Artemisia
A place to walk with trees
digital art through the veil
Honest To Goddess
Dear Lady,
May we hoist our skulls
out of our nethers,
Stretch skyward
in the brief time remaining
and conduct ourselves in the manner
we wish to be remembered
-M. Hawes
Constellations
of pink
in ever changing beds
guarded
since the ice-sheet melted
by
the Keeper of the Redds
-M. Hawes
Zebra Totes
Peppermints
For elephants
Must be as big as pillows
Hearth towel tea atom lieu
Baton oeuf
Zebra totes
Of famous quotes
Are better than a laptop
Hearth towel tea atom lieu
Baton oeuf
-M. Hawes
Aha
Shakespeare awaken
and grab your gear
before wild pyres divest us of kin
Two of Clots entombed me not
as sterile taxis begin
to traffik into Covid Zones,
Google Diets and Cellophones
with Apps to help us all relax
take our meds and pay our tax
-M. Hawes
None may possess Truth. But our lives are dignified by her proximity. Truth diminishes ignorance and contains fear. She is ever a starting point, never a destination. To be born makes one a student. To describe the trail makes one a storyteller. To extract meaning makes one a philosopher. To share makes one human. Time proves the wisdom of patience as we explore the spandrels. To forgive is the first task.
~888~
forge your code : choose your road : carry your load
libera me deus ab consilium insipientibus.
I Paid My Quarter
I paid my quarter
unwilling to cozen dogs
or to feed emus
when that cubic fen
revealed six orangutans
behind godly shields
hitting pili nuts
with broken wands
until dark made them
scratch their bites
-M. Hawes
A kachina is an ancestral spirit of the Pueblo Indians. There are more than 500 of these spirits acting as intermediaries between humans and gods. Each tribe has its own kachinas, which reside with the tribe for half of each year. They can be seen by the community if the men properly perform a ritual while wearing kachina masks. I encountered this one on the east shore of the Fraser River in Lillooet, B.C. He is seated with his left hand on his lap and a spirit badger is peeking out from its burrow to his left. They are surrounded by artemisia tridentata, aka. Big Sage.
I encountered this 21st Century kachina in Vancouver. Though technology has diminished our sensitivity to liminal denizens, it must be considered that they may no longer appear in their expected guise of days gone by in urban settings.
I encountered another 21st Century kachina in Vancouver at VGH. Three-footed and of a positive nature, I was particularly drawn to its very kind eye.
Ratatoskr (Old Norse for "drill-tooth" ) is a squirrel who runs up and down the world tree, Yggdrasil, carrying messages between the eagle, Hræsvelgr, who is perched on top with a hawk, Veðrfölnir, perched between it's eyes and the serpent Níðhöggr, a wyrm who dwells beneath one of the three roots of the tree. Ratatoskr is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources and in the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. I spotted Ratatoskr in Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver. He bears a pencil sized twig in his mouth and provokes me to write.
The fir woods and fields of moss-covered boulders that tumbled off high cliffs before the pyramids were built are God’s soundproof studio. The silence is downright Carpathian, yet it has seen at least ten thousand years of human deeds. I passed this sweat lodge one day, abiding in the power of silence like a dream fragment.
From the mountains, forests, plains, deserts, tundra, caves, jungles, tenements and suburban front yards of our world; in yurts and igloos, in cabins and castles: God Bless Little Girls! Thank you, dear precious creatures for keeping alive the magic from which we all spring and evolve.
I came across this tree practising yoga under the tutelage of a Ponderosa pine during a walk on Seton Bench. One lesson I learned is that in order to look up, one must sometimes lay back.
Looking up the Springtime trunk of an old tree in Vancouver's Shaughnessy neighbourhood, I can see that this entity is travelling across space with it's feet in the sky and it's head and hands in the earth. Willing to provide warmth and shelter for me and you,. Wise beyond our ken and worthy of deep respect.
A Welsh Harp Song
In a sacred grove of musk apple trees
was an elfin band upon their knees
with foxfire fingers plucking melodies,
where a daemon cast jars of talents unused,
gifts ignored and genius abused
in his bid to dishearten a Muse
deftly weaving, as the shadows grew long,
a tapestry euphonious and magically drawn
from tangles of aptitude and a Welsh harp song
-M. Hawes
It was Spring 2021 in Vancouver. Wildfires raged around our house in Lillooet. My wife was being treated for leukemia. Virus was on the wind. We missed our cat. I walked everyday to take counsel from trees, some of whom burst into song.
Walking along the old railroad right-of-way near Arbutus St. in Vancouver while my wife was fifteen floors up having chemotherapy, I became aware that we are pilgrims all, wherever we may find ourselves. I remembered climbing the Grouse Grind for the first time years ago. I was a heavy smoker then and had stopped to lean against a tree, mouth agape and panting. A young woman, separated from the snake-like stream of hikers and approached me to gently shoo away a fly that was slowly but surely crawling into my mouth. May I find light to return that timeless kindness many times over as I walk through the remaining days of my life.
The author at twenty years of age. I am standing beside a pine that I met one very special night in the Kanaka Bar section of the Fraser Canyon as a teen. I was spending a night up a mountain and during my vigil, a dry lightning storm ensued and this tree was struck near to where I sat.. I visited it over the years until it had been blown down and melted back into the earth. These intertwined branches seen sticking up from the prone tree became my symbol and have formed part of my signature ever since. This photo was taken by my first wife, Brenda, whom I had brought to visit to the tree. I wrote a poem for this stricken friend in the Seventies.
