Category: poetry

Just beyond the present moment

photo wcw 2021

JUST BEYOND THE MOMENT

“That other dimension where the words are waiting just beyond the moment you are witnessing”

WestCoastWoman 2020

I was sorting through bits and pieces of writing collected over the years and came upon a comment sent to another writer. I expressed how their writing took me to that “other dimension” the moment “just beyond” the witnessing. They suggested I try to form words around the dimension I was describing…..it felt ineffable.

In this same stack of papers I found a portion of an interview with Derek Walcott from the Paris Review, Winter 1986 I had copied from https://theuncarvedblog.com/2014/06/22/love-after-love-by-derek-walcott-resonates-deeply-when-you-first-acknowledge-yourself/ It comes as close to describing that ‘other dimension’ that I’ve ever read :

” But I do know that if one thinks a poem is coming on-in spite of the noise of the typewriter or the traffic outside the window, or whatever…..you do make a retreat, a withdrawal into some kind of silence that cuts out everything around you…I am not a monk, but if something does happen I say thanks because I feel that it is really a piece of luck, a kind of fleeting grace that has happened to one. Between the beginning and the ending and the actual composition that goes on, there is a kind of trance that you hope to enter where every aspect of your intellect is functioning simultaneously for the progress of the composition. But there is no way you can induce that trance.”

Derek Walcott

MONKS WITHOUT MONASTERIES

Monks without Monasteries
Withdraw to Silence
Sanctuary
Gestating
Words Born of
Fleeting Grace
Trance

Kneel
Hands cupped
Offer
Thanks.

wcw 2023




The Other Side

the force of the tide photo westcoastwoman 2021

“Summer was like your house: you knew
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

THE OTHER SIDE

This morning
forcing myself
to rise from
the Other Side of
the bed
the world
a sky where
rain fell
no bombs
not rising to
cram essentials
into small bags
before entering a corridor
of human strength and
misery

This morning on
the Other Side of
the world
the bed
first foot
met the floor with
“Thank”
the second
“You”
humanity rising
no Other Side to
Courage
Truth
Freedom

We rise
unstoppable tide
forcing
everything
everyone
Forward.

wcw 2022


Featured

Now That Anything Could Happen……

not a commercial operation. photo westcoastwoman

Now That Anything Could Happen
by Joyce Sutphen

You now know that anything could happen;
things that never happened before, things that
only happened in movies and nightmares
are happening now, as if nothing could
stop them. You know now that you are not safe,
you know you live in fragile skin and bones,
that even steel and concrete can melt away,
and the earth itself can come unhinged,
shaken from its orbit around the sun.
You know, now that anything can happen,
it’s hard to know what will, and what will you
do now that you know? What words will you say
now that you could say anything? What hands
will you hold? Whose heart will beat inside you?

Joyce Sutphen, “Now That Anything Could Happen”
From Naming the Stars. 2004
_____________________________________________________

Not a Commercial Operation
“now that anything can happen, it’s hard to know what will“

The wind was picking up, whitecaps appeared as a small boat floated into sight. Trailing behind was a questionably seaworthy barge hauling a large propane truck, both were being buffeted by the growing swells. The boat was moving closer to shore appearing to zig zag in an attempt to jockey the barge into a less precarious position. I watched as the barge rocked back and forth, at times no longer visible, giving the illusion that the propane truck was making its own way across the water.

I called the Coast Guard, explained what I was witnessing and was put on hold. They came back and advised me that there were no commercial operations in the area. They did not need to convince me that this was not a professionally orchestrated commercial operation. Feeling their job was done they ended with “people do all kinds of things”.

I watched the boat and truck bob and weave it’s way out of sight, the thought that lingered was how familiar it felt each time a wave hit and the barge disappeared below the water line. I recognized it was the emotion we have been living with the past two years.

The truck is too big for the barge, the boat is too small to be pulling it and the wind and waves are never reliably consistent. We are living in a world now “that anything can happen” and as we are being reminded every day “people do all kinds of things”

So, I extend my hand to yours as we all jump forward into this New Year and ask the question ….

“What words will you say now that you could say anything?”

wcw 2021

“It began when…”

Morning Walk. photo westcoastwoman

It has been a while …. I recently joined a writing group that uses ‘jump off lines’ from poems to get us writing ‘wild writing’. I plan to post one of these ‘wild writings’ every week and see where it leads.

