Posts tagged animals

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and see
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in silver feathered sleep
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream


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Image: Trees in Mooonlight by Rod Schneider

a skewered bit of fish

spoke to me

of its long adventure

in silent reverie

watching the light

careen through bubbles

long left

by plankton’s organizational crimes

as it filtered down

(in otherness)

it danced upon

the upward draft

of these air bubbles

feeling their circumference

bursting upon gill and scale

a rhythmic tambourine

tumbling broadside

and as it ventured its tale

of sun’s dance

i felt my heart

squeeze a bit

a nuanced caress

life against life

as its story now became mine.

Ann says: This shows a very Buddhist concern for the karma of food and eating.  Buddhist meal prayers may begin with:” There is much suffering in this food…”

Poem Copyright 2013 by Audrey Howitt.

Images: 1. Mary Jo McConnell  2. Head of Woman With Fish by Jose Miguel Perez Hernandez

He called me “our lady of the pootens,”

“pootens” being those

creatures who could not

survive on their own.

The appellation was not meant in honor

nor in love really—

A sense of the sardonic maybe,

the inevitable,

as I picked up yet another

hurt and hungry animal

to harbor for a time,

until it healed,

or died.

He didn’t know that was empathy.

He wanted it to be something else,

a space that I carved out

only for him

a space for him

to heal,

or die.

But I couldn’t do it for him.

I just couldn’t

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Copyright/all rights reserved 2012 by Audrey Howitt.  You can read more of her work here.

Image: The Child With a Dove by a follower of Jean-Baptiste Greuze

From Pagan high priestess Shara:

When you see a road-killed animal, make the sign of the five-pointed star (symbolizing earth, air, fire, water, and spirit), then the sign of the Horned One (index and pinkie fingers raised). Repeat this blessing to yourself:

“May the Horned Lord gather his wild creatures to his heart.”