Old dead tree
stood too close to the trail
all your cones
scattered
like rabbit shit
for time to bat around
ground down
molten wood
merging with mother earth
springing greens
it's us again
in retrospect
ounce for ounce
the cosmic bounce
of this rock we sanctified
yawns for the people
bearded laughing creatures
of magical nature
in a rarified atmosphere
-M. Hawes
I am part Irish. In 2021, my wife was diagnosed with leukemia and flown away to Vancouver, my town was threatened by several massive wildfires, Covid-19 was variating and things looked bleak indeed. The year before had seen a Winter canyon car crash and two painful blood clots in my legs. Reaching my limit, I called my sister, who suggested a person who could give practical help. It was to be a lady doctor who turned out to be Irish. As I stood in my yard, awaiting her phone call, I squatted to smooth some clover that had been torn by my mower moments before. I ran my hand over a small area by the front steps and these six four-leaf beauties sprang up from where they had lain down to avoid the blades. I picked them and went inside smiling for the first time in many months. The phone rang...
This is a picture taken in Lillooet during the wildfires of the Summer of 2021 by my friend, neighbour, colleague, radio host, pianist, musicologist and cat-whisperer, Jeff O'Kelly. I saw something when I turned his original image 90 degrees. Without adding anything, but by merely adjusting the shadings, colouration, cropping and orientation; I was rewarded with a clear sight of a bearded genie using fire to conjure a crowned infant queen with a birthmark on her left cheek astride a rampant steed. The genie is in the right foreground and the mounted Queen is to his rear, facing away.
Another superb picture taken by Jeff O'Kelly in Lillooet. He sent this to me in Vancouver while I was attending my wife. We were staying at the Easter Seals House as she went through chemo and a stem cell transplant at VGH. Jeff was cat-father to our much beloved Dusty Bones, Esq. and kept an eye on our trailer. He regularly sent e-mails and photos of Dusty, our yard, clouds, smoke and mountains. This correspondence kept us linked to Lillooet for a long eight months. Using the same tools as in the genie picture, I was able to make clear what I saw in this picture of wildfire smoke approaching Lillooet from the North. Artemis, to be precise. She bears the same name as my favourite local plant, artemisia tridentata or Big Sage. I learned the Latin name from another local friend, Aleda. To say I am enraptured with the fragrance, would be an understatement. On all my walks I rub both arms and my beard with it's magic leaves. While waiting out my wife's stem cell transplant in a small room in Vancouver and facing the possible loss of our trailer due to proximal fires, I imagined Artemis summoned from the sage smoke, searching for her brother, Apollo, the Sun to ask why he waxed so hot. She is in the foreground, acting as a shield and even has on a surgical mask for Covid protocol. (smile) Apollo is just behind her with flared nostrils and still shooting sun flares out to scorch the land. Artemis has deployed a heavy grey blanket of safety over Lillooet. I was allowed to come home for a few weeks in the Summer to pack my wife's suitcase. My departure happened to be on the day Lytton burned. I passed through on my way North moments before it was engulfed. When my wife and I returned home from her ordeal in November, there was a wind-planted Big Sage growing in the centre of our front yard. I was so relieved that our town had been saved from the flames that I named this website Artemisia. I later became aware of the Italian female Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. After reading her bio and viewing her paintings, I knew we were in brave company.
Another picture taken by Jeff O'Kelly in Lillooet during the fires of 2021. I called this level-adjusted cropping, "Smoke Tsunami" and it reminded me of two things. The first was Japanese woodblock prints by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist, Hokusai of the late Edo period. The second was what the Japanese call "Kame-san" or Sea Turtle. So, if you ever wondered why the term Turtle Island is used by many First Nations Peoples across the globe, please regard this picture and the one below.
Looking North-West from the Old Bridge in Lillooet, I took this picture of Kame-san when I first moved to Lillooet so I could determine how fast he was moving as the years of my retirement rolled by.
While walking down Main St. in Vancouver looking for an orange tee-shirt in the Summer of 2021, I passed this school, General Brock Elementary on 33rd & Main. May new schools emerge from the ashes of colonialism. Places where natural spiritual knowledge is not shelved for the sake of convenience, homogeneity, control and profit. It is up to us...
Sugar Beets
No longer can hockey pride
keep our maple-kilt myths alive,
when in Residential Schools, so many died
while Pope-mobiles carted predatory priests
and fiduciary pundits sowed sugar beets;
now faces are splashed on the daily news
of the psychopaths who ran those zoos
and quiet ships with hingéd booms
offload chemical barrels
for hidden rooms
-M. Hawes
Walking back to Easter Seal House from Queen Elizabeth Park, I removed my eye-glasses to see what state my actual vision was in after sixty-four years of use. This digital swirl is a very near approximation. I reckoned that when we factor in the inaccuracy of what we see with our perfectly corrected vision via the brain's penchant for filling in blanks and simplifying complexities, together with our own biases and the prevalent prejudices of whatever society we live in; blurry vision may just be a spiritual aid awaiting discovery.
While walking around and through Vancouver's beautiful Quilchena Park for the first time, my wife and I came across this exquisite bronze sculpture. It is named Three Watchmen. According to the artist, "The piece is based on legendary Haida figures who remain watchful to alert the owner to the approach of an enemy or any threat. The three figures can be said to represent the past, present and future; and the interior, exterior and supernatural worlds." I heard a line from an old poem from childhood in my head as we strolled past, "Where we walk to school each day, Indian children used to play." It is well that observers are reminded that they are being observed.
A prayer shrine I made in Vancouver at the Easter Seal House for my wife Nisa, who was undergoing chemotherapy and taking a vast array of pharmaceuticals for leukemia treatment. She gathered the shells at Spanish Banks during walks between hospital visits. A place we used to bring our boys to romp, dream and fish. As if to let us know that the universe had heard our desire for healing, trees fell off the cliff to the South and crashed down to the road. It happened twice on consecutive days after parking the car and taking three steps. The shrine was intended to compliment her doctor's medicine, not to be at odds with it. My belief is that in order to heal, a person must show the universe by their actions that they need and want to heal. This is done by embracing life and the promise of life, such as seeds. I brought an acorn from Vancouver and planted it in our front yard in Lillooet. A little buck ate the leaves but I think it will survive. My understanding of "prayer" is not asking for things but rather expressing gratitude for what one already has. I wondered what our human shrines might look like to the spirits we construct them to and I came up with this digital approximation.
