Tag: pacificnorthwest

Morning Practice

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I am going to start sharing more of my daily writing practice here. I am engaged in the practice of daily poetry writing, each morning before the world can rob me of my time to create and connect. These poems are not very worked, free form and unfiltered.
I have found it so interesting to be doing this morning writing through poetry, my morning writing used to be in the form of journaling. This poetry practice in some ways is more honest, more sincere, simpler and radically raw, than my journaling was. This form of writing allows me to express feeling more directly. I am enjoying the discipline of this daily practice and happy to share some of the writing that comes to being through this commitment to a daily honoring of the muse.

 

How long will it take to heal
The shattered pieces of my broken heart?
I sweep the rubble clean away – then low and behold
once again – disaster.
The roof is caving in and hurricane warnings tell me that
a storm’s coming, always is, on nights like this.
I plant seeds on the good days
days when warmth blooms in my chest
and I can see vision of summer evening – soft tides – soft smiles
I bury the seeds deep , to keep them safe until the grow
after the flood waters have receded
after the strong words have died down.
I place my hand on my chest
a shelter of a sort
to hold close this heart of mine
the temple of my love.
You are not forsaken – I tell her
Life leaves rubble in us all
we sweep and sweep again
we plant seeds and wait
it’s like the garden love-
give time – take time
one day a mighty Oak will grow
just don’t stop planting acorns.
These words are scattered seeds
this page a love letter to my own sweet heart
Take root now- grow.

photo- coast range, near burnt woods Oregon, baby big leaf maple.

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Burn

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The skies have been dark this week, the air stagnant and toxic. I can feel the burn in my throat. I can only think “this is how it will be forever now. Every summer now will burn.” Summer skies filled with smoke, blue turns grey, and ashen. I am sad, the kind of sad you’re not supposed to talk about. I  didn’t know I would see the change in my lifetime, not really. You know your hear about these things, this climate disaster, global warming. But it is all far away, apocalypse abstract.

These last few summers its been in no way abstract, it has been here, present and beside me. I am unable to turn away. My once blue summer Oregon skies have gone dark. We can not ignore the  truth. It’s closing time. This is only the beginning. Get ready for the fall, there will be darkness.

Our world burns.
Today smoke fills the skies
my throat, lungs and eyes.
Blue sky, a memory of summer gone now.
The earth is hot
103 in Redding yesterday
10,000 people evacuate
running from the flames.
Their cars are hot, on scorched highways
the fumes from their tailpipes fill the sky.
What of those that cannot run?
No gas in their tanks or
money in their banks.
What if they are ill?
In body or mind, those who choose to stay behind.
What of the winged ones, and the 4 legged
It is all too much to bear.
Tonight- the moon is orange and amber
a dark glow in the sky.
It seems to me she is looking down and weeping.
So am I.

 

Marianna Louise Jones

Longing for home

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I am alone here, in this foreign place.
This land that is my country, yet not my home
I guess this is what happens when sea to shining sea is 3000 miles.
Birds sing in songs I do not know
trees, tall with bare trunks and high canopies,
tower over my head.
The earth is light and tawny, not the brown humus that I know.
My feet fall soft upon this path, tan and fine
bones of the earth, stones, rise amid the soil.
I am stunned by sound, a cacophony of birdsong,
so sweet and raucous, sharper than the familiar calls of
the birds that call my temperate rainforest home.
Funny how, in all this space and novelty, this beauty,
I can long for home.
A stone sits in my chest, heavy for the lands of the pacific.
Even the spiders know that I am foreign here.
I have walked through so many webs this morning,
torn them apart, unintentionally upon my breast.
The air, sticky, even in dawns light,
clings to the webs and condenses,
small beads of golden dew, warm and wet,
meet my skin and spread out. I am shimmering.
Long time now, since heat touched my skin like this
heat that is alive, moist, and tender.
Still, in the wonder of it all, the birdsong, the frog song, the cicada song
I long for home, oh W’yeast, you have me wrapped around your finger
No, your rocky crags and gentle slopes…I’ll be wrapped around you, all my life.
You’re high peaks and rugged valleys, the ripple of your flesh.
Douglas fir and cedar, my trees, hold me close.
I cannot resist you dear conifers, you hold me, your boughs,
wrap my arms and legs in your green embrace and I am gone.
Gathered into you.

 

*image of a lake just outside Oxford Ohio, where I walked as this poem came to me last week.

Marianna