gratefullyyourstoday

In the fall off 2013, I found the courage (or it found me) to make some pretty big career and family life changes.  It was unsettling at best.  As that time came into its own, noisy Herons began appearing everywhere.  I turned to Ted Andrews’s Animal-Speak for understanding, and learned that Heron medicine is for people who appear to dabble in various occupations and ways of living life; that this can seem unsettling to most people, but for heron people there is great security in this flexible approach to life.  Here began the heron poem.

Must it be Heron?

 Though I look to the sky longingly

For eagle,

Or owl,

Or hawk at least,

They are not the totem of this time.

Except on occasion

When dear hawk provides her traveling mercies.

It is heron who continues to find Star and me,

Here on the bridge

As we learn of old age,

And the changing seasons of our lives.

Fall 2013

JEHW

“But ask the animals,

And they will teach you;

The birds of the air,

And they will tell you;

The plants of the earth,

And they will teach you;

And the fish of the sea will declare to you.”

Job 12: 7-8

Years ago I was sitting in with a wise woman and dear friend pouring out my soul when a cicada began flinging itself into her sixth floor downtown window.  Now, I must tell you that this friend was a well-respected scholar of symbolism.  She turned to skeptical me, and declared that this was clearly a sign.  She grabbed her copy of Animal-Wise, by Ted Andrews and read, of cicada – a symbol of happiness from the past and coming positive and necessary change.  It turned out that this little cicada was absolutely right – a skeptic cured.

This began my ever expanding understanding that the Divine speaks to us through nature, pretty much constantly, if only we will listen.  And today I begin a blog series that I will occasionally use to share those wise words. 

JEHW 

June 2013

Damaged Merchandise

 “We are all damaged Merchandise.”

He said.

And arrogantly, I thought to myself,

“Well,

Maybe everybody else is.

But me?  

Not so much.”

Then again,

Today, as I sit

On the edge of my bed

Crying my eyes out

Over something my

Elderly mother

Could not stop herself

From saying.

Humility amends that earlier, arrogant thought.

Perhaps,

At least today,

I am the very picture

Of damaged merchandise.

Verbs

“We are verbs.”

She said.

“Not nouns.”

And today,

As the grief of things left behind

Begins to lift,

Her verbing wisdom comes to ease  

The good bye.

I dig a little deeper

And remember that

My reasons for moving on

Well outweighed those for staying.

But there was beauty there in the rejected road –

She is what trips me up on the journey.

Beauty has earned her place the sentence too.

Even now she blankets the call

to the action.

Is she friend or foe?

It’s hard to say.

Something deep inside say,

“Lay down your sorrow, and welcome her as grace.”

The grace that kept you warm

As you stepped up to the challenge

Of being a verb, not a noun.

© JEHW 

May 20, 2013

The Church in the Wildwood

 This blissfully beautiful Mother’s Day morning

I sit on an old picnic table “Church”

Pulled up into a clearing

Near the water’s edge.

The air is wet with an overnight shower,

The earth fragrant

With her latest Baptism.

Sun warms my skin

As he gently pears over the

Tops of the trees who are

So proudly dressed in

Their new spring leaves.

Hawks, geese, robins, ducks

And an orchestra of other unknown birds

Provide the Sunday morning

Anthem.

I close my eyes and offer up gratitude

For my life,

And ask the Divine to open me

To what is yet to unfold.

A proud mother duck

Arrives at the service

With her passel of ducklings – too many to count,

All very well behaved little young ones.

They follow her, dutifully and quietly. 

I ask this great “cloud of witnesses”

To witness my past mistakes,

And to encourage me to use the them

To learn a better path.

I offer up those things that confuse me

And ask for enlightenment. 

I pray for those I love

Who, crippled by aging bodies and minds,

Can no longer make it

Into the woods

For such fulfilling

“churching.”

My Wild Card

 I have a wild card.

Not the kind that

You are thinking –

The kind that gets you

Out of trouble

In a poker game.

This one is a collage of

Three wild animals that I love.

A buffalo on her open plain,

A fox in her snowy field,

A rare spirit bear in her ancient forest.

I think I made it

To remind me

That I am a part of something bigger,

And wilder

Than my neat and comfortable little

Suburban home.

It makes me want to contribute –

In whatever way I can find –

To their ability

To continue to live

In their own

Neat and comfortable far

Suburban home.

Hum,

Maybe it is a wild card

In the way that you are thinking.

Maybe it will, somehow help me

In some small way,

To get us out of

The trouble we are in,

In this poker game we are playing

With our – their home. 

JEHW

5/7/13

Before the Rain

 Before the rain

Star and I take a long

Walk in the woods.

The gathering moisture

Turns my hair to ringlets.

We soak in

The chattering of the birds,

The gentle breeze,

The richness of the

The early May leafyness.

The goose family heads for the shore

As the reservoir

begins to

Ripple.

Three, count them, three

Rare and quite shy lady slippers

Offer up a parting vision.

They say it will

Rain for three long days.

We soak in Momma Earth’s

reassuring beauty.

She nurtures us

Before we are forced inside.

Star is my beloved 14+ year-old border collie, and constant walking companion.  She is likely to feature heavily in my writing.

“You look great,”

she said.

To this her friend replied,

“Thanks.

There’s a lot I

need to accomplish

with this outfit

Today.”

Recently I took a creative journey with my daughters and friends to Teotihuacan, Mexico.  The trip inspired me to write some poems.  Here are two. Maybe more will follow.

I Arrive Home

An ancient country,

Backward people,

Bad water,

Dirty,

Smelly.

I arrive.

I begin to die to exhausting,

Paralyzing voices in my head,

Telling me what to do,

How to live,

Who to be.

I soar to the heights

Of eagles.

I bathe in extravagant,

Undiscriminating

Love.

I stay.

A rich country,

Gentle people,

Thirst quenching,

Cleansing,

Refreshing,

Aroma filled.

I arrive home.

 Shackles

It was a beautiful,

Simply elegant

Dress

Complex in the making

First worked in muslin

To test the style and fit.

Then in demure, earth toned

Tiny flowered calico.

A shirtwaist with

Placket, hand worked button holes and collar,

Tiny, perfect pleats

Darts, waistband, belt,

Almost completed when

Someone said,

“What a foolish waste of time.

You could earn enough in a few hours’ time

To buy that silly thing.”

I listened,

And on went the shackles.

(Let it be known that I allowed this.)

And the jail cell closed on the joy of its creation.

Away went the dress,

Unfinished.

Off to work went I, “earning”.

I listened for years.

Years became decades.

Two,

Then three.

A lifetime for some.

The shackles remained.

I railed at the jailor

I begged for release.

Until, finally, painfully I realize,

That the jailor was – is me.

I have the key.

It is my voice, and only my voice that can say,

“Foolish – no, not so much.

Creating feeds my wonderful, foolish soul.

I think I will create some more.”

The shackles drop.

I replace them with anklets of flowers.

I will create.

I spread my wings again,

Breathe deeply,

And fly.

Gratefully Yours Today has been a long time coming.  Years ago, while on a lovely drive in the Virginia countryside with my dear, dear friend, I passed a storefront.  In a surprising flash my imagination wrote in elegant scrolling script the words Gratefully yours across that storefront and some vein of creativity opened.

Beyond a gracious letter closing, for me Gratefully yours has come to symbolize many things – a card shop?  Writing workshops with visiting authors?  The end of a novel?  A story of my grandmothers? A prayer?  It could be all of these and more, and today, a risked beginning.  I share a poem.  Maybe two. We will see where it takes me.  I invite you come along…