On my very first day in Vancouver to support my wife during her treatment, I took a stroll through the Shaughnessy neighbourhood that lies adjacent to the building where I lodged. Many exceptional old trees were encountered, albeit human planted within the past one hundred and fifty years. The energies present in this area are intense on both extremes of polarity and have made their marks on all the living things in the environs. The first notable tree I encountered was this one. In my anxious condition due to my inability to see my wife at VGH or to be with any relatives due to Covid restrictions, I first named him, "The Elm of Constant Sorrow." Over ensuing days, I came to see him as wise rather than sad. I renamed him, "Sentient." His moustache grew all Spring.
There is a place I found where the rock is on top, the sky is on the bottom and trees connect the two worlds. It is a perspective that I imagine a bobcat comes to know over time. A lesson that washed out of my experience here was that the hardest to reach destinations afford the greatest feeling of safety once they are attained.
A lovely Summer morning in Vancouver. Looking South-East from Easter Seal House toward Queen Elizabeth Park. Having made several recent major course corrections in my own inner and outer life, I was reminded of this lyric.
"Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
there's still time to change the road you're on."
-Stairway To Heaven, Songwriters: Plant R A / Page James Patrick
A path I love near my home in Lillooet. After seeking a way to some heights I was called toward on my walks for several years in vain, I opened myself to the possibility of following a wolf track that I encountered about a mile away from this location after a rain. The track led me down a familiar way I often travelled and then abruptly got lost in tall grass. While seeking a sign, I brushed aside the branch of a fir tree that I had walked past dozens of times. There, clear as a child's smile was a trail, with big wolf prints that was perfectly obscured by said branch. Tracking along familiar "big picture" terrain and geography, I was led across several trails I had never seen before even when stepping on them. Eventually, I was led to this sublime stately sphagnum way through silent fir and pines. Not far from here is a wonderful high place from which to survey ones' soul. There are several good teachings in this and again I was reminded of some lyrics from long ago.
"And it's whispered that soon, if we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason
And a new day will dawn for those who stand long
And the forests will echo with laughter
Remember laughter?"
-Stairway To Heaven, Songwriters: Plant R A / Page James Patrick
My wife and I walked each evening after supper in the Summer of 2021 after her stem cell transplant at VGH. North along Oak Street from King Edward Blvd. and the Easter Seal House where we lodged to 16th Avenue, where we encountered this Welcome Totem that stood as guardian for the Community Garden located there, It was along this walk, one evening as we came abreast of the Schara Tzedeck Synagogue (Gates of Righteousness) that we noticed a stream of water from a hidden broken water main. It appeared that the pavement was spontaneously weeping in the Summer drought and the spring of water produced ran all the way down to the totem.
Nisa walked on after a brief look and I stayed to investigate the source of the moisture. After my scrutiny of the curbside, I noticed that a car parked at that spot had someone in it and she looked vaguely familiar in my peripheral vision. I stood alongside the passenger side window and waved hello, just in case. A young woman with long chestnut brown hair turned slowly and serenely to face me and her visage bore such a look of peace that I was taken aback in a very firm but pleasant way. Then, lowering my gaze a few inches from her face, I clearly saw that she was holding a large rabbit in her lap and slowly stroking its fur from its downward ears to its front paws. You will understand the significance of this if you read my essay entitled Good To Go. Thus, I say in Welsh, "Cryfder yw addfwynder ac addfwynder yw cryfder. Diolch am eich arweiniad a'ch amddiffyniad, Saint Melangell. "
An ancient willow tree in Douglas Park, Vancouver. It was brought as a sapling from Lost Lagoon and transplanted to what used to be a private commercial garden plot that was hacked out of the native forest and worked by Chinese labourers. My wife and I walked here often after her transplant and we drew much strength from its example.
Sitting next to that tree again
staring past tears
up to the top
where the leaves
closest to the wind
are shining
A little bird is singing
of tree and leaf
I feel for the tree
as the forest does
and I love the bird
as one who
hears its song,
"The leaves
are free of the wood
-yet bound to it,
a lesson in love,
a lesson in love."
-M. Hawes
On the afternoon of Thursday, March 29th 1827, tens of thousands of people united for the funeral of Ludwig van Beethoven. Heinrich Anschütz, read the funeral oration written by Franz Grillparzer in front of the doors of the Währing Cemetery
"An instrument now stilled. Let me call him that! For he was an artist, and what he was, he was only through art. The thorns of life had wounded him deeply, and as the shipwrecked man clutches the saving shore, he flew to your arms, oh wondrous sister of the good and true, comforter in affliction, the art that comes from on high! He held fast to you, and even when the gate through which you had entered was shut, you spoke through a deafened ear to him who could no longer discern you; and he carried your image in his heart, and when he died it still lay on his breast.
He was an artist, and who shall stand beside him? As the behemoth sweeps through the seas, he swept across the boundaries of his art. From the cooing of the dove to the thunder's roll, from the subtlest interweaving of willful artifices to that awesome point at which the fabric presses over into the lawlessness of clashing natural forces -- he traversed all, he comprehended everything. He who follows him cannot continue; he must begin anew, for his predecessor ended where art ends.
He was an artist, but also a man, a man in every sense, in the highest sense. Because he shut himself off from the world, they called him hostile; and callous, because he shunned feelings. Oh, he who knows he is hardened does not flee! (It is the more delicate point that is most easily blunted, that bends or breaks.)
