SHARK REEF
A Publication of the Lopez Writers
Guild
October 2001
No. 2
Poetry
by White Bear Woman
UNTITLED
It is possible to move through the world
carrying messages to yourself
that you forget to open,
letting yourself pretend
they are for someone else.
BETWEEN THE WORLDS
It is night.
Morning will come,
but now, everyone I have ever loved
is sleeping.
My eyes are open, caught
between heart and mind,
breath caged and still.
These hours when the body
longs to fly
are the most holy and
most fierce.
What makes us dream and
what makes us wake
holds still deciding.
IN MY 50TH YEAR
life begins calving
like the glacier calves.
Huge chunks breaking free and
giving in to saltwater,
making unexpected waves,
melting slowly.
Kayakers and those in small boats,
vulnerable to unpredictability,
are warned to keep their distance.
I am at once all that is still frozen
and everything that has been set free,
and there is no longer any part of me
that wishes it were otherwise.
YOUR OWN BEST LOVER - from a song by Heather Bishop
If you live alone long enough
your own life begins to make love to you.
It starts as casually as any friendship,
gifts appear,
things you really love,
a candle, flowers.
You begin to move the furniture,
paintings, photographs,
rearranging for your own
pleasure what had been
agreed upon with another.
Then one night,
maybe in winter,
when snow makes the world
hold its tongue, and
the whole sky is filled
with the sharp light of the stars,
she comes to your bed.
When she
touches your nipple for the first time
you realize she is the best lover
you will ever have.
That moment is worth all the rest.
Each night after that,
when what is immense and undeniable
lumbers stubbornly toward the house,
coming close in with the dark,
together
you will turn on the light.
RETURNING TO ALASKA
Today I head north over water,
following something blindly
into the wilderness of ocean,
following something as primitive as love.
At mid-life the need to draw breath once more
on the keen edge of adventure
is strong, compelling.
I return to Alaska as the salmon return,
drawn there by instinct,
unimproved by all my accomplishments,
my body, fish like, changing color and shape,
gnarly and intense.
I remember mermaid shapeliness,
all silver and firm moving out into this life.
I remember unrelenting restlessness,
a drunkenness of spirit.
Now I move with steadfastness,
a long sobriety of purpose,
into the coldest waters
through which we all return
to the most sacred place.
ALL THAT IS HOLY
The earth does not care whether
we are nourished by her bounty or not,
or whether we notice her or not.
She flowers for herself alone,
bears fruit unto herself alone.
If, in that human loneliness that drops us
down and leaves us kneeling,
we imagine a voice that says,
"Take, eat,
this I give that you might not be hungry,
this I give that you might live,"
and we receive communion
from the mosses and salal,
and we receive communion
from blackberry and the cedar,
and we receive communion
from the salmon and the wild plum,
it is because we've finally
come to live
where all that is holy in her
is also inside us.
White Bear Woman has been writing poetry for forty-five
of her fifty-two years. She has also been a university teacher,
a carpenter, a cook on a fishing boat, a kayak guide, a licensed
masseuse, a restaurant owner and more. Whatever she does, she
doesn't dabble; she plunges all the way in.
"I follow my passion and my heart and they've led me
through my life," she says. "I haven't stayed on one
path because different things have gotten my attention. That's
where my poetry comes from --that place." She has had five
books of poetry published.
