Rainforest Arts

Light Support

Craving

At the dawning of time
I craved the light,
a warming infusion,
the end of night.
I reached for it…
reached for it…
with nascent sight
that glowing diffusion
of life, into life.

At the ending of time
as dusk infolds
limb and leaf into
stories untold
I yearn for answers
to what I have been,
release from questioning
thoughts unseen.

Craig Spence

Radiance

Sunflower

This is not a child’s drawing
of the sun, 

a flat yellow disk 
with thin rays in a blue sky,

but a conflagration,
seething mass of plasma

with darkness at the heart,
its seeds coiled and ready to spring.

Our gaze is drawn to this tall star
at the centre of the garden. 

Yellow dwarfs us, incandescent,
a head heavy with seed.

One day it will burn out,
a red giant face

pulled by gravity towards earth.
Autumn is coming,

heavy dew burns off by noon,
a hint of cold in the air,

but this flower 
will not surrender easily

Radiant, it flings its bloody petals
outwards, piercing

the illusion of permanence,
this day’s bright corona.

Nadine McInnis

Bath Time

Formlations of Mist

Mist-mystical. Words converge, meld into meaning. I can’t help romanticizing gulls, wheeling overhead, screeching and screaming. Strutting along seashores, chattering, squawking. Gliding over the reflective surfaces of my remembered sea. They usurp my thoughts with their emphatic voices. Avian harpies. Symbolic as doves, in their own ways. Or eagles. Or ravens. They don’t flutter, or soar, or row the air on sable, whooshing wings. They divide molecules of sky purposefully. Seeking, always seeking. Even in their silence, speaking, always speaking. There’s no such thing as imperfection. But seagulls are more perfect than other beings… I believe… when I fall under their spell. They spot me with obsidian eyes, and… I exist. That’s what it means to be a god, isn’t it? To create worlds at a glance. To emerge like formulations of mist out of the vastness of possibility and define the urge of all conceivable creation.

Craig Spence

Early in the Morn

Pathway

This morning walking past a wood,
In a sudden, pale light I stood.
The moon from out behind a tree
Revealed a strange new path to me,
And at its end a secret door
Rising from the mossy floor.
A mirrored light within it shone;
Enchantment drew my feet on.
I walked…
I walked…
Along the path,
The world behind me fading fast.
Earthy damp between my toes 
And laughter in my heart rose
To feel the forest magic strong
Urging me to come along.
Reaching the door I stepped within 
To never be the same again.
Though home I go, in the forest
Is forever where my heart shall rest.

Ben Melnyk

Rapture #1

Artist Dream

The artist,
awakened from slumber
by a dream of lucid wonder
a vision through a window view
of colours, so bright;
shades of yellow, red and blue

Tall trees, unwavering 
encompassed by such vibrant hues
invite the artist to reminisce 
of places near and memories dear
painted woodland
roots; 
run deep into the earth

Julie Nygaard

Green Rain

Whalesong

“How inappropriate to call this planet Earth 
when it is quite clearly Ocean.”
	-Arthur C. Clarke

At first, the water was so cold I feared
my lungs would surely freeze. 
But down I kept going: down 
down, downward, drawn 
by the lonesome sound of whales.
They were singing, despite the bits of plastic 
clogging their blowholes, the plumes of oily poisons
dancing in the sea, dancing obscenely
beside them in the ocean,
deep beneath the ocean once-so-blue.
Echoing the lament of their cousin Tahlequah
mourning the death of yet another daughter
the empty body of her infant balanced on her face, 
like some gloomy figurehead on a sailing ship of old. 
Their deep notes keep echo, echo, echo-
ing the tale of her long and sorrowful journey.

Heidi Greco

Day is done

Current Worn

She sings me softly of the tidal waves
The storms that rose and devastated
Only to calm again
and scatter sea glass on the beach.

I scan the horizon and recall
The days of flight rough with discovery
My ruffled feathers
Now a distant aching dream.

Here all is born anew of surf and sand
As rocky outcrops steadfast witness
The changing of the seasons
And persistent ebbing of the tides.

Become all of the things you dreamed of
When that egg first cracked and broke
This sunset gently your reminder
a new day awaits after the darkness fades.

Apis Teicher

Are you listening

Borderline

I see you and your angels
Tears light up your eyes
Reaching out to waken
a heart paralyzed
Done is the damage
Gone the colours in my life
Your words, they ache to calm me
Mine cut you like a knife

The key to my freedom
hidden deep within my brain
taps silently upon my heart in vain
Done is the betrayal
Gone the hope crushed into dust
Gentle arms will only burn me
Dead and buried is all trust

I push you and your angels
weary, warn and wise
Still reaching out to touch
a soul terrified
Done is my heart song
Gone is all I know
Promise me, you'll set me free 
and never let me go.

Judith Dawn Whyte

Rapture

I will dance for you

For you, Carmen would throw away her rose
Eros calls, awakens life to love
From your crimson lips
a golden tongue arises, sings,
Come to me and I will dance for you

Bernice Ramsdin-Firth

There was no need to wait alone

Anticipation

Her wish was a wrinkle, folding into the flat air
The flick of a whisker, a hair
Lifted by the slightest wind
Multiplying
In the way of grass, one small blade at a time.
Surrounded by the same silence, the seeming stillness
Of a deer suddenly standing in a meadow,
Or an infinity of rabbits
She knows how to wait, anticipate.
They come when needed
Seeded by her soft desire
The subtle yearning, settles on her skin
Like a pelt.

