ON THE LAST DAY OF APRIL

Photo by S. Auberle

On the last day of April, the forest is filled with a fragrance of wild leeks.  A crow calls, a plane drones low over the island.  On the wind you can hear ongoing chatter of a rookery out on the Little Sisters.  After four days of rain, the sun is warm on our faces.  There is a plaintive conversation drifting down from gulls so high in the blue air we can see only specks.  A fly buzzes by, the first of the year.  We watch a flock of cormorants flying low, and a couple--arm in arm--walking down the trail.  You ask if I remember an evening here, last November.  It was sunset, and the first snows had not yet fallen.  The setting sun turned the whole world orange, and we felt so lucky.  Now we'll go home and cook eggs, serve them on blue and white Japanese plates, sprinkle wild leeks over them.  We'll have a glass of Malbec with some good bread, and think again how lucky we are.  Later, under the waning moon, we'll listen for coyote songs, and in the morning, we hope, begin this beautiful life all over again.

EARTH DAY PANTOUM

Painting by S. Auberle

EARTH DAY PANTOUM

Like songs, like prayers,
they want to be heard--
these wild places
I carry in my heart.

They want to be heard
like you and me, and
I carry them, softly,
give them voice.

Like you and me
they weep sometimes
and I share with them my tears.
I have listened to rivers,

weeping for their diminishment,
to mountains, shattered for coal.
I have listened to laments of the raped
forests and grieved beside them.

The shattered mountains
do not beg for mercy,
the forests ask only that I listen,
mourn who they once were.

Like songs, like prayers,
like the hawk's high screams,
the wild places are going.  Pity
the children who will never know.

~  Sharon Auberle

EACH MORNING

Image by S. Auberle

"Each morning

we are born again.

What we do today

is what matters most."

~ Buddha

SPRING THING

Photo/Painting by S. Auberle

The calls of geese awaken me

this morning, their plumage colored

like the brown and white earth.

Snow is melting in the hollows,

moist breath of Spring sighs through

the birches, but storm-blue clouds

in the western sky convince me

that winter has not surrendered

and I must yet restrain this impatient heart

from some foolish Spring thing, though

the lonesome echoes of geese soften me

like snow melting on the earth's warm breast.

~ mimi

HAPPY TO SAY

Photo by R. Murre

Happy to say a poem of mine--

"Talking With Neruda's Ghost"

appears for the month of April

on the very fine on-line magazine

"Quill and Parchment."

Here's the link:

http://quillandparchment.com/