IT BEGAN WHEN……

It began when I spoke something, something that sounded like a promise,
that tasted both foreign and sincere on my tongue.

It began when there was no doubt your body was dying,
when that promise had to be unearthed, examined, acted upon.

It began when I held your hand and it came time to say goodbye,
the gifts and pain that flowed from that touch.

It began when I went to the shore sobbing,
as a scene played out between a man and his dog.

It was all ‘clothing optional’.

It began when there was no other option but to release, everything,
clothing being the least of it, that first layer easily removed.

It began when attempts to control anything moved forward like a tsunami,
spilling onto ground, exploding into air, inhaled by merciless waves.

It began when you asked me where I was going and I replied
“Wherever my feet take me.”

Yes, that was the moment it really began,
when feet carried me to the edge of a waterfall

Standing, waving to myself as I went over

It was all ‘clothing optional’ beyond that point

wcw october 2021

Clothing Optional. photo westcoastwoman


” I am Losing my Mother Words”

Portal. photo westcoastwoman

Hieroglyphic Stairway

It’s 3:23 in the morning

and I’m awake

because my great great grandchildren

won’t let me sleep

my great great grandchildren

ask me in dreams

what did you do while the planet was plundered?

what did you do when the earth was unraveling?


surely you did something

when the seasons started failing?


as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?


did you fill the streets with protest

when democracy was stolen?


what did you do

once

you

knew?…

poem by Drew Dellinger

___________________________

“I Am Losing my Mother Words“

This statement reached my ears and I was unable to process the meaning, my deep heart had no such trouble.

“I am Losing my Mother Words”

These words were in response to a call from an adult son. A call to his mother, an attempt to make sense of the myriad of events tearing humanity apart. He was looking perhaps for ‘mother words’ of long ago, the ones that somehow put pieces back in order, that securely strapped you in even if it turned into a bumpy ride.

His question was one of bewilderment, how so many failed to see beauty, failed to choose peace over war, acceptance over hate.

I too am losing my ‘mother words’, my initial reaction was deep sadness but I soon realized that the ‘mother words’ of the present were of no use to either myself or any intended recipients. They were slowly being unmade, new words were forming, sent from the Ancestors for Future Generations. Words of transition and transmutation.

The speaker then described the beauty of apple blossoms in her garden and then the horror of bombs falling in another part of the world. What ‘mother words’ were being spoken by mothers and fathers huddled together holding children close as bombs exploded around them? What words will comfort in that reality?

Her next thought haunted me…

“Perhaps it is not,

never has been,

Either/Or

it is

Both/And

Apple Blossoms and Bombs.”

Eagle Sunrise. photo westcoastwoman

The Descent

rapture or rupture statue Denman Island photo westcoastwoman

A discussion on how ‘breaking down‘ is often a portal to ‘breaking through‘ prompted a friend to forward the attached poem to me.

We had been using the metaphor of snorkeling to describe the approach many of us take towards the bigger questions of life. If not forced by circumstance to confront something, we snorkel, safe on the surface just looking into the depths.

We toyed with the image of putting on tanks, diving down to interact with and perhaps touch what we find, or a diving suit, a submersible that allows a walk on the bottom of our unconscious. A few days later I had the image of “free diving” unencumbered by any sort of attachment to the surface except the air you captured in your lungs…. doing a deep dive…

Surrender……. not the ‘giving in to‘ but the ‘living in to‘ the “promiscuous” present moment.

wcw

surrender. photographer unknown

The descent by Gina Puorro

There are things you can only learn
on your knees
or in a storm
or when the cracks in the foundation
of this modern world
open a chasm of uncertainty
beneath your feet.
Your discontent
with what has been named normal
is both grief and longing
for what your mind has forgotten
but your body remembers.

You can feel it
in the way a child’s laughter
disrupts your commitment
to what is appropriate
and makes space
for foolishness and magic.
You can feel it
broken open
at the altar of all you’ve lost
and how much you’ve loved.
Can we fall apart together?
Make a commitment to search for the truth
but promise
to never find it.
Let myths and stories
be the cartograph
for what is both
primordial and brand new
because the present moment
is promiscuous like that.
Compost ourselves down
into the dirt beneath the dirt
and tend the chthonic embers
that light the ancient fires in our bellies.

