The whole wide world pours down

The whole wide world pours down, originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

You will never be alone, you hear so deep
a sound when autumn comes...
... you never heard so deep a sound,
moss on rock, and years. You turn your head --
that's what the silence meant: you're not alone.
The whole wide world pours down.
-- Excerpt from Assurance by William Stafford

****************

To everyone who has been asking about Sam, our 18-year old flatcoated retriever, I wanted to fill you in:

Sam is still going as strong as an old guy can ... he takes two walks each day. He beams at us, silently -- so perfectly communicating to us what he wants or needs, how much he loves, how he feels .... where he wants to be. He has slowed down markedly, yet I am still in awe of his age, his energy, his devotion, his enthusiasm for life.

I also wanted to share photo of Sam doing what he does best: dreaming, sleeping, wandering around in the forest of his heart ... in a state of silence (he is deaf now) and peaceful existence.

One day melts into another day, like a dream. I believe in his heart Sam remembers days when he could chase rabbits and almost catch them. Days when he could scout ahead of us on the trail -- far ahead -- and never have to pause to catch his breath or pretend to find a smell because he could not go on... days when he could leap effortlessly from a river bank, find the stick in cold deep water, and with perfect movement bring it back to shore

... memories like filtered sunlight falling all around him. The whole wide world pours down, like light, like leaves, like dreams, like love.

Poetry Thursday: words conjure more than meaning

Although my post for today is not in the form of a poem, it is about poetry -- visual poetry. This is an illustration of one of the ways I mix poetry (the written kind) with other senses in my mind and body. I wrote this post for the PT writing prompt, The Body Knows ...

FRAGMENTS OF AN ANCIENT POETRY

Imagine a word such as moon. When you say moon, your lips curve. The word itself has curves. It conjures: round and old, and traveling on a long, slow-sounding journey. It's interesting to me, that along with the sound of a word, the visual aspect of the word affects its meaning.

As a sculptor, I'm fascinated by the shapes of language and as a writer I'm drawn to the meaning of shapes. This is a natural merging of two of my primary interests. Fragments of an Ancient Poetry is a three-dimensional page of my sketchbook-journal, revealing the increasingly refined and complex strokes of a thought process, or poetic idea.

--excerpted from artist's statement for Fragments of an Ancient Poetry

THEN:
Newspaper announcement, left, of a solo exhibit of my mixed media sculptures in 1987 at the Third Eye Gallery in Helena, Montana. A friend shot these photos at the opening reception. I completed the majority of the pieces shown in this exhibit (along with some working studies, sketches and paintings also exhibited) while attending a papermaking intensive at the Banff Center for the Arts in Alberta, Canada.

The other major piece in the exhibit is titled Sometimes Breathing Feels like Dancing (one of ten figures in that piece is shown, left)

NOW:
I'm 20 years older now. Maybe 20 years wiser, though that's arguable. As I revisit my artist's statements and photographs of my work from that period of my life, I realize I have a different perspective now. I hope it's a broader perspective. I still love these pieces and wish we lived in a house with walls large enough to display them.

I look at the figures in "Sometimes Breathing Feels like Dancing." I see my youthful body bent gracefully, supplely, just like the willow branches I used to form the dance. My life has taken some twists and turns ... in many ways I am still dancing with life. And death. With joy. And sorrow. And grief. Feeling the grace along with twinges of pain, love, longing ... feeling bent, slightly dried out, though still beautiful.

Will I ever truly know the steps of this dance? Enough to look ahead, to feel confident that I will not trip over my own feet? That I will be able to glide over the dance floor without regret, with my heart open to the music, to the senses, to the love of the one whose body sways in rhythm with mine?

Looking back on the experiences that have brought me to this threshold, I would also say, that "Sometimes Dancing Feels like Breathing."

This week's prompt for PT was to start with one line of someone else's poem, for inspiration, as a springboard, as a threshold to your own verse. Please head over to Poetry Thursday website for links to other participants' poems for this week.

Poetry Thursday: Love the Place You're With

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last night, just moments before the sun went behind the ridge, I stopped along Prickly Pear Creek just a little south of East Helena. There, the creek runs between two ridges and has been used and abused for years, by locals who toss beer cans and garbage in the gulch,and by hunters who discard elk and deer carcasses after taking what meat and trophy parts they want to keep.

