i check the bleuets on the boundary to the west feral shrubs in reclaimed and overgrown prairie teeming with life the berries are still pink-sky-sunset blue not yet dusty indigo blue i’ll check again tomorrow like i did yesterday
a lone deer forages in the freshly seeded field to the north probably soybean this year, i say with confidence after observing rotation and rest patterns for nitrogen, for six summers, now
i raise my hands up slow and high surrendering to the deer to show i don’t have a gun /on me/ or a bow or blade, bought or made my tradition is not forged steel and gunpowder, my ceremony is not stone, bone, shaft and feather,
my nature is not always claws these days
i hold my mouth, soft, open in a weird smile to show i have no usable canines
i transmit a thought, a query concerning the herd “where are the six you lived and walked with all last winter?” there’s no response to my attempt at telepathy — although — oneday
i emanate waves of empathy out from my heart — i imagine them like Lake Michigan gently lapping at the local beach and hope that kin feels it
originally published june 17, 2016, revised june 11, 2023
* please visit the website/app Falling Fruit to add a fruiting tree that is located and accessible in the public way to the foraging database for others.
the author’s mulberry-stained fingers
A clear glimpse
A clear thought
on this clear June night
Of age,
and Alzheimer’s
the old-timer’s disease
A clear memory recorded and archived tonight
An acute awareness of myself
tonight, in time and place
a new track to play on loop for a listener in my future life
a husband, friend, or son
a caregiver, a kind one
a visitor, volunteer, or nurse,
a grandson, or maybe — no one
A reddish dog, eating mulberries
from the sidewalk in shadows
Mottled concrete in the dim light of a city street lamp
obscured by the canopy of that beautiful, June, fruit tree
Woody Guthrie, the mulberry forager
A woman, middle aged, seems so young, even a tad pretty, in her mind’s eye now
Stretching her still strong body upward for plump, dark berries
Reaching for branches trimmed too high by the urban foresters
or arborists or surgeons, I forget what they’re called
On her tippy toes
grabbing, pulling, picking
squeezing the dog’s leash between her thighs
don’t let him get loose in the dark, don’t let him get skunked in the dark
contorted mulberry tree at night
the same contorted mulberry in Sun’s light: wowowow
Some of the best ones are lost in the awkward tussle
before she can palm them, save them, taste them
She triggers a reverberative rain from boughs on high
That precise, delicate sweetness of the bounty in her mouth
The dog’s belly full of the ripe windfall
sustained by both gravity and this woman
His name was Woody, or Digby, I think
He used to climb into our sleep
Smashed and whole
The street, sidewalk and cars stained
by the impressive purple mess
the dark grass hiding perfect treasures for doves tomorrow morn
She and that dog,
They were urban foragers and gleaners in June.
All month long, her fingertips, feet and lips
tinted with their fuchsia dye, it didn’t even once occur to her to check his paws
A clear, recollection of acute melancholy:
this day — that day was also her son’s birthday //
The first birthday he ever spent away from home, away from her — in Nebraska, or was it Alaska?
That glorious tree, that good dog, that golden boy
how can i “calm down” when all i feel is love and rage, when all i experience is beauty and pain/ no in-between / pass the cab and the kettle corn / and if you didn’t want me to opine on fresh-cut flowers and this film — then why, why, why – did you insist that my eyes see them – yes, i know there are flower farms —— but have you heard that pollinators aren’t allowed indoors around vases? it’s none of anyone’s business how many time i’ve seen “Almost Famous!”
yes, i am a mother, and i drink too much wine, sometimes — but he’s in Albuquerque not in a crib in the next room — i wish time travel were true // and other times, wine is not enough to squelch the pangs – of 18 years gone in a flash but thousands of hours wasted on PTA and homework — fucking homework ! /// i took my kid road-tripping and camping, sent him to the SCA and Grand Teton to keep him out of these systems — how many huckleberry milkshakes at the Pioneer Grill does it take to finally see mountains and bears and rivers and trees as persons? well, i can actually tell you!
we had our deep talks, but not enough, never — how can time spent philosophizing be measured? in life choices and paths — that’s how. and i’m proud.
can you make a pact with me and promise i’ll never have to eat these words – especially the rants — and when, not if, i say something really wrong — you’ll push bowls of fresh figs and olives in my face to shut me up as a signal? salsa and chips will work too
can i tell you i’m broken without you trying to fix me? can you tell i’m broken — or do i wear it well? do these big feelings make my brain look small?
never stop showing me the radiance of you just because i’m dark — someone has to be the shadow, the mourning veil, the contrarian — and i know i volunteered — a long time ago — but “at some point” i would appreciate a different assignment?
— by the way, your auras do wonders for this room
you’ll both never not be in cascade canyon with me
the macro and micro cosmic exterior environmentis imbued with art
— if you just fucking look —
art is everywhere
art is more than cities, than galleries, statues, murals, landscaped botanical gardens, paintings, commissioned installations, fountains, graffiti, sculptures, museums, fashion, prints, architecture and the built environment
During the summer of 2017 – a time of significant change in my life – including the rupture of my marriage, an upcoming “milestone” birthday, and a relocation to a quiet rural place with dark skies and an abundance of fauna and flora — I literally heard myself: I had unconsciously begun a meditative practice of singing or humming verses and melodies of sorrow, wonder, gratitude — or simply, of the mundane. They were autonomic and presumably original, lamentations.
then, serendipitously, I retroactively encountered a May 2017 piece published in Yes! magazine about the revival and history of “lament singing” in Finland.