When the fault lines open
and your mind is grasping
and you don’t know
in the way that water
has taught you
how to be a vessel
and how to spill.
Can you trace your lineage
all the way back to salt?
the same that now stains your face
with both sadness and laughter
excites your tongue
and protects your prayers.
You are diasporic. Ecological. Holon.
A vast territory
of many wild bodies
melting into each other
dressed up as human.
Simultaneously living and dying
shaping and dismantling
filling up and boiling over.

Ashes to ashes
stardust to bone.
What language do you grieve in?
What is the mother tongue for that
which twists and contorts your body
wringing oceans from your skin?
The gravity that pulls you
down to your knees
forehead to ground
where to go from here;
prostrate
trade rapture for rupture
let yourself spill
and descend.

-Gina Puorro


Featured

Forced Landing

Forced Landing. photographer unknown (to me)

“Life has a way of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen at once.” Paulo Coelho

FORCED LANDING

Departure uneventful
Arrival anything but,
long past the
Point of no Return
we spiral.

Flight diverted
holding pattern unsustainable
hoping only for
safe descent,
arrival intact,
grounding.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, we have been cleared for landing”

Fuel low, patience short,
They are not coming to save us
We are They
we always were,
Courage found in
Fear with prayer.

We are not out of the woods yet.

“We hope you enjoyed your flight with us today, this leg of the journey ends here. All possessions should be left onboard. Those of you travelling onwards will find signs as you exit…..safe travels“

wcw 2021



THE ONLY TWO DIRECTIONS

Wandering on the ‘misty isle‘ I happened upon reflections in a dark pond, the message of the photograph became the two directions, up and down, towards and away, only revealed when the image was turned sideways.

Yesterday a friend introduced me to this poem by Quinn Bailey.

When our internal or external worlds are turned sideways, that can sometimes be
“when the boulder in front of the cave begins to shift”

THE ONLY TWO DIRECTIONS BY QUINN BAILEY

This world has only two true directions:
Towards and away.

The big fear, in the end, is to awake and find that
You chose away.

That the hand
Which held you down
Was none other
Than your own.

Remember

The pursuit
Of that which is not truly us
Renders even the most
Powerful vision useless

Recognize

When the boulder in front of the cave begins to shift

When that first illuminating shaft
Pierces the dark

Do not hesitate long

Do not waste time
Anticipating the griefs
Yet to come

They cannot be helped and perhaps are necessary

On that long
And awkward walk
Towards yourself.

Quinn Bailey
The Currents of the World
2020 Homebound Publications

photos westcoastwoman

Featured

The Essential Conversation


” Elevator talk.
Let’s get this thing stuck,
see what we really have to say.

Give those occupants a new reply
when asked,
Up or down?
Just say,
Down
in a free fall
pressing DOOR OPEN.”

(excerpt from Elevator Talk by Melissa Sawatsky)

THE ESSENTIAL CONVERSATION

Stonewall(ed)
hand hewn verbal protection
carefully laid, piece by piece,
a lifetime in the making,
no escape clause.

Words withheld, unspoken,
undeliverable,
the contents of a goodbye
discarded at the roadside,
no recipient, no return address.

The Essential Conversation,
clear instruction, open
the dam of heartache,
attempts to top the wall, first
diving then begging for release.

Blow up the wall, the dam,
limitations choking our lives,
open the run of the river,
drown in your longing
for freedom denied.

Surrender illusion, control
you never had, shaken, stirred and
spewed onto the riverbank
searching for the eyes of an other

…to start the Essential Conversation.

westcoastwoman 2021
photos westcoastwoman. (2013) Marine Building Vancouver Canada





Featured

The Way It Is

Tangled threads. photo wcw

This poem by William Stafford speaks of a thread, I feel it also speaks to the times.

“You don’t ever let go of the thread.“

THE WAY IT IS by William Stafford

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you can do to stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

Featured

Reflections on the Sound of Silence

Hello darkness my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
because a vision softly creeping
left its seeds while I was sleeping
and the vision that was planted
in my brain, still remains
within the sound
of silence.

Sound of Silence Simon and Garfunkel

THE SOUND OF SILENCE

In this year of a thousand months a silence has settled, palpable, like silk against bare skin.

One by one freedoms slip away in an unintentional game of musical chairs until we find ourselves alone, gazing into the Great Mystery.