I had driven by this creek numerous times, though I hadn't stopped until now. I had Sam with me and we both wanted to get out someplace new. So, this is where we ended up. I had to keep Sam on a leash for this walk - if I hadn't, he would have availed himself of the opportunity to douse with that special fragrance loved by dogs -- "Eau de Carcasse." There were at least 30 carcasses along the stretch of water we walked. Eeeuwww!

I had my camera with me, of course. The light was fading fast and I knew I had to hurry to catch it before nightfall. As I looked around for something that appealed to me -- a scene or detail I might want to shoot, I thought about what many people have told me when they see my photographs of Montana -- that I must live in Paradise, that Montana is so beautiful, pristine, that they want to visit here, to see what (I) see.

Yet here I was, scanning this trashed-out, dumping place for some little detail to photograph. It was worse than a garbage dump. This creek with its sad parking spots, its lovers' lane, its game carcasses strewn in the bushes ... this damaged wetland was a stark testimonial of how little we humans care for the earth.

In anger, I almost turned right around to leave. But something in the water caught my eye. A beaver dam, breached in the middle, icy willow branches bravely stacked against the winter, against the beavers' predators. The little dam was something I needed to see last night - it was a glimmer of optimism, of hope, in this trashed out riverbottom.

I sat for a few minutes, just feet from the large ribcage of an elk. I scolded Sam for being too interested in the bones. He put his head on his paws and watched me shoot -- quickly -- as the light changed and the water shape-shifted.

I wanted to redeem my species somehow, to reach back in time, find the memory of who this little dancing creek had once been, before the cement plant started polluting the waters, before people started using the valley as an unofficial dump and drinking place ... I wanted to catch the narrow slice of sky reflected in Prickly Pear Creek. I wanted to remember, with my mind's eye and my camera, the way graceful branches danced with the current.





I tossed a stone just upstream of the beaver dam. I clicked and clicked the camera shutter until I could see only the beauty of water, of evening, of a beaver's industry and natural design ...

until I could see
only the deep
blue sky and black
branches and golden
light swimming in
blue night
rippling


This is how to see the place
where you belong.
This is how to love
the places you spend your days
and nights.
Look under the surface
love the beauty you find there
no matter where you are.


~~~~~~~~~~~~

Singing Land
Your burning skies are never-ending
Across your red brush plains
Out where the dingo still is king and eternity remains
There between the old and ancient there's an oasis bright
Your gentle children who have gone are close to me tonight

In your singing land, in your singing land
Shine on, oh shine on over me

There's a feeling still and eerie, there's a feeling strong
The path humanity has come and the path that he has gone
Me I am I am just passing three score years and ten
And I'm just a stranger who may never come this way again

In your singing land, in your singing land
Shine on, oh shine on over me

Under the spell of caterpillar dreaming
New life shapes its form
Along the river's naked banks
That are straining for the storm
Oh sacred rock, in thunder ocean
The tree of man grows clear
The woodlarks sing, the brolgas dance and
Dawn is slipping near
-- song by Dougie MacLean

I have put together an audio/visual experience for you in this little slideshow with Dougie Maclean's song (above) To listen and watch the slideshow, click the arrow in the center of the screen below:




Posted for Poetry Thursday's totally optional prompt for this week, which I am totally ignoring. As usual. ;-D or check out the other poetry posts for this week by clicking this button:




I posted the first bunch of photos in this set, Love the Place You're with, last winter ... this winter I went back to the same place to see if I had a similar response to the place and I did. It has imprinted itself in me. It has become a numinous thing for me. It has become the kind of place that shows up in my dreams.

How to Age Gracefully

How to Age Gracefully
originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

How to Age Gracefully

keep smelling, stay
interested in all the
messages that come alive
like signs,
there are sighs and songs
in every blade of grass and
breath of wind

keep moving, even
if only your eyes
look everywhere,
there is beauty and
movement to watch
like leaves that lift
and fly like birds

~ ~ ~

Maureen Shaughnessy