greenstorm | Entries tagged with poem

I fall asleep early
As the sun goes down
And wake after midnight on my forgotten laundry

Towel loops are etched into my cheek
And the moon shines bright enough
That I check to be sure my headlights were not also forgotten

Against the window my breath fogs, chills
Doesn't quite freeze

The counselor told me it's hard to accept
That nothing lasts
It never was before but
Now in the middle of the night
I move slowly to stoke the fire
Boil water for tea,
Stir in honey
Heat the oven
Put in bread--

Everything I do now is placing
One stone
On top
Of another. Rebuilding
Because nothing lasts
And because, like a child laughing at destruction,
Someone has swept an arm over my castle
Tumbling my stones.

Rebuilding.

One stone at a time,
One log on the fire at a time,
One cup of tea at a time,
One long look at the moonlight when everyone is asleep:
Rebuild the castle
Because nothing lasts
And because no one is entitled to a castle

Or even a pile of pretty rocks

Nothing lasts
And so in the moonlight
one stone on top--

so many nights
building
rebuilding
so many pretty rocks

no one is entitled but the rocks deserve--

one cup of tea
a fire
rocks to build with
and then sleep.

What if I'm happy?
The question has been coming to me for ten years
A quarter of my life
In moments:

In a truck, alone, a hundred kilometers from any people
Bear tracks outside the window
And about to shoulder a heavy pack

In the rain and wind
Fighting with a tarp
Pigs playing tug-o-war on the other side
As I race coming snow

In sunshine
Blisters on my hands
Eyes stinging with sweat
Only half the garden dug
And baby plants busting out of their pots with impatience

In darkness
So cold the walls are chilly
And skin freezes to the windows
Only the heartbeat glow of the woodstove
Glimmering in the dark

Immobile
Held by two cats and gravity
Tracing by eye
With the luxury of time and love,
Every white and tawny hair

Held transfixed
By three cups
Blue and blue and blue
Against a blue wall
Each anchoring a long curved shadow

And so often lying alone
Sunlight through the window
Or rain on the roof
Small sounds outside
The ceiling an architecture of light

What if it's not about doing everything right?
What if it's not entrapping some human into collaboration?
What if it's not knowing I'll be safe?
What if it's not knowing it will last?
What if I'm just happy
In this little pause between moments?

If I'm just happy
What do I do now?

Sun streams in the window
Cool, clear, bright
Rippling like water over stones
Like water washing strength
from my limbs
Caught as if by the power of a river
I lie back on the pillows
Washed by light
Held by gravity
The daylight playing over my body
And then passing on
I am no more than
Bones held underwater
Motionless
And eyes recording a day's passage

This is the time of dreams
Dreams of lifetimes
of revolutions
of families splintered and healed
of police switching sides
and food given to all

This is the time of dreams
And I am grateful that when I wake
From living another life, and another
My familiar sits on my feet
Licking his paws
Smelling of spruce trees
And willing me home

This is the time of dreams
My body caged
My feet walking other lives
Other worlds welcome me
Crying to be witnessed
Offering the lesson
There is always another way

This is the time of dreams
The sky turned grey
Walls rising monolithic
To mark the turning of the sun
The turning of the world
The turning of my people
The turning of all people
My turning
My turning
O Lord Thou pluckest--

For the third day ash rains from the sky
It's someone else's ash
Lives burnt far from here and carried by the wind

I dreamed about a woman writing poetry
In the dream I was crying
And by the end we were friends

For the third day the sky is the colour of cement
It's my sky
To which I wake after dreaming of poetry

This morning each muscle is delicate but elusive
My body a stringed instrument
Which I never learned to play

I lie back in bed and pretend
The ash
Is a cage

This year the season turns
Muddy yellow
The close sluggish sky a reminder of
Fires past
Fires to come
I clean the chimney
And sweep the ashes
In a haze of smoke
All the way up
Up
Into the sky
There is no sky
Just smoke and smoke

In the basement I stack wood
Fuel for future fires
Fires for tomorrow
And for everyday thereafter
And after
And after

