terça-feira, 6 de agosto de 2013

Back to life...

So I think I have a choice - keep this blog alive (for the maybe two? people who read it regularly) or update it. My art still lives - and so should this blog. And I also think it is best to keep it alive with new writings, and not from texts taken from the depths of my hard drive. The three poems below are poems I wrote for animals I saw in Canada - a squirrel, a moose, and a polar bear. The first was seen in Point Pleasant Park in Halifax; the second was seen in the Cape Breton Highlands; and the last was seen in Churchill, MB. I may write for other animals I saw - the beaver at Long Lake and the fox by the Twin Lakes in Churchill. Or maybe not. Who knows.

***
Tell me, squirrel, what you see
When you're sitting on a tree?
Do you think of long-forgotten
Streams that never found the sea?

Do you dream of ancient forests,
Lands unmarred by mankind's hands,
Where the ice would freeze the waters,
But would never seal their fate?

Where on starlit nights, in darkness,
One would see the northern lights,
And the wolves would greet the sunrise,
Howling... Howls of joy, not fright?


Of a time that's nigh forgotten,
In a land that has been changed...
Squirrel, tell me what you see
Sleeping on a broken tree.

***
Moose that's browsing at the edge,
Eating all those little saplings -
Does your clueless look, perhaps,
Hide the memory of ages?

Ages past, or yet to come,
In a land that's everchanging
Loved by many, loathed by some
Ancient ground that's worth defending

Chose to live a life of peace -
Eating saplings, growing antlers
Yet how long until one sees
The relentless shades of hunters?

Ages come, and ages go,
And the Wheel continues turning...
Browsing at the forest edge,
Moose, enjoy your well-earned rest.

***
Bear, who's rolling on the ground - 
Why are you so white and fluffy?
Are you but a juvenile,
Roaming in an unknown country?

Ran away, yet did return
Scared us, like a frenzied Trolloc
Crouching low, your pace unknown,
In the bushes by the water.

Long ago, in other days,
You would run these lands unhindered
With no fear of cracker shells,
Only you, the birds, the willows...

But those days are now long gone.
Now you share these lands with others.
Friend or prey - who's there to know?
...May you find your ice in darkness.