Excess of feeling avoids feelings. He fled the world because he did not find, in the whole compass of his loving nature, a weapon with which to resist it. He withdrew from his fellow men after he had given them everything and had received nothing in return. He remained alone because he found no second self. But until his death he preserved a human heart for all men, a father's heart for his own people, the whole world.
Thus he was, thus he died, thus he will live for all time!
And you who have followed his escort to this place, hold your sorrow in sway. You have not lost him but won him. No living man enters the halls of immortality. The body must die before the gates are opened. He whom you mourn is now among the greatest men of all time, unassailable forever. Return to your homes, then, distressed but composed. And whenever, during your lives, the power of his works overwhelms you like a coming storm; when your rapture pours out in the midst of a generation yet unborn; then remember this hour and think: we were there when they buried him, and when he died we wept!" -edited Hannah SALTER translation from French
This is a picture I took about a year ago. It is a place where the sculpting hands of water work solid rock with a powerful gentleness that only time can comprehend. When I first made the journey to this numinous place, I sat down and immediately discerned Beethoven reposing on the right-hand side wall of the chasm. I felt the presence of what is great in humanity that does not die with the body. As if a human component was lending aid in the water's task. I recognized him from having seen a photo of his death mask. I visit often and have found two other "rock sleepers."
A second growth and very likely human planted tree in Vancouver's Shaughnessy Park that is in the painful throes of a difficult labour. I encountered this dendro-drama on my first day in town to care for my wife as an outpatient of VGH. It was also my first stroll through this little park in the heart of Shaughnessy. I named this living sculpture, Atlas Shrubbed, as it appeared to me that the mowing down of the virgin forest on top of this sea-moistened ridge to make way for instant fortunes and magisterial mansions filled with imported art, had occurred at odds with the ancient spirits of place. Me and the squirrels are still awaiting the outcome.
While walking around the Punjabi Market district on Main St., we happened upon the tree pictured above. It had been there for all the years we had lived in the area, but this time it was decorated with saffron garlands in massive long threads hung from high branches imperceptibly caressing the heads of passers by. I imagined that in India, countless spirits peppered the sub-continent on it’s long sea voyage towards it’s collision with Asia, which any humans would have recognized and connected to through myriad localized religions. Those tribal beliefs would have melted unharmed into the welcoming masala of Hinduism and I suspected that even the modern Sikh religion cannot have always been unadorned by ancient local deities in rural, agricultural Punjab, particularly female ones. This led me off on a google which confirmed, “Hindus consider all trees to have a tree deity, which can be worshipped and provided with offerings including water and sacred threads.” And that, “In Hinduism, Aranyani is a goddess of the forests and the animals that dwell within them.”
Another superb photo taken by my friend, Jeff O'Kelly in Lillooet. I was with him when he snapped it and his actions were as quick and sure as a boy with a sling-shot and a pocket full of pebbles in a scrap yard. Later that evening I received a copy with the caption, "An Unfathomable Object in an Indescribable Setting." I replied, "Bravo! Jeff, what an impeccable composition. I see the wheel inherent, in the illusion of chaos painted by our limited ability to reckon time, waiting for man's germinal capacity to receive it's gifts and reach beyond this place. You are dabbling your toes in the sublime, boyo. Continue. Share. " By which I meant, we are surely all unfathomable objects living in an indescribable setting.
While out walking in Vancouver during one of Nisa's chemotherapy sessions, I went for a random walk and saw a couple with a beautiful black dog. I was sorely missing my cat, Dusty Bones, Esq. who was back in Lillooet. I asked the couple if I could pet their dog and told them why I had asked. They said yes I could and instead of going for their own walk, we had a three hour conversation in front of their apartment building. Passers by stopped to join in from time to time. They seemed to appreciate hearing my story and each offered up their own stories as the dog was adored by all. I was still at a stage where I couldn't talk about my wife with dry eyes but couldn't refrain from the topic either. By being present to bear witness to my pain and suffering, those beings showed me compassion. I have recently learned the distinction between compassion and empathy. The empath actually experiences another's pain. I have been plagued by the latter and blessed with the former. I never appreciated the distinction, however, until I began meditating. We parted on the sidewalk, likely to never cross physical paths again but aware of our connexion. My watch indicated that I was possibly going to be late to pick up Nisa at the hospital. The mix of positive and negative emotions confused my sense of direction like swimming in a mountain lake on a scorching day and diving through a thermocline. I stood looking in the four directions in vain for a familiar landmark. Then I saw the tree. He was a slim, dapper, European gentle-elm and just putting out some modest but tasteful foliage. I silently asked, "Where?" and he indicated with a friendly nod and gesture, the exact direction to the hospital. I thanked him and bee-lined to my rendezvous, arriving several minutes early.
While walking through one of my old postal routes that encompassed Queen Elizabeth Park, I visited an old friend near the corner of 33rd & Cambie. It was an old Cork Oak hybrid tree or quercus hispanica. In the shade of its long parallel branches I saw another old acquaintance. Just across the boulevard from the Holy Name Catholic Church is a most curious pine tree. As a letter-carrier, I saw this tree as the Scandinavian Kraken and called it the 'Bus Stop Kraken.' Re-visiting it years later as a retired letter-carrier during a time of crisis, I saw it 's true nature and identity. I would like to introduce you to the Akkorokamui , アッコロカム, a gigantic octopus from Ainu folklore, equivalent to the Nordic Kraken. It is believed to live in Uchiura Bay in Hokkaido. It is said that its enormous body can reach sizes of up to 120 metres in length. The Ainu reverence of this being has permeated the Shinto religion, which has incorporated it as a minor kami. While often presented as a benevolent kami with powers to heal and bestow knowledge, it is fickle and has the propensity to do harm. Akkorokamui enjoys the sea and offerings of fish, crabs and mollusks. Homage to Akkorokamui is often made when seeking healing for ailments of the limbs or skin. Mental and spiritual purification is particularly important when dealing with Akkorokamui.
