DREAM VESSELS #37: Mountain Fire Shepherd

DREAM VESSELS #37: Mountain Fire Shepherd 

                                    from a collage by Marsha Connell

A shepherdess steps into a burned land. 

The shelter is not a yurt, but a mountain.
Perhaps the darkness of Tibet.

Where to find tent poles with a shortage of wood?

Tied to the door frame, is an amulet,
laurel leaves and feathers to protect her.

No one sees her in all her coral finery.

On this continent, or in Hawaii,
she would wear a feathered cloak.

Four rams hold up a chalice to the sky,
they rise up to collect rain.

Have the forests been felled by a volcano,
or worse?

The borderless birds watch us. 

The bluebird will not come again,
not this silent spring, or the next.

The orb above the tent is not a moon; 

inexorable oil barrels rise
instead of a harvest moon. 

We march toward the carbon past,
a death-march we can’t stop.

The fire from the oil wells in the Middle East 

will be felt in the remotness of Tibet.
And in the time to come.

The fire will darken her life too,

though Tibet is a closed country.

Our presence is felt there as well.

Summer 1992
This was a corrupted file and I have no hardcopy

first draft

Four rams hold up the chalice to the sky
and the woman looking out of the tent,
cannot comprehend the devastate of forests.
Where to find tent poles if there’s a shortage of wood?
Feathers and laurel leaves, the bluebird to come.
The orb above the tent is not a moon.
The worn black tent is not a yurt,
The trees were filled by impact – a volcano?
The rams hold up the chalice to the sky.
Maybe she’s a Bedouin maiden in all her coral finery.
There’s an amulet tied to the door frame.
Oil barrels rising up in place of a harvest moon,
or is it the hunter’s moon?
The feathers of birds around the doorway—
Bluebirds, silent spring, parrots and macaws
A feathered cloak for the sun.

marsha’s notes. When I was little my grandmother gave me a bluebird necklace  

This elaborate vessel. our culture does not invest in such elaborate art

a chalice, for us to own it is a sacrilege.

xxxx

we don’t have the investment of feeling for the power of anything natural

this very humble woman’s at peace with it so it’s more natural to her