Vicki McLeod

Uneasy Alliance

Witness

Mothers, fathers, ancestors
Carved love with bare hands 
Into the trunks of cedars
A stonemason took hold of a chisel
Etched kinship into white granite
Made breath into stone

The church a blind eye
Reaches toward heaven
While the forest advances,
draws near on wet green feet
To steal her children home
Their lineage: bear, eagle, raven 
The silent moon is witness, lighting the way
What the dead can’t see,
the spirits remember.

Vicki McLeod

Hide & Seek

Koi Pond

Caught in the current,
They shift to the side.
Hiding spots exposed
In the flash of an eye.
Once a sanctuary for these honey-gold koi
Their pond transforms from stillness to flow. 
Unseen but a moment ago
They burst onto the scene in slow-mo,
Reminiscent of sunflowers glistening 
With dew drops in dawn’s warm glow.
After seamless sashay sways of exertion,
Eager for a new place to lay low,
They pause in a moment of tranquil beauty
To assess whether you are friend or foe
Until they remember
‘Swim for your life or never get old.’

Brigette Lebrun (Furlonger)

Nootka Coastline

Everything Waits

Autumn lies upon the land
with its bright skies
the sea lies still
for now
there are no dark days,
only a desire to lie amongst those trees
watching leaves fall, scenting the air.

Everything waits.

Bernice Ramsdin-Firth

Creation

Stray Strands of Life

As the fire wains, what is left in its wake
is scorched earth, ash, and the solemn longing
for a time now passed

All I see still is the sprawling green plain,
where wildflowers and long grass
grew unrestrained and untethered

It was long before I realized not all was lost,
as stray strands of life still rose above the soil
still standing defiant, even as the embers, unrelenting,
left black scars along their leaves

I watched as the final living flame
clambered along the stem of the last casualty,
and the wind that carried the fire forward
too took the seeds and cleared away the smoke

Adrian Nygaard

Oak Collage

Arise Acorn

Through reflection,
I am rooted.
Into the divine,
Creation.

I wander,
Over broken leaves.
I unbutton,
My breath,
To connect.

I stretch,
Out my hands,
To braille bark,
Feeling my way,
Through the dark.

Only to be,
Covered in moss.
I toss,
My old perspectives.

JoHannah Knight

Kiwi Lodge

Late Summer in the Orchard

Choose the perfect moment,
before the drunken wasps fly. 

Let them wander harmlessly
over your sweet sticky skin.

The trees are gnarly and ancient,
used to this ritual

of letting go of their fruit.
So choose the perfect moment,

the air still and warm with
slanting sunlight.

The mountains are distant,
softened by afternoon humidity

You have no desire
to ever leave this place.

A gentle tug on ready stems
and they fall into your hands

painlessly, easily, sweetly,
as though it will always

be this way.

Nadine McInnis

The End of the Day

I Will Follow You

Travelling together
head to tail,
enough wood
to light a fire
at the end of the day.

Where we stop,
where we eat,
where we love,
where we sleep.
If I am with you
it will be enough.

Holly Warren

Florence at Night

Dear Old Friend

The distance never felt so close. I see you in the reflections in the water, the ripples of years fading as the current carries them away. In this place we’re still young; everything is new even as we are surrounded by the ancient roads and bridges.
This is a place of eternity and discovery, where everything tastes like summer and we lose ourselves imagining the Romans building so much of what we see. These bones, like Ponte Vecchio, stand in stark reminder to the rest; complexity and contradictions have long been shared facets of our lives.
I’m lost in the blues, and the golden light; in the sounds of life returning to once empty streets.  What capacity we have to reinvent ourselves! What glorious rebellion it is to feel I am in summer again, walking these alleyways and gazing out across the water from the bridge.
Always,

Apis Teicher

Hu’chol

After the Sun the Birds

All day the sky was busy
with the restless sun
broke the cover of clouds
so the rains could not come
summoned the wind so like refugees
the birds clung together as they
floated in the currents
of light and shadow
in air too bright

Even as they nest among still leaves
they worry the light may return
What if the sun slip back over the horizon
with its hilltops still burning
How can they sing at daybreak

She pins silver shells to her ears
she retrieves pieces of wire and feathers
from the debris on the forest floor
assembles the crown and walks into the night
Like the moon she tilts her face to the earth
and all grows still

Tim Fairbairn

Taking the Punge

There Can be no Forest without Tigers

The water buffalo kneels on the opposite shore
dips its face into the ice-cold Indus River
that would seem to form a border

The tiger’s paws seek purchase 
on stones that will not settle
His chest swells in the cold waters
as his heart rages against the chill
that seeps through his thick stripes

A gifted swimmer he knows he will not drown 
As he fixes his eye and heart on the buffalo
lost in the quenching of its thirst 
being so perfectly assuaged 
on this bright morning

But this tumbling stream is not his border
His territory waits for his return to the forest
It is clearly marked in his alphabet 
urine at the roots 
and claw marks high on his trees
He has no craven interest 
in land that is not his own

His whiskers touch the surface as he slips
without a splash through rolling water

Tim Fairbairn

Forest Dance

What is real

Exhausted, an old man sat down to meditate in the shade of an ancient oak. “Let me rest a while,” he said, “and perhaps my joyfulness will revive.”

He closed his eyes and let his mind wander, imagining himself under a silken, multicoloured sky stretched to the horizon in every direction.

“Open your eyes and see if it’s real,” a voice inside him urged. “No,” the old man refused. “I see it perfectly well with eyes closed.”

Then he heard children, singing, laughing, and dancing in the valley below.“Call out to them. See if they answer,” the voice challenged. “No, the old man shook his head, “I hear them perfectly well with my mouth shut.”

Then a fragrant breeze tussled the old man’s hair and tickled his nose. “It’s real,” he said before the voice intruded. “Its whispered secrets guide me to what I know.”

Craig Spence