I see them in the evening
echolocate after gnats
as they dart and dive for micro-prey
our night sky is alive with bats.

They clear away mosquitoes
never seeming to alight
and make it safer here below
these tireless workers of the night

I am fearful for their future
as we use our toxic sprays
for as we spray mosquitoes
we poison those who call them prey

Still the acrobatics thrill me
in their nightly hunt for gnats
and I hope for many years to come
our nights will be alive with bats

Cori MacNaughton
(July/Aug?) 1999

I feel you on my face
I taste you on the wind
I labor while I long for you
My most beloved friend

So long since you've been gone
Yet feel I the pain as much
And counting days as happenstance
Await your spirit touch

My fear profound yet plain
That I will never know
A love the like I had with you
The will to let you go

Cori MacNaughton
2Feb2005

Jane is playing hide and seek
with everyone she knows
and though she stands before you
you see only what she shows

She shows a tiny portion,
just a little more to friends
and though she stands before you
she has disappeared again

Jane must hide the one thing
that she knows you must despise
and though she stands before you
she is gone before your eyes

Jane is playing hide and seek
with her imperfect soul
and though she stands before you
she has fallen through a hole

18Mar2000

I feel great pain as the harpoon finds
the whale once more, I hear the boom
as explosion thunders, rips apart
the body, sinew and beating heart
as blood and tissue spread and drift

And shark, the lesser predator
nears and circles the carnage 'till
the struggle ends, the whale stills.
The sea once more is filled with loss
that might, had we more courage, been avoided

Cori MacNaughton
26August2003

Sunlight on the sea
       The curved fin of a dolphin
              A lone cloud observes

Cori MacNaughton
12 June 2000

Have you ever done something
and then could not believe
it could possibly have been you?

Have you ever said something
and then cringed when you heard it
exiting your mouth?

That would be me, sometimes . . .

Or, while mentally calculating
your accumulating grocery bill,
have you run into a friend
only to completely lose count?

I have stood in front of the door to my home
trying to lock or unlock the door
using the keyless entry fob from my car.

I have done this --- more than once.

I have, months after getting rid of that car,
searched for its keyless entry fob
on my keychain.

I have spent hours and days
searching for glasses on my head,
for keys that I was holding,
for the purse on my shoulder,
and have managed to miss them completely.

I have called information for a number,
written it down,
and then had to call them back
because I misplaced the number before I could redial the phone.

I have neglected friends and family,
duties and responsibilities,
not from lack of love
or sound intention,
but merely by allowing myself to be distracted.

If I had followed up
on what I knew at seventeen
whales, sharks, mankind ---
might already be saved.

Who knows what my focused mind might have accomplished?

But instead
I put myself to sleep
because the real world
was far too much to bear,
and living in books and dreams
so very much safer
than all the dysfunction awaiting outside.

I met my soulmate at twenty
and then left him behind
marrying one man,
and then another,
who never got me -
instead of the one and only man who truly did.

There's a reason that God protects children and Fools.
There's a purity of heart,
an innocence of spirit,
and . . . occasional lapses in intellect.

So, for all of the lessons I've learned and I've lost,
There are worse things than being a Fool.

Which I remind myself again
as I accidentally call my own cell phone
and then hang up my land line to answer the call.

In parting, I offer what I finally learned, which is

This above all:
To thine own Fool be true.

Cori MacNaughton
6Apr2005

No More But Skin and Fur and Bones
The sea lion’s eyes were glazed in pain
The morning after the storm alone
I sit with him in drizzling rain

Our rocky shore, its raging depths
Provide the stark reminder
For tiny souls twixt life and death
That death is oft the kinder

Cori MacNaughton
23Mar2000

Cool water
Once fresh and clean
Reflecting the skies
In azure imitation
A complement to Nature
In her splendour

The image fades
Distorts
With the spread
Of an oily film
And the pond
Now tinted brown
With algae and silt
Hints of Death
No longer giving Life
But taking
That which is
As blood gone stale

Cori MacNaughton
22 August 1983.

The Celtic Cross
Around my neck is often seen
An ancient sign
Of where I go and, too, have been

The cross more ancient
Than the Christ oft signified
A mere expedient
To Rome when Jesus died

Although I wear it in His name it further goes
To those whom Hadrian so feared he built his wall

The land where rivals are the thistle and the rose
Where the blood of all my forbears once did fall

As their mingling souls in Heaven thence arose
The stones within the mist cast silent pall

Cori MacNaughton
8Mar99

There is a strangeness in fog
that is palpable
and perhaps it is the strangeness in me
which responds

It is no accident I know
that I was raised
where fog is legend
and so remains
a cloying fact of life
for coastal Sunny California
is coldly blanketed each morning
six months of every year
in chilly dampness

What once was familiar
now changed
hidden within soft billows
of clouds brought to earth
the monotonous drip
from the leaves of the trees
the eaves of the roof
the rocks on the hillsides . . .
stars and planets obscured
only the mysterious moon
peeks through the diaphanous veil
lighting her shroud from above

now moving
now shifting
a glimpse of . . . something
caught
only to disappear once more
deep within the flowing haze

Yet where others find in fog
a thing to fear
I find in it a pleasure
seldom found elsewhere
for me familiar comfort
in the heavy grey mist
enveloping me
as a blanket of spirit
or ancestors

And perhaps it is this
the others fear
for the spirits of fog
can be cunning and cruel
hiding dangers
from those unwary
or disrespectful

But I miss the fog
laying low upon the cliffs
turning ordinary landscape
into otherworldly and strange

I long for the lonely cries
of the foghorn at sea
and should the sea monster come
I pray it finds
the love it seeks

Cori MacNaughton
19Jan2007

In a book of love letters
written centuries ago
I found a line you once wrote to me

and it startled me so badly
that I closed the book
replaced it upon the shelf
and avoided it for months.