Fires for the death of trees
Fires for warmth
Fires for smoke
To block our vision
Of the coming fall

Solstice.
It's what happens when everyone is looking.
Blood and pollen and mud and rain in the hair
Sliding in muddy inevitability down the slope
Of bright green grass
Or is it up the slope?
Your feet come out from under you and
Whoosh!
There you are in solstice
Sun still high above
Blood and pollen and mud and rain and your skin
All in the earth together
Even though everyone was looking
Even though everyone was reaching for it
Even though everyone is grasping as if they could hold the light
Between tight hungry fingers
Even though we want it
So much
Still it comes
Sunlight
And a fistful of blood
And pollen
And mud
And green grass
And the soft rain falling
Falling
Falling
Through
So many
Layers
Of
Light.

Oldest son
Responsible one
Peacemaker
You try to mend the world
With a million kindnesses
And every day
A little
It works
The world is on your shoulders
Sometimes in your hands
May its joy
Always outweigh
Its burden

***

Open-heart
Joy-maker
Lover of animals and family
Saviour of silent lives
May you always walk
Supported
In many worlds at once

****

We all have something that brings out our spine. Countercultural. Joe is vegan, Al is antivax, Ben is anti sane, and goodness knows what I am.

****

I drove down to Sherry's with Tucker and left my truck in Vancouver, with pottery and wedding shoes. I didn't want to drive Seattle traffic. I left one key at Sherry's, accidentally. The spare was in Fort: respectively 5 and 12 hours drive away. My community in Fort rallied to get the key flown down Monday (I'm not planning to leave till Friday) and there are a couple options for the other key.

***

I'm reinspired by my work last year that was half-finished at Sherry's. I miss putting poems on my work. I got a bunch of texture tools/stamps. The plan is to spend some time going there.

***

I met my brother's new wife for the first time yesterday, at their western ceremony. She's very nice and she works with animals, which I appreciate. They've bought a condo and want to spawn. I wish them well. The wedding was very sweet.

***

I find myself wondering what it would be like if family and community had ever come together in a celebration to support and approve of something I was doing. Maybe life-changing. Even if I held my wedding to myself people would come but maybe not with such support. They'd come because I asked, not because they believed in the institutions I was supporting.

***

Housesitter messages me that I may have another cat staying in the house. Very curious to see who's there when I come home.

***

My home is full of emotional support. Being around family -- some on my dad's side I hadn't seen in thirty years -- was very strange. People love me here. It's not home though.

***

Point Grey traffic was unreal last night as everyone moved to the darkest area they could think of for the extra strong aurora borealis.

***

I love my family a lot. They're not my home, but I love them.

Been posting a couple ad hoc poems on fb lately, everyone is doing poetry month. Collecting them here for future reference:

a small poem

wind rattles
and frost hasn't come for three nights
this late in winter
i wouldn't have thought
there were leaves left
to
fall

****

they say go big or go home
but at home it takes
all seven acres to hold me
and when I leave
they say I'm too big
for my britches

****

loved by you
is waiting on the ground
for a leaf
slips sideways
rises on the current
skitters into a dust devil
but inevitably
comes to rest
here with me

my heart slips and skitters with it but
the dance
is more beautiful
than the fall and clunk
of a stone

***

according to need

for you
the sun darkens
signifying the fragility
of life

for me
raindrops fall
signifying hope
for continued life

Heat hammering on the snow
Lancing it
Burning it away
Layer by layer the garbage is revealed
Held safe in ice
Covered in blankets of cleansing snow
The landscape was at peace
Now it is torn raw by cross-land flow
Water carving and tearing new wounds
Into old scars revealed
Sun ripping six months of flaws into
Full view in six days.
Under the gunshots of shattering lake ice
Beer cans peeled into curved knives by ravens
Glitter in every ditch
The first geese chew innumerable shreds
Of muddy plastic
No leaves are open yet
No ground is thawed
No romantic empty slate appears
Promising fertile growth
Until you pick up the trash.

