I finally lost it
Dying embers of a blue hidden sun
Closing in on the gypsy caravan
Callused and tired
Sweat perspiring in long streaks
Nostrils flairing
Slight rustling of nearby poplar trees
And the echo of every footstep
Beating out of tune with thy heartbeat.
One last moment
Erased the pain
No longer present
Between shoulder blades and spine,
A hoot broke the echoing
Going deeper inside my brain
A distant owl
Awake to the day
Unaware the danger
Of finding myself in
So the path led twisting
Towards a deeper understanding
Of fungii and lichen
Flora and the rot of its day
Until the madness set in
Spiraling to tree tops touching open sky
And a little beaver dam turned waterfall
Gurgling goodnight.
Tag: owl
Lead the Way (day 2723)
These trees have begun to speak in many languages
To my ears that are listening to silence.
Each time Orion shines, Owl begs for a lover
While my tears dry upon my cheek
– Sap dries upon each tree’s wound,
For no wound is too deep to heal
– Though frost strikes into depths I cannot feel anymore.
Dog enjoys this silence, he hears it all
He hears what I cannot hear
Though my eyes they fight fire with his.
I leave my footsteps alone
And find a new way home, trees lead me there.
This treeline I never made yet live upon every day
Grows against my territory like Winter against Fall,
I have not become used to it
Eagerly entering into the darkened shire
With my heart freely beating against my lips
That keep pace with a dog, yet fearless
And listening to trees lead the way.
Two (day 2568)
Drove into a rainstorm with two passengers to my right
Had a conversation about two things on my mind
Two stop lights later I heard two loud sounds I knew
Two old friends of mine I hadnt seen for two whole years
Two hours later I had two beers in my hand
Two more for my two friends,
Two more for the road
At last I saw the two lights I knew as my own home
Two horses there greeted me, standing next to two pine trees
That’s when I was startled by two owls calling out
One from the East, the other from somewhere North
Two steps into my door, I met my two dogs who
Grabbed my two hands and made me feel at home
Where I sat at one of my two chairs
And shared dinner for two with the woman who I do care.
A Little Mouse (day 2117)
As if in the ransack of time a little mouse could foresee such a circumstance, little unbeknownst to him and his furry paws scuttling to and fro about the forest floor – roots for here and roots for there, but left in a random mess that danced like bliss – as the owl hooted loud the shakey graves below the folly could tell ten thousand stories of arching madness and screaming terror; look out look out look out my friend, I have not come to be thy penance, no, I am here to hold thy candle brighter, to make thy night much less weirder, to the side of willow river and make a dart into thy deepened hole of safety and say to thy family you love them better and listen to your little mice that complain of washing and complain of chores but lead your life as you best can for times will come and leave you better beside the river and your cavern and your pretty mice wife, hither.
Moon at Midnight – Part XXXIV (day 2008)
In the morning Lily told us
She had dreamt of an owl
And had spoken to it
She said it was dad
His name had been Night Owl
Who gave her a message for Willow
And she told us
He had said that things ahead
Were going to get dangerous
And that sticking with Joe
Was very necessary.
Mountain Chief came to us that morning
Saying he had dreamt about Night Owl, too
He repeated what Lily had said
That the vision was a strong one
And Joe was to be trusted
And so I was to be trusted.
I didn’t really know what to do
I had always been a believer
That a family unit was one that shared decisions
So I kept silent
Could I really forecast, prophesize
To give any sort of resolution?
I did reinforce to Mountain Chief
And to Lily and Willow
That I could be trusted
And if I knew anything, I would speak.
When I stepped out of the teepee
Many of the people in our family
Were waiting, looking at me
Expecting some kind of miracle
But Mountain Chief settled them all down
Laughing at them and slapping me on the back
He was a good leader, a fierce warrior,
A strong man
One I had no desire in challenging
A man who was my friend
And his honesty and consideration for me
Only affirmed my affection for him
A man who had let me into his home
And into his heart like a brother.
Willow, Lily and I walked to our favourite lookout
Where we could see the entire valley
And the distant snow covered peaks
We wondered how long it would be now
Until the snow came to us
We had our furs and were gathering food
But winter is winter
No matter how many campfires you have
It’s still cold to the naked skin.
When we came down we paused near the place
I had found Lily the night before
And sat there for a while
Trying to understand the energy of the space
Suddenly out from the canopy
Came a beautiful owl
With a wing span that must have been 3 meters across
It came straight at us
Then turned sharply fanning us
For us to see it’s full and beautiful wing
It floated down the clearing
And in to the thick canopy.
Moon at Midnight – Part XXVIII (day 2002)
The next day riders from other Blackfoot tribes came
And Mountain Chief, Moon Cow, and three other men
Rode off to a great meeting of Chiefs
I knew, and could tell,
That nobody was pleased with what the U.S. Army was doing
And tension was clearly in the air
Nobody felt comfortable
And people were becoming worried
Suspicious
These proud people were feeling scared
In the very land they had always lived free.
I spent the next few days with Willow and Lily
Walking through the grassland and forests
Looking for fuel and food
Waiting, I guess,
Our presence comforted each other
Reassured each other
All three of us had become very close
With all the time we had shared over the winter
It was exciting for me to recognize
How much Lily had already learned from her mother
She was very good at finding the herbs
That her mother would ask her to find for her
She would come back with a handful of them
And an even bigger smile on her face.
Willow told me that she had heard of other tribes
Being forced into slavery
To being held captive on certain land
The Government had given them
If they signed a Peace Treaty
I listened quietly,
For I had also heard such things
Further in the South and East
And was saddened from what I did hear
I asked Willow if she would want to live like that
And she said that she would not
She was born free and would obey nobody but the earth
I asked her if she would rather
Live off the land like a nomad
Always wandering more and more
Or if she would like to live more like Amy & Frank
She said she did not know
But that she did see the benefit of having land
To return to every year
Like Amy & Frank had
She asked me if I could build a house
Like Frank had built.
After four days and four nights
Mountain Chief returned with Moon Cow
And directly summoned me
And the other elders of the tribe
Into a gathering
He told us everything that had been talked about
How the other Chiefs didn’t trust
The U.S. Army men
That they threatened our whole way of life
And that if they got their way
It would be the end of us
He told us of visions he had listened to
And told us of his own vision
He himself had had one night
While camped along the river
He told us he had seen an owl
And had walked closer to ask him
What he was going to do
And the owl had told him
That when he sees the mouse
He then plans his action
In the middle of the night.
Mountain Chief told us that we would stay for two more days
On their traditional winter grounds
And that we would be moving
In the middle of the second night
So we all returned to our teepees
To begin preparation.
Impatient Midnight (day 1851)
A cloud pulled at my ear lobes
And took my tingling nose
To an open pasture –
Exposed and sunken into slumber –
Tip-tapped drearily by menacing trinkets
And coo’ed at softly from a shallow hallow
Where an owl waited for midnight’s feast
With an impatient air.
Owls (day 1706)
I’m not quite sure the song,
Ending of no name.
Alone and upturned,
Grass in white snow.
Yet all around was soul,
Spinning in mid-winter foul.
Owls at twilight
Memories in dancing firelight.
Catching Away (day 1308)
Sunsets are always so much easier for me to catch.
They don’t try to get up and sneak away like a thief,
They squabble and gobble and hiff and huff
Until they explode in the sky like a painted eye.
That, and I’m a night owl and the moon tells me secrets.