It was a letter from a man
to his lady love
separately secluded in pastoral France
and I think of another letter you wrote
while I was in Luxembourg
in which you ended with the words
"Get to Paris at all costs",
and I wonder
if the two might be connected.

You loved my letters
my practiced penmanship
and humorous style
but it was to my sister
that my letters
were most creative.

Her favorite and mine,
a letter where on one page
I wrote every third line
until the page was full;
on another I began writing
on all four edges of the page
and spiraled inward.

Thirteen pages,
each different and unique
as I recalled for her
the mundane details of my days -

And then I got a computer.

And, despite my best intentions
promises made to myself and friends
I stopped writing letters,
replacing them
with infrequent cards
and impersonal printouts.

And even though
the content was much the same
they were devoid of much
of their former style
and personality.

And so it was
that we lost touch
and I was left behind
to seek you elsewhere.

I returned to that book one day
and though the words
of that long ago lover
still rang with your voice
they'd lost some of their sting.

Cori MacNaughton
(prior to) 28 Apr 2005

Wooden Bowls and Wooden Spoons
items ***** and mundane
draw me into my shared history
with my foremothers
and theirs before them

The sharing of these simple things
of chopping, stirring, baking
snipping herbs and crafting soup
smoked meat served on wooden platters
such as might have been used
a hundred years ago
or ten thousand -

Wood has served us from the dawn of Humankind
as fuel for the fire
as shelter from the storm
as living trees producing oxygen
as things of beauty and inspiration,
of poignancy and pathos

There is a warmth to wood
absent in gold or sterling
the warmth of life - still with us
and once the meat is gone
the platter will cleanse itself of impurities
with the defenses remaining
from the tree it once was
protecting us yet again
keeping us safe from the dangers
outside of the circle of wood

With wood comes the danger of fire
this danger I accept
and brave the fire I will
to have the wood with me
to walk beneath and smell the perfume of the leaves
to feel them crunch beneath my feet
to see the earthworms retract
as I toe them from the path

I want my life to end
having given more than I have taken
and giving trees brings me joy
and makes the world a better place
a place in which there will never be too few trees
to be able to enjoy the feel
of wooden bowls and wooden spoons
where endless forests and healthy woods
add to this miraculous planet of Life

Cori MacNaughton
Apr 2002

The finest singer in the sea
I heard upon this morn
And in that strange sonorous tone
A universe was born

The low melodic wailing touched
And roused me from my sleep
As the humpback lithe and languid
Made a turn and sounded deep

And as my mind awakes it turns
To whales large and small
To the snowy white beluga
The canary of them all

The clicking bursts of ***** whales
And the California grey
The fin whale speaks across the sea
To those a world away

The short and longfinned pilot whales
With whistles quite complex
The striking graceful orcas
Speak in different dialects

But it is the great blue whale
That makes the loudest cry
Though it is far too rare today
With such an awful why

But on this wondrous morning I
Am filled with joyous glee
That God has given life to whales
And gave to them the sea

Cori MacNaughton
24Oct2000

I've had it since childhood
A thirst for the sea
A longing for something
Once dormant in me

To bring to my consciousness
Deep from within
That which I was born for
And must now begin

Cori MacNaughton
3/99

It was after we passed Moby’s Dock
that Ebony met her first thresher shark

He was five feet long or so
two feet shark, three feet tail,
and had just been pulled from the surf
to be proudly displayed
by the fisherman who had caught him

Ebony stood transfixed
her every muscle poised
her feathered tail twitched
as she leaned closer to inspect
and then recoiled from this cold-blooded beauty
still dressed in fleetingly iridescent
blues and greens and purples -

As the sun’s fading beams highlighted
the magnificence of this dying shark
I mourned his loss that night.

The noise and tourists
in the Pier’s arcades and bumper cars
did not detract from the peacefulness
of the Pacific in her chaos
for this was August
and they would soon go home

I watched a distant storm at sea
flashing fire against the deepening twilight
I stood, and Ebony,
gazing at the flashes of lightning

My hand felt her softness and warmth
as I stroked the waves of her black fur
relishing the cool wind on my face
listening to the rigging
of the boats resting at anchor off the Pier

Thinking about thresher sharks
Willing them away
from this place with its fishermen
and cold, baited hooks

Cori MacNaughton
13 Sept 2000

I have shorn the hair of Samson
And the tiger's claws unsheathed
I have spit into the hurricane
And defied as fires breathed

The minutest one is fastest
And the closest one to me
The largest is the strongest
The most likely to break free

The middle is most cunning
Spits and growls at my resolve
Yet I face the fearsome challenge
As should one the more evolved

I have bravely fought the battle
To triumphant victory
As I fiercely clip the claws
Of not just one cat, but all three

Cori MacNaughton
20Mar2001

Abuser

Simple pleasures
Causing pain
Building up
To strike again
Draw them in
Shut them out
Weaving lies
Creating doubt
Love to take
But never give
Life expected
Not to live
Stealing hope
Stifling breath
Broken promise
Courting death
Cruel intention
Deed is done
Self-inflicted
Sparing none

Cori MacNaughton
8Apr99