tell us in its glitter script,
you are the voyeurs within this space.

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Denali National Park bus. The Kantishna Experience goes to the end of the one and only road in the park — to mile 92.  I was struck by the magnificence of the land and its inhabitants: grizzlies (see poem Ursa), caribou, moose, dall sheep. And I kept thinking that we were the voyeurs, the interlopers in this incredible place.

…and the Ice Melts

lillian9 Comments

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If you look with the mind of mother earth, in this place called Alaska, you become the earth.

Great calving sheets of ice seen from the haven of a cruise ship. We roar in excitement as you roar in pain. Losing part of yourself to the sea.

My boots trek through forest, stumble on tree roots, your uprooted veins. In the midst of rocky debris, at the toe of Laughton Glacier, a new sound. The relentless trickle of water into a glacial stream. Tears unabated, you weep cold rivulets, slowly, through hundreds of generations.

And I see. And I hear. Like a jagged shard of ice thrust through my heart. I understand this insidious thing we blithely call global warming. And I am chilled to the bone.

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A prose poem, in the style of Joy Harjo. 

Photos:  Top:  great slabs of ice shed from Mendenhall Glacier. Above left: standing on the “toe” of Laughton Glacier, after hiking 6.5 miles through Tsongas Forest and climbing through rocks on her debris field. This picture shows a gap — the “black cave” created by the ice melting…continuously dripping. The “rock” above the cave is the ice itself, narrowed from melting. It will eventually collapse into itself.  All that you see above the “cave” is ice with debris its carried in its forward path.  Right: the “ice field” our ship had to go through to get to Hubbard Glacier….which can be seen in the distance. Result of glacier calving.

See views of the glaciers themselves with my poem, In the Midst of Glaciers.

A different take on the Daily Post Photo Challenge: from every angle.

Eagle

lillian4 Comments

eagle 1

Tree top abandoned
you glide overhead
power and beauty combined
a national treasure.

Outstretched black wings
white head and tail
blend in sleek aeronautic form
sole presence in vast sky.

Suddenly
legs drop in mid-flight
fearsome talons glint in sun
stark contrast to sea serenity.

No hesitation,
double-back or fly around
fast dive, splash
water and body collide.

Plummet turns to majestic rise,
return to nest, the conqueror.

The moment, so fast in time
waters flow unbroken
unaware they’ve lost
a swift inhabitant
to the ruler of the sky.

eagle 3       eagle 2  Photos:  from recent Alaska trip. Apologies they are not better….taken on cell phone. Eagle was magnificent!

Even Song

lillian11 Comments

green tent

Plop
Patter
Ping
Slow steady nocturnal rain
taps on the yellow-green ceiling
of my ancient canvas tent.
Comfort seeps in as I burrow deep
in my cocoon zippered bag,
crisp cold nose, just outside the seam.
Lids shutter slowly as ears perk to listen.
Thoughts float in a cool haze.
A hooting owl sits sheltered
by spring’s green-yellow canopy.
The drip, drop, patter
plops above its feathered head.
Dreaming now,
a moon sliver guides me
to a sleep moment of clarity.
These rain notes are nature’s evensong.
A prayer
for all who sleep in this forested place.

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Revised from one of my very first poems written in February, in my first class with Holly Wren Spaulding. Posted so early in March (as Rain Song) , I doubt but five people saw it!
UPDATE:  I am in Alaska, as you read this! Will be posting every other day for two weeks until I return.  Mostly new — poems that is — although I will be rejuvenated (love that word!) even more upon my return to Boston, our city by the sea.

Tankas* for Earth’s Children

lillian4 Comments

Volcanoes fester
seethe and boil beneath earth’s skin
like red hot anger
held within, spews forth fury
assaults all within its grasp.

Watch how the clouds fly
sometimes dark and threatening
often soft and light
retreat in black moonlit sky
promise always to return.

Oceans between lands
offer pathways to friendship
teem with life for life.
Waves ebb and flow to all shores,
assure life’s cycle anew.

Sun of mother earth,
shines her perpetual light
nurtures all children,
no matter diversity
prejudice vanquished for all.

Listen my children,
the earth shudders in anguish
sees your refusal
to step lightly on her soil.
Embrace your sameness and love.

 

*My June Challenge Poetry Class assignment was to write a poem within constraints, and the next day’s assignment, to write a poem of instruction. This combined the two. A tanka is a genre of classical Japanese poetry that contains 31 syllables, typically in lines of 5-7-5-7-7.