The germ
of a white flower
had existence
before the town
shared the banks
of the stream
it now grows over.
The universities
were unthought of
and Kyoto
had no name
-M. Hawes
On a month long hiatus back in Lillooet while my Nisa was having a stem cell transplant in Vancouver, I went walking on Seton Bench. On my way to a spot I love, I lay for a while in the warm, clean, July grass. I had missed the destruction of Lytton by fire by less than an hour on my way North up the canyon and was in a very delicate state. I wasn't certain if I would be able to rejoin my wife of over thirty years or if I would have to suddenly evacuate and be cut off from returning to her side. When I rolled over, I spied this lovely little mountain flower and was immediately taken back in time to Kyoto, Japan. As a young, strong man with all my hair and teeth, I had come down out of the piney mountains above Osaka and sought the house of a friend I had met on an airplane flight tens years prior. Leaving Osaka after that reunion, my second wife and I came to Kyoto. There, I discovered four creeks, some as small as Lynn Creek and some as big as Cayoosh Creek. While strolling alone one Sunday afternoon along one of those ancient waterways called kawa, I saw a beautiful single white flower hanging by a vine over the shallow stream., which runs right through the ancient city of wood and stone. Now, in Lillooet I was seeing the same scenario up-side down, as it were. A single, white flower standing in dry grass in front of a man-made wooden structure, even more ancient in it's design. The poem above was written to the Kyoto flower and I dedicate it now to this little mountain sweetheart. The lesson has come home.
One of the patterns woven into the single entity comprised of my wife and myself, is humour. Hers, is a zany Malay brand of word-play and irony with a Filipino dignity that avoids any crudity of speech but will heartily laugh at others without demeaning them. My humour is similar but with a bit more juvenile exuberance and it flowers under duress like a persistent dandelion. I have occasions everyday to laugh at myself and the human condition in general. Here you see an example from the Summer of 2021. Nisa was undergoing chemotherapy , via a "Hickman Line" and also via poisonous pills, tailor made to her specific genetic mutations that are to blame for her flavour of leukemia. That medicine did not exist ten years ago. During this time of many IVs, we really focused on fluids. Nisa was unsure what past favourites she could tolerate and so I was buying all kinds of juices to find what suited her altered taste buds. One of our old favourites was Philippine Calamansi juice. It is a local species of citrus very akin to a lime but orange inside and with a flavour that is a marriage of tangerine, lime, lemon and pomelo. One morning, we rigged up a mock drip with our mop handle and bucket, a soft bag of calamansi juice, the charge cord from my iPhone and some of Nisa's medical tape. She got to be the nurse and construct the apparatus. It was good catharsis for us both. We giggled like children all day and I began writing a book of new poems.
A venerable old tree in Braemar Park, near King Edward Avenue and Oak Street in Vancouver. This lovely location is just two blocks away from where Nisa and I stayed at the Easter Seal House during her treatments and observation/recoveries. Ironically, it was territory that I had covered in my very last postal route during my thirtieth year at that job. I was a frequent sitter at this tree during my breaks. Here we see the massive being casting an equinoxial shadow during early Spring. It was this day that I realized where the inspiration for traditional Celtic patterns may have originated; as the dark shadows curled and twined intricate patterns on an emerald carpet.
Strolling in Vancouver's Shaughnessy neighbourhood in the Spring of 2021, while my wife underwent chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant, I came across this archetypal scene. The hamadryad, Syrinx being pursued and nearly caught by Pan, to be specific. She is about 4 1/2 kilometres from the Fraser River. Greek mythology informs us that Syrinx was a nymph, a follower of Artemis, and known for her chastity. Pursued by an amorous Pan, she ran to a river's edge and asked help from the river nymphs. They transformed her into hollow water reeds that made haunting sounds when the Pan’s frustrated breath blew across them. Pan cut the reeds to fashion the first panpipes, afterwards known as syrinx. From this, the word syringe was derived. Chastity, beauty, amorous desire, flight, succor, unrequited love, transformation, sacrifice, frustration, music and modern medicine in the time of leukemia and Covid; all contained in a tree, echoing an ancient human grasp of reality, it's contentions still being seriously pondered today.
I later read some words of Parmenides, one of the most significant pre-Socratic philosophers, who wrote a poem often referred to as On Nature. Only fragments of it survive, but contain the first sustained argument in the history of Western Philosophy. Parmenides outlines two views of reality. In The Way Of Truth, he explains all reality is one, change is impossible and that existence is timeless, uniform and necessary. In The Way Of Opinion, he explains the world of appearances, in which our sensory faculties lead to conceptions which are erroneous.
Parmenides attempted to distinguish between the Unity of Nature and its Variety, insisting in The Way Of Truth, upon the Reality of its Unity, which is therefore the Object of Knowledge, and upon the Unreality of its Variety, which is therefore the Object of Opinion. In The Way Of Opinion, he propounded a theory of the seeming world and its development.
In the Introduction, Parmenides describes the journey of a poet, escorted by the daughters of the Sun, from the ordinary world to a place beyond the beaten paths of mortal men to receive a revelation on the nature of reality. They reach a sacred temple of an unnamed goddess by whom the rest of the poem is spoken. The goddess resides in a liminal space where Night and Day have their meeting place, where all opposites are undivided. She tells him that he must learn all things, – both Truth, which is Certain and Human Opinions, which are Uncertain – for though we cannot rely on Human Opinions, they represent an Aspect of the Whole Truth.
From that text, “Welcome, youth, who come attended by immortal charioteers and mares which bear you on your journey to our dwelling. For it is no evil fate that has set you to travel on this road, far from the beaten paths of men, but right and justice. It is meet that you learn all things — both the unshakable heart of well-rounded Truth and the Opinions of mortals in which there is not true belief. The mortals... decided well to name two forms (IE.. the flaming light and obscure darkness of night), out of which it is necessary not to make one, and in this they are led astray.”
