Thursday Poem - Wage Peace

Wage peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble,

breathe out whole buildings and flocks of

red wing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists

and breathe out sleeping children and

freshly mown fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out

maple trees.

Breathe in the fallen and breathe out

lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening: hearing

sirens, pray loud.

Remember your tools: flower seeds,

clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.

Play music, memorize the words for

thank you in three languages.

Learn to knit, and make a hat.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,

imagine grief

as the outbreath of beauty

or the gesture of fish.

Swim for the other side.

Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and

precious:

Have a cup of tea... and rejoice.

Act as if armistice has already arrived.

Celebrate today.

Judyth Hill

Thursday Poem - Wage Peace

Wage peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble,

breathe out whole buildings and flocks of

red wing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists

and breathe out sleeping children and

freshly mown fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out

maple trees.

Breathe in the fallen and breathe out

lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening: hearing

sirens, pray loud.

Remember your tools: flower seeds,

clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.

Play music, memorize the words for

thank you in three languages.

Learn to knit, and make a hat.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,

imagine grief

as the outbreath of beauty

or the gesture of fish.

Swim for the other side.

Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and

precious:

Have a cup of tea... and rejoice.

Act as if armistice has already arrived.

Celebrate today.

Judyth Hill

Thursday Poem - The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life

and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake 

rests in his beauty on the water,

and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives

with forethought of grief.

I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.

For a time I rest in the grace of the world

and am free.

Wendell Berry, from Collected Poems

Thursday Poem - Wage Peace

Wage peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble,

breathe out whole buildings and flocks of

red wing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists

and breathe out sleeping children and 

freshly mown fields.

 Breathe in confusion and breathe out
maple trees.

Breathe in the fallen and breathe out
lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening: hearing

sirens, pray loud.

Remember your tools: flower seeds, 

clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.

 Play music, memorize the words for
thank you in three languages.

Learn to knit, and make a hat.

 Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.

Swim for the other side.

Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and
precious:

Have a cup of tea... and rejoice.

Act as if armistice has already arrived.

Celebrate today.

Judyth Hill

Thursday Poem - For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes, 

of statistics

lie before us.

The steep climb

of everything, going up,

up, as we all

go down.

In the next century

or the one beyond that

they say,

are valleys, pastures,

we can meet there in peace

if we make it.

To climb these coming crests

one word to you, to

you and your children:

stay together,

learn the flowers,

go light.

Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island

Wordless Wednesday, Peaceful

Thursday Poem - Wage Peace

Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children
and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen
and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening:
hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools:
flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.
Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.

Judyth Hill

Stirrings, Wistful and Agitated

This is the first day of March, and a deep and icy cold persists here. In the eastern Ontario highlands, we are a long way from springtime, and the maple syrup season that is usually underway now is only a dream of remembered sweetness and fragrance. I can't help thinking wistfully of evaporators burbling away in sugar shacks and cauldrons of maple sap boiling over open fires out in the Lanark highlands. 

What on earth am I doing up in the wee hours of the morning? If the truth be told, I am restless and agitated and having trouble sleeping at the moment. Perhaps that is not surprising, given two years of staying home and complying with COVID protocols, but the situation was not helped by the recent so-called Freedom Convoy blockade here in the city. During the mayhem, local residents were terrorized, downtown businesses were shuttered, buildings were vandalized (or set on fire) and public monuments were desecrated. The protesters were removed several days ago, but they cooked up a smelly poo load of misinformation during their unruly sojourn, and it continues to rocket around in cyber space. The stuff piously spouted as truth is sheer fantasy, and it beggars belief. Demonstrating peacefully? Standing up for freedom? Huh.

This has nothing to do with freedom or democracy. The memorandum of understanding published by the convoy leadership openly stated their objective of overthrowing the elected government and replacing it with themselves, unelected members of the senate and an unspecified bunch of right wing politicians and certifiable nutters.

The present war in Ukraine breaks my heart. Wherever I am and whatever I am doing at the moment, the Ukrainian people are never far from my thoughts. The Russian people are in my thoughts too, the legions of brave souls who are gathering in cities across Russia to denounce what their leader is doing. They are being arrested by the thousands, and yet they continue to show up and make their feelings known, peacefully. That is real courage. That is what peaceful demonstrations actually look like. 

What to do? Far from the war, I pick up my culinary tools and head for the kitchen to stir up small magics: loaves of bread, molasses cookies, scones, casseroles and cauldrons of soup. As I move my wooden spoons about, I whisper protective cantrips for those in peril across the ocean. Please somebody, keep them safe and stop this madness.

One thing is for sure. I am going to grow a LOT of sunflowers this year, and I also plan to carry sunflower seeds in my pockets. I will scatter them wherever I go.

Sorry, I just had to say something this morning. Enough is enough already.

Thursday Poem - For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,

of statistics

lie before us.

The steep climb

of everything, going up,

up, as we all

go down.

In the next century

or the one beyond that

they say,

are valleys, pastures,

we can meet there in peace

if we make it.

To climb these coming crests

one word to you, to

you and your children:

stay together,

learn the flowers,

go light.

Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island

Thursday Poem - The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry, from Collected Poems

Thursday Poem - Wage Peace

Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children
and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen
and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening:
hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools:
flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.
Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.

Judyth Hill

Thursday Poem - Wage Peace

Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children
and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen
and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening:
hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools:
flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.
Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.

Judyth Hill

Shining a Light in the Darkness

"What hope is there for individual reality or authenticity, when the forces of violence and orthodoxy, the earthly powers of guns and bombs and manipulated public opinion make it impossible for us to be authentic and fulfilled human beings? The only hope is in the creation of alternative values, alternative realities. The only hope is in daring to redream one's place in the world -- a beautiful act of imagination, and a sustained act of self becoming. Which is to say that in some way or another we breach and confound the accepted frontiers of things."
Ben Okri

For the last several days, I have been trying to string words together to express my grief about the atrocities in New Zealand, and I have failed. Others do this better than I. The fierce and eloquent Terry Tempest Williams made an appearance here yesterday, and this morning's offering is from Ben Okri. The incandescent Ursula K. Le Guin's words will probably turn up here this week too. We are all poorer for her departure from this plane of existence last year.

We carry on. No matter how dark and brutal things get, we light our candles and butter lamps and lanterns and carry on. We shine our little beacons into the dark corners where evil festers, and we call the beast by its true name.  We summon the fiend into the light of day and expose it in all its grotesque hideousness.

We carry on. We dare to imagine a world where such unspeakable things do not happen. We work to make that world so by our thoughts and words and deeds.

We carry on. We do not give up, ever.

Thursday Poem - For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
The steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together,
learn the flowers,
go light.

Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island

Thursday Poem - Wage Peace

Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children
and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen
and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening:
hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools:
flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.
Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.

Judyth Hill

Thursday Poem - Wage Peace

Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children
and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen
and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening:
hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools:
flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.
Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.

Judyth Hill

Thursday Poem - For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
The steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together,
learn the flowers,
go light.

Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island