Clayoquot Musing

I spoke to a whale in Clayoqout Sound in the depth of the night

my beloved’s breath next to mine,

I spoke to a whale in Clayoquot Sound,

and in a moonlight breech

called to me and said,

‘Come join me in the bottom of the ocean, where wolves and cougars dance with us and your kind’

so down I went with the Whale friend

and in the ocean was the Earth’s first step

and Whales showed me who they were

and will be again,

A Wolf called to me in Clayoquot Sound

a gentle howl and panting breath,

“come run with me to far distant wood,

so we went and knew his tribe

and back I came with their ancestor’s memory

given as a gift by wolf’s breath and blood

A cougar came and sat beside me ,

as we gazed out across the water to the land

his sad eyes met mine,

” I am not the hunter or do the hunting, man does that,’

“I follow the way and my prey give themselves ,’

We shared a joke on mortality

and we walked across the waves to the human town

and prowled unseen in the shadows of the people’s minds

In the arch of the first morning hour

I met a bear wandering across the stars

We sat together by a fire made by a White Pelican

and the blood of his Pelican ancestors

The bear sat tired and the fire warmed him up

We sang a while, he smiled and covered me with his breath and fur

waved good by with his eyes

and went starward to his ancestors

The humingbird, and otter, butterfly and eagle came and went

I have gazed across the Clayoquot, through the Earth

to the rustle of the first heart beat

when the first man stumbled

and still does,

in the sea you hear the hooves of buffalo

in the high mountain passes the black and white flash of Orca’s

In the wide lands the rumble of dragons,

in the forests the ghosts of the primal earth

The call of light on the old growth trees

was the harp that all creator gods would play

each a peg and string,

to fabricate each living thing,

there is no new world but an old world with a new day

only understood by the heart

that is open to the unspoken way