Time
is a feeling
sacred green mountains
October morning
a shining icicle
two miles off
inhaling eagles
exhaling evergreens
dreams are born
in muted light
bear snuffles rotting log
then moves on
seven steps
Peacetime
-M. Hawes
There is only one
true midnight
void of light and warmth...
Death...
Once I touched it
as it ran through my fingers
into black sea water...
Now
when pain wracks my heart
and darkness approaches,
My very life flares high
proud not to know
which of these winds
will rob my fire...
Around me
through an inky mist
you will see
a softened blue,
a quiet blue
not unlike the dawn,
if you listen
you will hear my heart singing
for I must do this
-M. Hawes
A cloud of gnats riding warming air-currents in the Vancouver Spring. They perfectly complimented the myriad thoughts that flitted and pulsed through my brain at light speed during my wife's months in the hospital. I was later to realize that they are natural and must be accepted but it is folly to allow one's focus to be drawn along their erratic tracings. How, pray tell is this accomplished? Two ways come to mind. One is to task yourself with the impossibility of accurately counting them all or with perfectly following one individual for one full minute. The other way is to simply concentrate your regard on the tree that harbours them. Think of the tree as your body and the winged ones as your thoughts.
Equanimity is a sublime attitude, neither thought nor emotion, rather the steady conscious realization of the transience of reality. It is the ground wisdom grows from and where true freedom walks. It is the protector of compassion and love. In contrast to neutrality and aloofness, equanimity is radiant and warm. One morning as I was working in the cold, I was treated to a practical lesson in equanimity. I made a coffee to enjoy and as it was too hot to sip, I smelled the fresh steamy aroma and set it on the table while I stacked wood and shovelled snow. When I decided to have a rest, alas it was solidified. This was my first time to have this happen and the novelty was a joy. I brought it into the house later and after a thaw, I had a delicious iced coffee. Thus, I allowed it to bring me gentle pleasure three times by my acceptance of its various current transient states. May I cultivate this truth to the end of my days.
In my wife's native language, flowers are called bulaklak. While walking through my old postal routes during her medical sojourn in Vancouver, I encountered these beauties on a Summer lawn and I could not imagine any other word being more descriptive of their gentle power.
From James Mooney's epic 1902 book, Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology:
"Westward from the headwaters of Oconaluftee river, in the wildest depths of the Great Smoky mountains, which form the line between North Carolina and Tennessee, is the enchanted lake of Atagâ′hĭ (Gall place). Although all the Cherokee know that it is there, no one has ever seen it, for the way is so difficult that only the animals know how to reach it. Should a stray hunter come near the place he would know of it by the whirring sound of the thousands of wild ducks flying about the lake, but on reaching the spot he would find only a dry flat, without bird or animal or blade of grass, unless he had first sharpened his spiritual vision by prayer and fasting and an all-night vigil. Because it is not seen, some people think the lake has dried up long ago, but this is not true. To one who had kept watch and fast through the night it would appear at daybreak as a wide-extending but shallow sheet of purple water, fed by springs spouting from the high cliffs around. In the water are all kinds of fish and reptiles, and swimming upon the surface or flying overhead are great flocks of ducks and pigeons, while all about the shores are bear tracks crossing in every direction. It is the medicine lake of the birds and animals, and whenever a bear is wounded by the hunters he makes his way through the woods to this lake and plunges into the water, and when he comes out upon the other side his wounds are healed. For this reason the animals keep the lake invisible to the hunter."
From Joseph Campbell's, The Power Of Myth:
“Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth–penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.”
I encountered this tree, photographed it and at night while digitally tweaking the low resolution photo, I was immediately reminded of the above Cherokee myth. I was in Vancouver for the sole purpose of seeking physical healing for my wife and emotional healing for myself. Much like a wounded animal, I constantly sought the cover of trees. I am sure that Atagâ′hĭ has trees like this one, standing sentinel around its amethyst shores.
Above we see the inside of an abandoned Benedictine retreat monk's cell on the Southeast shore of Seton Lake and below we walk past a Camper perched on barrels perched on the tectonic plate that forms up the East bank of the Fraser River near the Old Bridge. Both are contemplative spaces that ponder the same reality. One for meditating on human nature inside walls of religious belief while shut away from nature. How human! And one for meditating on spirituality outside of walls while subject to nature. How natural! Now, in both scenarios, imagine you are looking through the eyes of a passing deer. Ahhh....
From before our first heartbeat and throughout every human breath until the very last; we seek five things. All that which we seek is here around us on the earth, requiring only imagination and some effort to obtain. Once these five are attained, we may procreate and teach our offspring that which we have learned. We may ponder the purpose, implications and responsibilities of our human existence. If we are committed to a life-long struggle to garner these five basic necessary things, we have no time to ponder and little time to teach. We see pictured below, the five things. We are told by Systems that these basic things are difficult to obtain. Life within Systems reinforces this manufactured truth.
Many Winged Fax
Flinty hearts in the sober years
constantly sprinkle texts with fear;
ringgit savers wary of thugs
bury gold in holes that panic dug
under bayous and inside zoos
in their dread
of the coming coups
and once the worm is terminally fed
economies shift from black to red
-M. Hawes
According to the Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson, the names of the three Norns are Urðr (What Once Was), Verðandi (What Is Coming Into Being) and Skuld (What Shall Be). I had a glimpse of their workspace on Main Street one afternoon in Vancouver. I was on a quest to find papayas for my wife, who was unable to eat anything else due to her chemotherapy treatments at the time. In a sun-washed window I spied the work tables of Urðr and Verðandi, who had apparently stepped out for a moment. I looked around the dusty shop for the table of Skuld in vain, quickly remembering that the future is not for us to know. I had a feeling that the ladies would be returning soon, so I took my leave. And at the very next shop, I found some fresh Hawaiian papayas.
