Falcon and the Woodpecker Converse

A piece of musicality for your enjoyment, 

if it pleases you...

When we two toads came into tandem, our attempt to get to know each other grew into a 20-page conversation on Google Docs which included personal histories, astrology, and the Native American Medicine Wheel. 

   

Earth Medicine: Revealing Hidden Teachings 

of the Native American Medicine Wheel (Earth Quest)

We used each of our earth influences: Awakening Time for Hannah and The Long Days Time for Susan. We employed our animal and birth totems: Falcon for Hannah and Woodpecker for Susan. And we added our mineral totems as well: Opal for Hannah and Rose Quartz for Susan.

   

Next, Susan used Hannah’s text and Hannah used Susan’s text to create separate erasure poems.  Finally, we wove the erasure poems together to create the following poem, “Words Between Birds.”

Susan says: Hannah!  What a pleasure to have you as my pen pal over the last month.   I learned a lot from you, and Hey!  We  built our poem with no panic or writer’s block.   You are one amazing person, and--though we wrote as birds--I am happy to be a toad in the same garden as you.  

Hannah says: Ditto, Susan!! It has been such a joy to write with you. The space that we created became a shared personal journal and the experience and you have been very inspiring to me. It was such a treat and honor to get the opportunity to glimpse life from your perspective and to share a bird's eye view of life in my world as well!

Birds of a feather and toads of the same cool pool....it has been such a pleasure!!

Without further ado we present to you, 
our friendly toads, the poem...

(via Flicker By donjd2 under creative commons)

Words Between Birds

It’s just a thinking day for me,

a day to take apart the furrows from brows

create surrealistic pillows,

hearts as we look out windows.

It rained all night…

I was a child and had chickens out back.

I was a child…

refusing to come down

from the weeping willow tree near the cornfield.

It rained all night.

So much potential in this wide-open white space

looking at snow fall--the really tiny-orby-kind

that floats around before falling -- the full moon . . .

shines through falcon eyes, opal, awakening time.

“That very first moment when our eyes met the thinness

of the veil-- between heaven and earth in that moment…”

I wished to access true aboriginal Astronomy,

I wished to access The Long Days Time.

When you waken having not slept,

when you awaken containing the moon,

are you connected to the tides?  

Do you feel phases of the sun?

Do you feel the true Astronomy

of long ago days?

The boys are buzzing around, the two year old

shaking a box of blocks on the couch.  Sometimes

overwhelmed with love and other times of the month

swamped with disconnect...so much love and hate...

I am fire: words buoy up to speckle the diamond-bright

surface just where they’re meant to be.

Large Starlings sit on the feeder

and discuss world’s end:

impossibly transformed-

seeds not up to sprouting-

not up to inventing some inner voice.

What if you need a spark?

What if you’re cold and you need a fire?

What if God just shows up?

What does it feel like not to have been a parent?

Who hasn’t parented in some way?  lots of different

ways?  in current affairs and history? by teaching

The Word in sign language, reading lips?  When

will this day let down her gray-guard...heavy

and blanketed breath of mist?

Windy and cold today…

It would feel noisy,

(bare arms on soft sweater),

to me it feels quiet

like a tree house in a deep back yard.

Windy and cold today

but I am water woman

basking in lingering family warmth.

Barren-dark twiggy fingers grope for a clearing,

claw for one last glimpse of clear sky-hungry

for even just a shred of sunshine’s warmth.

Childlessness...makes the heart ache …

Falcon and Woodpecker plucking and placing

each other’s words...nesting them together.

        I am woodpecker seeking rose-quartz
        waiting for a baby to be born.

In their arms they hold their labor,

I see tears and I think I understand  

how it feels to look at a person you made.

How golden her eyes are…

a sweet bouquet of flowers

in a weedy day;

intensely beautiful.

Just a thinking day for me...