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Passang Sherpa Jul 2018
Gone are the days, when by night, we would sleep on the trees
And by day, roam around, finding for eatables and wild berries,
We would then, swing from creepers to creepers, trees to trees,
Playing amongst, brothers and sisters, friends, and other families.

Our homes have been invaded, humans encroaching, day by day.
We have been driven out of our homes; we have no place to stay.
We now, no more, hunt for food, rather by the roadside, sit or lie
Ever patiently, waiting for foods, thrown from vehicles passing by.

They call us monkeys, but look who’s been monkey-ing?
No thoughts on where we’d live, simply occupying.
Cutting down trees, destroying our habitat,
We have no home, we can call our own; ain’t it bad?

Copyright © PS
Gabriel burnS May 2017
“several wolves were introduced...
...rejuvenating vegetation
with the deer henceforth
avoiding those areas”

and now behold sprouting grass
and blossoming branches;
makes you think whether balance
always leans on a quota of violence

I start seeing in my park
the flora is suffering
I’ve let in too many deer
and they’ll eat everything offered;
they know not when to stop
leaving the trees bare *****,
chewing the bark
just because it is there.
And I'm sorry my deer
but our gardens could use some wolves
for the good of the land
(but we’re) learning the hard way,
seeing the truth in
“Too much of a good thing cannot be a good thing”
either the wolves come in, or a habitat collapse
Andrew Kelly Mar 2017
Change starts
With the formation of habit.
The simplest action
Will flip that switch in your frontal lobe.

The reason we call
What we do on a regular basis
A habit,
Is because we live in the decisions we make everyday.
Wally du Temple Dec 2016
I sailed the fjords between Powell River and
Drury Inlet to beyond the Salish Sea.
The land itself spoke from mountains, water falls, islets
From bird song and bear splashing fishers
From rutting moose and cougars sharp incisors.
The place has a scale that needs no advisers
But in our bodies felt, sensed in our story talking.
The Chinese spoke of sensing place by the four dignities
Of Standing of Reposing of Sitting or of Walking.
Indigenous peoples of the passage added of Paddling by degrees
For the Haida and Salish sang their paddles to taboos
To the rhythm of the drum in their clan crested canoes.
Trunks transformed indwelling people who swam like trees.
First Nations marked this land, made drawings above sacred screes
As they walked together, to gather, share and thank the spirit saplings.
So Dao-pilgrims in the blue sacred mountains of Japan rang their ramblings.
Now the loggers’ chainsaws were silent like men who had sinned.
I motored now for of wind not a trace -
I could see stories from the slopes, hear tales in the wind.
Modern hieroglyphs spoke from clear-cuts both convex and concave.
Slopes of burgundy and orange bark shaves
Atop the beige hills, and in the gullies the silver drying snags
and the brilliant pink of fire **** tags
A tapestry of  times in work.
A museum of lives that lurk.
Once the logging camps floated close to the head of inlets.
Now rusting red donkeys and cables no longer creak,
Nor do standing spar trees sway near feller notched trunks,
Nor do grappler yarders shriek as men bag booms and
Dump bundles in bull pens.
The names bespeak the work.
Bull buckers, rigging slingers, cat skinners, boom men and whistle punks.
…………………………………………………………………….
Ashore to *** with my dog I saw a ball of crushed bones in ****
Later we heard the evocative howl of a wolf
And my pooch and I go along with the song
Conjoining  with the animal call
In a natural world fearsome, sacred and shared.
---------------------------------------------------------­---
Old bunk houses have tumbled, crumbling fish canneries no longer reek.
Vietnam Draft dodgers and Canucks that followed the loggers forever borrowed -
Their hoisting winches, engines, cutlery, fuel, grease and generators.
While white shells rattled down the ebbing sea.
Listing float homes still grumble when hauled on hard.
Somber silhouettes of teetering totems no longer whisper in westerlies
Near undulating kelp beds of Mamalilakula.
Petroglyphs talk in pictures veiled by vines.
History is a tapestry
And land is the loom.
Every rock, headland, and blissful fearsome bay
Has a silence that speaks when I hear it.
Has a roar of death from peaking storms when I see it.
Beings and things can be heard and seen that
Enter and pass through me to evaporate like mist
From a rain dropped forest fist
And are composted into soil.
Where mountains heavily wade into the sea
To resemble yes the tremble and dissemble
Of the continental shelf.
Where still waters of deception
Hide the tsunamis surging stealth.
Inside the veins of Mother Earth the magmas flow
Beneath fjords where crystalised glaziers glow.
Here sailed I, my dog and catboat
Of ‘Bill Garden’ build
The H. Daniel Hayes
In mountain water stilled
In a golden glory of my remaining days.
In Cascadia the images sang and thrilled
Mamalilikula, Kwak’wala, Namu, Klemtu
The Inlets Jervis, Toba, Bute, and Loughborough.
This is a narative prose poem that emerged from the experienced of a sailor's voyage.
Kate Willis Jan 2016
Zoo
You stare at me through the cage walls,

Your eyes full of wonder

And heart filled with love.

Your hands hit the glass that separates me from you,

Or you from me.

And you stare

Like I’m some kind of zoo animal.



You’ve dreamed all your life, since you were three

To see me in my natural habitat,

But since my old home is all gone,

Destroyed.

Ruined.

Burned.

Your dreams have changed.



You paid ten dollars,

But what is one Alexander Hamilton

Compared to the experience

To come see me in action,

Licking my paws and ears

As I sit here, bored

In a cage that resembles nothing but a fake home made of plastic and

Fake rocks.



There is a show at noon.

I’ll have to go to a separate cage, one with a view from above.

And you and a hundred others

Will watch in amazement while I chase raw meat that’s dragged around a pole.

You laughed and say it’s funny, awesome, how fast I am.

You should have seen me when I was home.

I was better.

I chased real food.



It wouldn't be so bad

Except for the fact that your world seems to romanticize the idea

That I would want to be stared at

To have you stare at me through a glass wall

While I sit there,

In my cage

Bored.

Out of my natural mind.

But, it's all for your entertainment, right?

I mean, all you paid was a single Alexander Hamilton.



And now,

You stand there after I’m back in my original cage.

You stare

On the other side of that glass wall,

The one that protects you from me,

Or me from you.

And you stare

Like I’m some kind of zoo animal.
So much depends
on a yellow
Bulldozer

Caked with mud
Beside thoughts
of payday
This poem is based on the famous William Carlos William's poem...
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