'This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially, and philosophically. We are living in what the Greeks called the Καιρός (Kairos) - the right time - for a "metamorphosis of the gods," i. e. of the fundamental principals and symbols.' -C. G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self (1958)
The above quote was used in a wonderful book that I recently read, called The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. This photo was taken steps away from my front door, a few mornings after finishing it. I was standing in the centre of my front yard beside an artemisia plant. I scrubbed some sage on my hands and face and adopted a "warrior's pose" I'd just learned on-line in a guided meditation session.
In the chi kung pose, one performs a deep bow over one slightly bent forward knee with the other leg extended firmly behind. The fingers are interlaced behind the back and the arms are slowly raised to the sky on the inhale. On the exhale, the arms are lowered behind the back and pulled into the Earth with fingers still interlaced. The chest is expanded as one rises to full height and arches back until parallel with the sky above. I opened my eyes at this stage on the third cycle and saw this male Sky Being doing his morning ritual. His face can be seen clearly in the top right corner of the photo, looking down at me.
"
On June 27th, 2022, this beautiful white and pink dove landed on our porch railing and visited with my wife and I at very close range. Later in the day, it perched under our kitchen window. Several others like it were seen about town in Lillooet that day and in the days hence. In all times, in all religions and cultures, this is a wonderful sign of peace, both inner and outer. I have utilized a polar inversion on part of the image to create this piece. The dove is unretouched and showing its true colours. Here is the message I heard her saying:
Open your mind
to a blank
page
draw
with your breath
the world, laughing
-M. Hawes
Having recently been blessed with the birth of a grand-daughter, I awoke one morning last month and began building the little doll pictured above as a gift for her. A few weeks before her first birthday, I spent the day gathering Saskatoon berries from the banks of the salmon spawning channel. During that outing, I happened upon some cottonwood wool from windfallen limbs, which I gathered along with wild raspberries, wild rose buds, mullein and other tree and plant parts. I made an offering to the woods and the water for these treasures by using a pine cone festooned with flowers and herbs. The doll was assembled slowly over the course of two weeks and some of the hurdles I encountered in the making of it had to be solved by letting my hands and heart guide me. Her core is made of cottonwood fluff and little flowers from our yard wrapped in mullein leaves, Bamboo sticks brace her arms and back for strength. Her hair is sourced from a beloved black bear pelt that warms my bed and is attached with fragrant fir and pine pitch I gathered near Lillooet. Grouse feathers adorn her braids. Her head was carved from a horse chestnut and her garment was made from a fovourite shirt of mine that has seen decades of outdoor adventures. Her overall dimensions were inspired by a statue of Kuan Yin. She has a single bead on top of her hood that represents her spiritual connectivity. She stands on a fixed base made of wood inscribed with my grand-daughter's name. There are two small bells sewn inside her Celtic Cross/Chinese Classical sleeves to ward off evil. When turned on her side, she becomes a bird. Madison, Grandpa loves you.
Burnt Orange
A little dragon on a day so fair
Ventured from her family lair
Fully determined to test her fire,
She soared over mountains
And rose ever higher
Until she paused to groom her claws
O’er a thickly flowered slope
Awash in pale blue blossoms
Of encouragement and scope
To widdershins she turned her chin
And roared a dainty roar
But Aurantiaca had woven a spell
With the ringing quell of acorn bells
From ancient Elvish lore
And all the forest watched nonplussed,
While Gypsy breezes danced with dust
And Chicory blooms, by Spirit Fire,
Were painted Dragon Rust!
-M. Hawes
'We are exposed to media and data that is intended to alter and manage our behaviour on a constant basis. In fact, our human made commercial systems depend on it. Just as we can see reality better when we are outdoors in nature and gifted with glimpses through the veil of our normal perception, we can bring this type of vision into our mundane, urban, commercial, political. and social lives. It has apparently always been thus and it has ever been our comedians, philosophers, artists, writers, playwrights, filmmakers and satirists who have had the courage and wit to exaggerate the details in order that we may see through the fog. In that spirit, with no bitterness, malice or judgement, I present to you my satire of the typical species of copy printed on the back of PC Game packaging.
"
At Seton Lake in the Summer of 2022 with my son, his wife and my grand-daughter. After a swim in the crystal water, a blue-eyed Acacia winked at me from its sentient, living star-road.
Hu!
I summon my ancestors
The four winds
The trees
The waters
The rocks
Thunder
The stars
The animals
I seek clarity
Noble thoughts
Strength to act
Wisdom to know
Give me power
Lead my hands
Guard my heart
Help me protect
My family
Hu!
-M. Hawes
When The Wind Blew Jeans
When the wind blew jeans
My favourite pants
Got up on the table
And started to dance
Before frosty flakes
Could cover the drama
I ran in the house
To fetch my pyjamas
-M. Hawes
Fair Naiads Deigned
Fair naiads deigned to advise a boy
before the vicars clipped his fig,
"Get thee hence thou pale eyed ketch rover
and find ye fair new wells to dig."
Or sing contralto for dim tenors
in stone chambers where nature's womb
with culpability has been paved
to form, for hollow men, a tomb
-M. Hawes
Bläckfiskafton
When the April moon casts her glow
calling wild flowers to emerge from the snow
the cuttlefish spirit out hunting small clouds
deploys its ink when the light gets too loud
-M. Hawes
After watching my first FIFA Men's World Cup in 1990, I was hooked. After watching my first FIFA Women's World Cup, I was electrified! I have continued enjoying both ever since. When I witnessed the spirit, determination, passion and epic skills of the ladies of soccer, I knew it was a wake up call for the male dominated world of professional sport. Even now, women and girls are fighting for equal pay, training and support. They will prevail and their struggle will improve the beautiful game for everyone. I predicted in the early 2000s that the Philippine National Women's Team would attain the lofty goal of participation in the World Cup before their male counter-parts and that they would do it within my lifetime. I am happy to say that my instincts were correct. On July 21, 2023, I encourage everyone to watch the Filipinas (formerly the Malditas) as they join the best on a planetary stage. Four other nations will also be making their débuts at the tournament hosted by Australia and New Zealand. Welcome, also Zambia, Morocco, Republic of Ireland and Vietnam.