When it warms up everything smells like hot dogs
Smoky fires kept dampened as
Sun rewarms our cluster of homes.

Earlier in winter the air was crisp with
Sweet pine smoke, sticky balsam, and the lower scent
Of charred birch.

Each house with its particular scent
Particular smoke pattern
The intimacy of strangers living through the same
Circumstances.

If you have pine I know where you spent your
Fall. If birch, I know where you spent your
Money, or social capital, or long rambling time
Driving down dusty roads to find it.

When you wake up you light up a smoke
Signal from your chimney, defiant against the cold,
One spark among many with the message: we
Survived the darkness. We
Are still here
Together.

Edited to add: I love these line breaks, they make me feel like I'm listening to an alien

Pythia is gone
Even Cassandra is fled
What happens next is what has always
Happened: an empty cave, a rock,
And water dripping.

I didn't expect it but it's perfect
Surface inviting
Like a sponge invites water
A little yielding, a little resistance
A perfect canvas for my pen

My carvings look like flames to me
And between those flames I place
The sparks of hearts
Dense in the center then
Float, dispersing, up to the sky

I don't expect it but it's perfect
Surface inviting, except--
My hearts get stuck in my ribcage
Once I would have written
so many places
so many times
and among it all you:
what awe, what wonder

Surface perfect, surface inviting
The pottery doesn't break
Instead it's my own heart
Watching inscribed hearts spark
And fade into an endless sky
Without a word.

Time was I could see the future

I still remember fragments as they occur

These days I try not to look into the future

It doesn't serve me

Hope doesn't serve me

If anything is meant to serve us, it is ourselves

The world isn't built for it

Unless we cherry-pick

Blossom-pick

Menu-pick

Even with the biggest plate we can't try everything at the buffet of life

And so much of it will be terrible

So we serve ourselves

Not what we're supposed to like

Not what is supposed to make life worth living

But what we actually love

Olives

Anchovy spread

Mochi

Store-bought potato chips

The stinkiest cheese oozing with orange washed rind

Little hot pickles

Winding through the choices people will say

"Try some of this, it's excellent!"

"Ugh, I could never eat that."

And you will want to take Jane's dip to make her feel better. Don't.

Ignore it all

If someone else wants hope

They can take all the hope

Load their plates

Fill their pockets

Live in the unknown future

And leave the shining pearls of each living moment

Inside the glistening oysters

Raw, briny, unpolished

On the table for me

Obscurity of grey
snow sifts, erasing mountains
While birch catkins swell

Whip-smart, sharp, a little mean
Always ready with a come-back
Always willing to dive into new ideas and
Argue.

It's what we valued-
What we value. A performance
Of quick wit
Between one thing
And the next
Never losing audience
Attention
Never asking more
Than they can
Give
Solidifying their approval
Before their
Next appointment
Or text message.
Satisfied
They were worthy of our
Attention
We approve
And move on
To a quick vacation
In one country
A new this or that
Enough novelty
To fill
A bucket
List.

What if it took months to communicate an idea?
What if it took years to learn a place, what if we spent so long learning slow ideas
That each one had time to crease itself
On our faces and our hands, written markings of the lifetime
Of integration of single thought into an ecosystem
Of other deep thoughts?

What if we sought, not the fastest, but the slowest,
Not the flashiest, but the deepest,
Our thoughts poised in composed contemplation
Absorbing each nuance of what exists
Before sliding one toe and then another slowly
Into the bottomless pool of accumulated knowledge
Celebrating when we integrated with the slightest of ripples instead of the biggest splash?
What if, what if, what if we all moved gently,
What if we watched before we moved, humble in our abilities, leaned on the value of others' thoughts,
What if, what if, what if we sat by the fire in slow contemplation
Laid out a constellation of what ifs
Against a whole sky's worth of context
Before weaving our actions into the tapestry.