To find that I was unconsciously, but actually, participating in a Finnish tradition that I had never experienced or even heard of — but that was somehow still within in me — in some cellular, trans-generational or ancestral place — felt like a bridge to my lineage — to all my unknown women-kin.
The lyrics and tunes occurred spontaneously over several months, and I often automatically repeated the same one over and over while working, cleaning, cooking, gardening, walking or driving. I sung or hummed them mostly while alone, but sometimes they would emerge aloud in public places — and I didn’t even realize that I was in song or know how long I had been doing it.
People who laugh, cry, sing and talk to themselves aloud in the street are not “crazy” — we are comforting, raging, celebrating, mocking and mourningourselves, our lives, our experiences and the world.
the birds’ choir is a mockery outside my window, eight different species on the sill — eight — for gods’ sake!
these days when the Sun’s arc is long and the soil is warming for the season — and permanently
i am in my bed with lead bones annoyed that i woke up again, and guilty with an ungratefulness about it
my steady lament is sung out loud — but still unheard i counted my mistakes like sheep, to sleep again they didn’t wander away though they stay close to their shepherd, always
they say Death comes in threes and that’s true but it still hasn’t chosen me instead, conscripting two complacent men, known to me, thirty-six, fifty three, in one week’s time — why? while i’m out here volunteering for the cause it cruelly searches elsewhere to complete their trio
of course i’m still fucking here! the gods won’t give you what you pray for!
courage, love, fidelity, life, death
they’re full of motherfuckery they know exactly what i — and what you, want most — of all
Portrait of The Artist in her pink chair. “I 👁️♥️U”
the volume of love, tenderness, peace, comfort, safety, and security
that she so profoundly deserves
might never be offered in the sustained abundance
requisite
for her to heal
from our
sins against her and hers,
our sins, once or twice removed, from us — or so we proudly imagine//
we failed her and hers — over and over again
in our refusal to just stop
in our refusal to just start
in our refusal to just not
so her and hers’ trauma untreated became epigenetic, chronic, lethal
her sorrow and rage manifest in righteous and rightful litanies against our society, our systems, and the falseness of our lives //
because of us, because of the world we’ve built, maintain or co-sign for privilege
her and hers’ lives remain
unfair unstable unsafe
un “forfilled”
she has not for one single moment stopped working and fighting to live and thrive for her and hers
ease, rest and respite are not her companions
her pursuit for her and hers truth and justice — and for universal justice and truth is unrelenting and well-beyond humbling //
let none of us proclaim her “strong” or “survivor” — those titles are unwanted blood medals forced around her neck standing atop a podium made of her ancestors’ and son’s bones and of her own
she is more,
so very much more,
more
than her 66 year-long sentence of struggle, more than this 404 year-long American genocide and apartheid
she is an activist, a mother-warrior, a revolutionary
but
all she ever wanted was to be
a baby, a child, a daughter, a sister, a woman, a mother, a lover, a friend, an aunt, a grandmother, an artist, a poet, a writer, a philosopher, a scientist, an historian, a teacher, an advocate, a protector, a provider,
Eleven years ago this week, ahead of the NATO Summit in Chicago in May 2012, I wrote messages with spray paint on the roof of my home in my Portage Park, Chicago neighborhood for world leaders to read as they traveled in military helicopters passing low and loud overhead en route to the Summit venue at McCormick Place.
REJECT FALSE AUSTERITY & ENGINEERED WAR (there’s always enough money for war)
WE ARE ALL INTERCONNECTED TO ONE ANOTHER & TO OUR EARTH
On May 20, 2012, I also attended the mass protest and marched in opposition to NATO and its global hegemony and destruction.
CHICAGO IS MY KIND OF TOWN
Also on that day, in one of the most profoundly moving and humbling experiences of my life, while standing shoulder to shoulder with thousands of others, I listened to personal stories of war — of killing, death, rape, horror, pain, guilt and grief — from both U.S./NATO soldiers and the victims of those wars.
I witnessed from just yards away, as Jacob George, by then a warrior, no longer a soldier, along with warrior Scott Olsen (a former Marine, Iraq War veteran, Occupy veteran, and Oakland Police terror survivor) and 43 other war veterans-turned-warriors tossed their military service medals across the CPD police-enforced, Secret Service barricade toward the protected U.S./NATO generals, the policy-makers, and world “leaders” comfortably ensconced and insulated at McCormick Place at the NATO Summit in their gathering of war-makers.
“A warrior is someone who takes his orders from the heart, not some outside force." - Jacob George
The U.S./NATO war generals, in cowardice, would not agree to meet in person with the men and women who served in their wars and conflicts to ceremoniously accept the return of those unwanted, inglorious war service medals. Those medals were publicly rebuked and surrendered to the asphalt at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Cermak Road nonetheless.
on September 17th, 2014 Jacob George died by suicide.
After the act of disavowing the war medals, We, The People were told to disburse and vacate the area — when we didn’t — and attempted to march forward toward McCormick Place to encounter the World’s warmakers face to face — or at least be seen and heard by them, several hundreds were kettled by Chicago cops and Illinois State Police — resulting in resistance by — “We, The People” with physical and verbal clashes, police violence and protester arrests.
THE BLOATED BLUE LINE Chicago cops at the behest of Mayor Rahm Emanuel insulated the NATO warmakers from being held accountable by the People who came from across the globe to confront them with the deaths of civilians, the occupation of foreign lands and the trillions of dollars spent on conflict, war, destruction and death, and with personal accounts and statistics of military rape, PTSD and veteran death-by-suicide.
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 