"
"And the sighing of the pines
up here near the timber line
make me wish I'd done things different,
ah, but wishing don't make it so"
-Ian Tyson, Fifty Years Ago, 1987
"And the obstacles along the way
sometimes may be so tremendous
there are guides and spirits all along the way
who will befriend us."
-Van Morrison, Checking It Out, 1978
Consort of Fire
As earth, water and light
are become body and blood,
shivers of pollen and sweet exhalations
attract star-fire across cold space,
whose electric fingers paint her robes
whose tongues of flame are quenched with sap
whose passion awakens
sealed wooden flowers
to rain their fruit
upon ancient carpets
of scented hair
-M. Hawes
Helix
A boy was born down Texas way
who had many things he needed to say
He began to walk and started to talk
to the breeze off Galveston Bay
Five years before and many miles away
a girl was born on the very same day
cooled by a breeze off the South China Sea
his third wife to be, of whom they say,
“When she turned five in Tumay,
her father remarked with a sigh,
"She made up a song, she sang all day long
and wouldn’t tell anyone why."
-M. Hawes
The Mother
Rust Insured
When the one-eyed owl doth wander
and dry mares graze on vines,
the wingless moth meanders
beneath her charry pine;
when the combines sleep
with bolted crops
and harvest imagos,
tired rabbits run
from the pastel sun
toward infinite repose
-M. Hawes
Coo For Awhile Beta Jutes
Coo for awhile Beta Jutes
and gaze up from your cots
whose sad memory foam
holds all that you forgot.
Then, like daunting marmots, rise
and cast your oven mitts
at quango idiocy, its bespoke hex
and all the selfish bits.
Now, with mycorrhizal yarn,
the following words do weave,
"Tis a simple fact of nature
that bears cannot rule bees."
-M. Hawes
Zeta Lag
When queens call hives to hejira
and bards laud common folks
When owls disgorge all rhetoric
and freed oxen adopt new yokes
O, falcon sense a trap and do not give it stead,
bite through your jesses, spread your wings
and shake the burqa off your head
-M. Hawes
Lights Went Out In Biarritz
Gentlemen and Ladies
in an air-conditioned gale
farting through silk-clad derrières
from the centre of the Pale
Myth cartels reaping peace
substituting vinyl doves
trying to conquer a world
they can only touch with gloves
Empathy once appeared
into the insectoid hum
when lights went out in Biarritz
and the laptops wouldn't run
-M. Hawes
August Posse of Pintos
An august
posse of pintos
wrangled up a chili
to kraal in a cast iron pot
but fiducia jumped the fence
when cumincheros descended
and three ancho ponies were shot!
Garlic bugles
called the onions to ring
tomatoes made paste
and bravely gave chase,
cilantro prayed and started to sing,
venison lean and coarsely ground,
roped a ghost pepper of some renown,
tipped his hat and rode into the bacon fat
and after the clash
had become serene
a mesquite mist pervaded the scene
as a lid descended to put them to bed
and they awoke to a yellow cornbread.
-M. Hawes
Robe Rage
From the nadir of our robe rage,
me bold and briny brislings
we might imagine God
as Father, Son and Quisling
who's potent sword with skewéd hilt
can: toxify puns and transmute nouns,
straighten hairs and gobsmack clowns,
preempt our death yet haunt our pies,
quicken drab jam or put out our eyes
and if we wax inexplicably sad,
warp the waft of feline scat
into ectoplasmic plaid
-M. Hawes
Innocence
Innocence is the seed and wellspring of power
wisdom is our ability to remember the flower
employing this knowledge requires the choice
of posthumous praise or fame's false voice
-M. Hawes
Jaulas de Tinta
Tantas palabras deseo escribir
y busco mi Musa para persuadir
palabras sabias para venir sobre alas
como guardas contra oraciones malas.
Unos vienen a mi pluma y esto pinta
pájaros dentro de jaulas de tinta.
Allí ellos cantan aún intrépidamente
y cada oído oye una canción diferente.
-M. Hawes
Jehozivuv
Up to Him the war fumes go
yams on snow and toad-hock phở
desiccated egos and vinos acetos,
undertaker's wit and febrile grit
-M. Hawes
Cordez Eux Tous Ensemble
J'empoignerai le moment,
chaque point parfait de temps
et cordez eux tous ensemble,
sur un collier dans l'âme profonde
Quand mon corps est trop vieux
pour accompagner mon esprit
et ma tasse est presque vide
et rien ne sera plus écrit
Je vivrai de nouveau ces temps
et je verra son brun doux yeux,
je m'assiérai sous un grand arbre
récitant le poème d'un vieux
-M. Hawes
A Jade Cave
A mountain of jade obscures a vault
where a poetess jots her theme
of tired children striking flints
to ignite recurrent dreams
of a lonely clever mountain girl
who's tears fall on the rocks
turning them to beryl
for her private stock
-M. Hawes
Into The Pines
as
my body
twitched
on the bedspread
my soul wandered
among the illustrations
printed on cotton fabric
and my spirit learned to fly
through the mesquite-scented
obsidian bowl of silver stars
that was a Texas night -
into the pines undamaged,
into the pines unencumbered,
into the pines unchanged
and undefeated
-M. Hawes