I’m at my cabin again, oh yeah, and feeling quite pleased with myself at how my poetry writing went this morning. A draft of a poem, one of the city’s Aboriginal organizations requested I write, is laying face up on the floor near my lazyboy chair. It is a good first draft. I doubt much change to it will be necessary before I stamp it ‘complete’. Man, it just tickles me when that happens!
Inspiration and poetry came to me this day in the stillness of the dawn. I realized then that the dusk of yesterday had persuaded the lakewater to find its perfect level. The obliging waters lay flat as glass all the hours of the night, until an early morning light broke the day and revealed the majestic calmness of the water to me at that moment. In the light I watched spirited fish shoot from the lake’s depths into the sky. They didn’t get far, gravity pulled them back down into their familiar watery surroundings where the breath of life for them, is theirs without struggle. The bass will never make it to the clouds but it was fun for me to watch them try to do so.
I noticed too, on the shoreline, a small red squirrel darting from the forest into the clearing of my camp. He abruptly stopped and raced just as quickly as his forward dash had been, back into the security the trees offer him. Perhaps he sensed a bird of prey was near and thought it best to stay out of open places for the time being.
The hunt is good for the hawk at this time of year. All those things he consumes which came to life in spring are beyond sample size at this point of the summer season. They have grown up, so to speak, and have now become the main course. Partridge, Waboose the rabbit, squirrels, snakes and other critters are going about their lives in the forest of late summer and the hawk is strong and well-fed because of it.
The fish who forces its body into the wind, and the squirrel who runs into the light and with it into the glare of a predator are more than poetry in motion. They are teachings with special lessons attached to them. It is for you to learn something good from it in your own way.
The hawk with eyes that capture every turn of the leaves on the trees under his gaze must eat. It wants to soar the winds on open wings in celebration of a fine meal, like a connoisseur of poetry would do after being overwhelmed with emotion because of the power alive in poetry.
Poetry! What would the world be without it?
Keep the Circle Strong,
Albert “South Wind” Dumont.
