Poetry

“Four Quartets”

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

T.S. Eliot

For one human being to love another, that is the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test of proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

 Rainer Maria Rilke 

Healing

I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections.

And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly,

that I am ill. I am ill because of the wounds to the soul,

to the deep emotional self.

And the wounds to the soul

take a long, long time, only time can help.

And patience, and a certain difficult repentance,

long, difficult repentance, realization of life’s mistake,

and the freeing of oneself

from the endless repetition of the mistake

which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.

 D. H. Lawrence

 The Seeker

As I continue to search, my bloodied fingers raw

whether it is that rocky climb or machete hacking at the vines

I know I am seeking something hard to find

something that has always lived inside of me

invisible yet gnawing like a beaver on a stick

just beyond my reaching hands

the yearning calls me

Is it this desire that is so delicious

that creates this constant hunger

I don’t know

but I will find you

on this side of the mountain

or on the other

as we climb yearning for each other 

dksaami

An Old Grizzly Bear

Riding on the Great Northern to Montana

Up into that wilderness

I was raised in

Up into the Blackfoot territory

Where the drum still beats

Where grizzlies run free

And the wolf is making its’ comeback

I packed my Winchester carefully

Knowing the station master

And his raised eyebrows

Would strip me head to toe

Where terrorism is now a coin word

And a world we once knew

My shadow has grown thin

Arriving in Browning, the foothills of the Glaciers

A childhood nightmare for myself

Once a town of drunks, whiskey and whores

Has made a comeback to the Blackfoot culture

Of honor, ceremony and tradition

I get my horse and mule

And head into God’s country

The first night, the wolf visited me

The small campfire kept him at a short distance

I threw him a piece of the meat I cooked

He swallowed it, no chewing here, then disappeared

Sunrise arrived, I decided to follow his tracks

Up into the deep snow, toward the Glaciers, for three days

Then the horses started to fail

Left them go with some food

Strapped on my snow shoes

My Winchester and some supplies

An unwanted snow blizzard arrived

Made a shelter with Pine boughs

Dug deep into the snow

My buffalo blanket

And dried meat for survival

Dreaming through the night

Only to wake up to Sunrise

Fingers and toes blue with frostbite

I took out my flint

Gathered some dried pine needles

And started a small fire

Got it blazing and thawed the frozen ones

Where do I go from here

Supplies running out

The wolf’s tracks are gone

It’s just me and the Glaciers

Knowing they will win

dksaami

Love After Love

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

 and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was yourself.

Give Wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror

 Sit. Feast on your life

Derek Walcott

“After the long Arctic winter comes the miracle of the returning sun. On a clear day when the light is that of dusk, only a slip of the sun’s edge appears, but enough to tell us that beyond the horizon lies a red, glowing disc…..Then we stand amazed to see its glory high in the sky. For a time the hours of night and day are balanced like those in the south…”