Fooled into thinking this was unexpected we see plans for this journey seeded long ago with every “yes” carelessly spoken.

Each moment becomes a new invitation, moving deeper like a lover searching for that place on your lip meant only for others.

Eyes closed, surrender drifts like wafting smoke to linger over new terrain, unsure of where to settle.

Shadows that once held fear dissipate with every wind gust, free now to ride this undulating movement…

We are danced into the unknown.


photo westcoastwoman

Featured

“swimming in clues”

breath of the ocean. westcoastwoman

All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop. Kabir

“swimming in clues”

Our lives in pieces
reflect through
mirrors, shattered,
barely held
in fragile frames.

Lungs gasp, groan,
sighs release,
inhale once more
sweet ocean air
breath of the ancestors.

Hearts reassemble,
vital organs
beat in unison
feel the labour,
Life rebirthing.

Wooden carcass
our wreckage decomposed
greed, power, blindness,
floats the surface
walks the pavement.

only having learned the backstroke…
“we are swimming in clues.”

westcoastwoman 2020

conquering the sea westcoastwoman







Featured

Shedding

“arriving at your own door” photo westcoastwoman

Love after Love by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give Bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

– Derek Walcott

Shedding

…..As I put the key into the lock and opened the door to ‘the loft’ on this distant island that feels so very far from home, this poem came to mind. It is a piece that has haunted me for a few years perhaps because I don’t want the message to be true.

There is no ‘magical other’ waiting to save us from ourselves or from the circling storm of uncertainty that surrounds us.

There is a welcome shedding of expectation that comes from the words, a sigh of relief that the only goal is to “give back your heart to itself” and “peel your own image from the mirror.”
Those things in themselves appear to be insurmountable right now but when compared with continuing this exhausting upstream swim, the image of simply floating with the current back to my “own door” is indeed a feeling of “elation.”

The latch is well worn, many have opened it and returned …..

Sit. Eat. Feast on your life.

westcoastwoman 2020

Featured

The Summer Day

“who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-“ unknown photographer

The summer is slipping away, you feel it in the cool of the dawn before the dew evaporates.

It is in the darkness arriving minutes sooner as each day comes to a close.

These times have been at once, strange, tragic and transformative. We are lurching towards a Fall that is unpredictable and unknown at best.

The poem below has been appearing for me in partial and complete form many times in the last few days and I want to share it before “The Summer Day” has passed.

The last two lines are ones I will be repeating to myself daily as we edge slowly forward.

The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver


Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

westcoastwoman 2020


Featured

Brides of the Sea

Street statue Victoria B.C. photo westcoast woman 2020

“A life that is truly lived is constantly burning away the veils of illusion, gradually revealing the essence of the individual.” Marion Woodman

Wandering almost always takes me to the edge of the ocean, especially if I wander alone. These days that seems to be my preference. The last wander brought me to a beach that was deserted except for two young girls who appeared to be about ten years old. Close to the shore they had fashioned a structure out of driftwood and returned to the water’s edge to find something to use as siding.

Seaweed, thick, wide and long proved to be the perfect material. I watch as one of the girls held two strands, one on each shoulder. It gave the impression of a veil from my vantage point. Her companion followed her lead and they both squealed in delight as they headed back to their ‘house’ trailing their gifts from the sea unaware of anyone watching in the distance…..I was the congregation, they were Brides of the Sea.

Brides of the Sea

Partially formed Mermaids
Oceanic without curves
trailing seaweed veils
skin of the sea, from
small bare shoulders
unable yet to carry
the weight of the world.

My heart calls out…
Be Brides of the Sea
ride the swells
surrender to the crest
the trough,
the holy trinity
Earth, Moon, Sea

No paper hearts
No man-made veils,
love, honor, obey
all that
isn’t spoken,
one deep dive
Body, Heart, Soul.

westcoastwoman 2020

gift from the sea westcoastwoman 2020




Learning to Fly

Photo credit westcoastwoman

……a poem by Manju Kapur.
I cannot find a title anywhere so I present it with my photograph and the emotion it evoked. Learning to Fly.

In my dream
women flew
larger than any
birds I have seen

They flew high
they flew together
over trees
and dry dusty land.

They came back,
some after years,
with water
careful in their beaks
for those who had
forgotten how to fly.

Manju Kapur