A Feather

They call us the survivors,
 
persuade us to collude with metaphors
of strife and overcoming
 
that cast remission as a victory
of our own making,
 
bright with the prospect of a
permanent peace –
 
as though we have been given
a new body, a new life, not the old one
re-visited
 
with the old skirmishes,
the old illusions and a new burden
of gratefulness.
 
There is no lasting truce.
Light returns, and shade
its faithful follower.
 
We are not heroic, merely hungry
for safety,
 
knowing survival is a feather
on a breath.
 

Elisabeth Rowe

published in collection, Timewise, 2019, Oversteps Books,
ISBN 978-1-906856-84-7

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Totem Poles

In the time before we came to silence them
with missionary zeal and mortal sickness
the Haida lived on the edge,
knew only what sun and moon and wind
and tide revealed to them:
 
how spirit moves through all things, how little
separates man from raven, eagle, salmon
or killer whale; how one becomes another
in their mythology of transformation.
 
These are their mortuary poles,
bleached grey, leaning like old men
at the edge of a crescent bay,
the carved features of beaver, bear and dogfish
scarred by rain and time,
the pinnacled coffin-boxes sprouting ferns.
 
They will rot and fall,
surrender their story to the forest floor
from which they grew in monumental groves
of cedar, spruce and hemlock.
Everything here is busy being born
or dying, growth and decay the seamless
order of things.
 
At the Haida heritage centre,
a new pole lies in the womb of the carving shed.
Hundreds gather to bear witness to its birth
and help deliver it to the weathering elements
on its way to a sacred site.
 
They hold their past in the palm of the present,
to keep tradition alive, to remind us
that the earth does not belong to us,
we belong to the earth:
looking and seeing how everything is connected,
we may choose to be care-takers
or destroyers.
 
 
   * Haida Gwaii, formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands and home to the Haida people, is an archipelago c.130 miles west of Prince Rupert in British Columbia.
 

Elisabeth Rowe

published in collection, Timewise, 2019, Oversteps Books,
ISBN 978-1-906856-84-7

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Rapids

Remember
that day on Snake River
 
the Colorado sun
slung heavy
the river sheened as glass
 
the glass buckling
the boat plunging into rough
 
bucking the crazy crests
smacking the hollows
 
the whole river
gathering itself
and heading for the cliff
 
someone screaming
‘Lean in! Lean in!’
 
as the flimsy rib
slams into rock
ricochets
 
twists away
down a long chute
of chastened water
 
they called it ‘Oh Shit Rock’
but we had yet to learn
how there is always
 
something lying in wait
to trouble the natural flow
of things
 

Elisabeth Rowe

published in collection, Timewise, 2019, Oversteps Books,
ISBN 978-1-906856-84-7

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Winter Wisdom

Write your winter wisdom
when the words run dry,
you told me.
 
What do you expect?
Some kind of silver weathered word-flow,
life-bytes of a linguistic surfer?
 
I’m telling you, that stuff
is for the birds, who, if they have any sense,
have flown to somewhere warm.
 
All I have to offer is a grey head-space
obliging with bad habits, blotched capacities,
bent expectations.
 
Old age is the punishment
for growing old.
No spring greens for the body,
no hey nonny-no
the lover and his lass long gone.
 
Leaf-fall turns to loam and feeds the roots
that shoot to light and air,
but don’t you see how all renewal
is reserved for youth?
 
Winter wisdom is the past set solid,
the future below ground,
the present splintered
with survival.
 
Feed it to the birds, and ask me
about summer
while I can still remember it.
 

Elisabeth Rowe

published in collection, Timewise, 2019, Oversteps Books,
ISBN 978-1-906856-84-7

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