As a 76 year old feminist who lives alone (except for animals) I have been struck by some recent experiences I have had with kind men, men that I would call “Mothers’ sons”. Overall, throughout my life I have had negative experiences with males beginning, of course, with my own father, which is why I eventually made the choice about 30 years ago to live alone.
These Mothers’ sons seem to have little or no interest in power or control but appear to live by another code, one that is not predicated on domination. As this prose poem indicates one such man is replacing the rotting timbers in my house, a difficult and labor – intensive job for one person. He is working alone, not out of choice, but because he cannot find one person who isn’t busy building million dollar houses for outrageous sums of money that are sprouting up like weeds in Western Maine. I have been looking for someone to do the work for five long years without success, and with a growing sense of desperation. Because it is men like these that we need to help restructure our toxic culture my burning question for the readers of FAR is how do we help create and support men like this one?
As an eco feminist I am deeply concerned with the loss of the animals I love. One of these is the Black bear whose visits are becoming more and more scarce as the forest around me disappears. The bear in this poem is unlike the bears I used to know in that he is terrified of me. When I first fell in love with bears it was because they embodied the soul and body of the Great Mother in a way that was meaningful to me. It is no accident that Black bears were honored as great healers by Indigenous peoples around the globe. The first images of them appeared on cave walls approximately 50,000 years ago.
Visionary Night
A furry shadow – ever dimming vision – did I imagine him? The woods are needled – Bare twigs stick out, pine spears behind Her. Mother Tree – She who sheltered his kin. He thinks rough elephantine arms will provide protection from his greatest threat – human supremacy. I cry out in desperation: “I am not one of them”. (this woman who loves bears)
When we meet
our deep
brown eyes
mirror a
mutual need
for light
to penetrate
human darkness.
Your eyes are
wary and fearful;
Mine hunger
for your touch.
I cry out softly
“Don’t be afraid…
I love you”.
We share
a haunted skin –
hunted down
by Difference.
You are slaughtered
by men with guns.
I am knifed by wounding
man words,
– boy threats,
a ‘gift’ of a still warm
grouse – her neck twisted
and broken – dropped
at my door.
There are so many ways
to kill an animal.
You have shiny black fur
and my skin is light
but our senses scream
as one
in torment –
our bodies feel
the earth moving
under our feet.
We have no place
left to go –
no hope of peace.
What’s left?
Courage
to endure.
Working notes:
Some nights I walk down to the field, the one I call “field of dreams” to gaze up at the constellation of the Great Bear who circumnavigates the sky. In the Northern Hemisphere the Great Bear was probably the first image and manifestation of the Goddess. As a bear She denned in the fall, gave birth in dead winter, was reborn in the spring, feasted during the summer, and re –entered the cave of night in the fall, participating in an endless round of becoming. This year I feel the loss of Her Presence keenly. It has been a year of endurance; one in which hope has been absent. A year permeated by fear, drought, heat, stagnancy, unbearable waiting for house repairs to begin. It is almost October; un – dealt with house repairs loom as parched leaves drift to the ground and rains never come… I am losing perspective and I know it.
Wild bears have been for the most part absent from my life. For the first time ever. The absence of day bears mirrors the apparent loss of the Great Mother in me. I am drowning in doubt, depression, and uncertainty.
Of course, hunting pressure has reduced the number of bears to almost zero and those that still haunt what’s left of these broken forests have little food or protection. Even though I offer sanctuary, treats and friendship bears have been too wary, visiting only under the cover of night. I almost never see them.
The exception was Coal, a timid 300lb adult female that barely allowed me to get a few glimpses of her during the month of June…Although Coal knows me she is no longer interested in friendship. That she has survived long enough to reach adulthood and is of breeding age (she bred last year but lost her cubs to god knows what horror) guarantees that she has had too many threatening encounters with men to trust any human, including me – a woman who loves her.
Because we are in the midst of the three month black bear slaughter I think about Coal every day hoping that somehow she has managed to escape the hunters raging gun, wild dogs that ‘hound’ her, the ugly steel traps illegal in every state but this one…I look at her picture wondering if there is some way to reach her, to protect her – to help her survive. But I suspect that I am as powerless to help her, as I am to help myself.
Sara is a naturalist, ethologist ( a person who studies animals in their natural habitats) (former) Jungian Pattern Analyst, and a writer. She publishes her work regularly in a number of different venues and is presently living in Maine.
When He comes
I forget who I am.
My story vanishes.
Boundaries dissolve.
Emerald green,
leaf filtered light,
clear mountain streams,
trees, lichens, moss –
become ‘all there is’.
In the still dawning
animals speak.
Nature’s ultimate gift is that given the chance S/he dissolves the artificial socially constructed boundaries that humans have erected to separate themselves from the Earth who is burning in the Fire, unable to breath, as many of us are beginning to do now.
We have a choice to re-establish interconnection – to become part of the original family that birthed us into life 500 million years ago… regardless of outcome.
Developing an intimate connection with Nature allows us to disappear into the whole. Ironically, dissolution of self is where peace is found.
Sara is a naturalist, ethologist ( a person who studies animals in their natural habitats) (former) Jungian Pattern Analyst, and a writer. She publishes her work regularly in a number of different venues and is presently living in Maine.
Sara is a naturalist, ethologist ( a person who studies animals in their natural habitats) (former) Jungian Pattern Analyst, and a writer. She publishes her work regularly in a number of different venues and is presently living in Maine.
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