What if, what if, what if, what if, what if, our minds weren't slipping into tragedy but into wholeness. What if, after racing over the surface, we allowed us to finally rest and slip below the surface into the embrace of--

What if, what if, what if, what if,
But there are no awards, you can't measure slowness, can't value unfilled space, can't even wait until the end of a short novel or a long slow poem without answers

With respect to https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(24)00013-0/fulltext#: edited to fix link

Tonight my muse could be apple trees
Never dreamed of in the last hundred years
Each one as unique as any human
Unfurling in the spring sun.

Tonight my muse could be the first leaves of the year
Born from my intimacy with generations of green leafy parents
And creating intimacy with generations of ancestors
Blessing me with their presence.

Tonight my muse could be time
Like an elastic band
Drawing me tighter to my dogs
Who improbably sweeten with every passing day
Before the band snaps and they’ll be gone from me forever.

Tonight my muse could be security,
Four safe walls for the first time
With the paradox of an expiry date drawing near.

Tonight my muse could be surface
Obscuring interiors
Revealing shape
But distorted by tricks of the light.

Tonight my muse could have been love
A building, a painting, a song that one person alone could never create
A staircase climbed
A shared aspiration

Tonight my muse is the saying
Fool me once, shame on you
Fool me twice, shame on me.

Tonight my muse is the song
99 bottles of beer on the wall
Take one down, smash it around
98 bottles of beer on the wall.
**

If I had a kiln I would name her Persephone
Womb of transformation
Alchemizing a little dust
Into red rock.

If I had a kiln I would name her Persephone
Home of the mystery
Of how fire either destroys
Or transforms mud and marks into something quite different
Into something that will last forever.

If I had a kiln I would name her Persephone
I would hand her my feelings
Writ in dirt
And she would make of them something beautiful

If I had a kiln I would name her Persephone
And she would transmute my recklessness
Half into death and destruction
And half into hungry flowers resplendent in the spring light

If I had a kiln I would name her Persephone
Neither of us would be able to see the future
But together we could make it
Into something beautiful.

If I had a kiln I would name her Persephone
She would be the warmest thing I knew
Surprising me with my own images
Bright and not yet broken

Not with the rod

But the way a bird builds a nest
Secure
Creatively brilliant
So that everyone
Wants to come live there

This is how I aspire

Not with the rod

But with duck confit wrapped around the pill
With time, and tasty-smelling treats in the trailer
With slow movements, a step and a breath at a time
With more toys and friends inside the fence than out
With a heated pillow in my favoured spot

I care for them
As I wish to care for myself
My own animal

Not with the rod

With my own nest
Coating my own pills with sugar
Trying for time, and tempting myself with treats
Scattering places to breathe at every turn
Full of friends and toys
And a heating pad in bed

Not with the rod

I husband myself with softness
With a beautiful and creative nest
And with as much security as anyone can offer themselves

Give me this day my daily round
Of time measured in field and raindrop,
Of garden and greetings of bright-eyed companions of fur and feather.

Forgive the way my heart is swallowed up by the land
Separated from all you would have me be
Brightened and deepened beyond your ken

As you will one day forgive the land for swallowing my body.

And lead me not into the mire of your expectations
Correct clothing, correct language, correct tone, every muscle correct
I will never be correct. I can only fail. And so

Deliver me from your judgement, turn away if need be
Watch your clocks, make your rounds
With your own kind.

For thine is the society
And the power
In this brief interlude
Until we are dust.

Sunbeams?
Who needs that tired old trope?
The garbage truck rumbles downhill
Silks to a stop
And glides through a left turn into a perfect opening
On a busy corner.
Up top, sunglasses and messy bun:
As she rumbles on with traffic
We exchange victory grins
Brighter than the sun.

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greenstorm

June 2025

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Page generated Jun. 30th, 2025 10:28 pm

Greenstorm's Journal

watching the cycle: leaves to mulch to soil to leaves

Entries tagged with poem

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September 6th

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Thoughts after my brother's wedding

Collected poems

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Drive to work

I guess it's that kind of day

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Nonetheless

Cognitive Slowing/No flowers for Algernon

Womb-time poetry, now with -30C

Husbandry

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June 2025

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