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Posts Tagged ‘beaver’

Motherhood

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 30, 2021| 1 Comment »


            —with thanks to the wise Rebecca Mullen
 
 
Today, again, I praise the beaver
who spends her life building,
rebuilding, rebuilding
her lodge where her young will live.
With small sticks and big sticks
and tall solid trunks,
with logs and rocks and mud,
with her teeth she builds a home,
builds it on moving water.
 
Because rain, because snow,
because warm, because cold,
because flow, because flow, because flow,
her home is forever in need of repair.
 
And so on a day when a surprise storm
has flooded the stream
and washed much of my lodge away,
I honor the beaver,
stalwart, resilient, habitual.
I notice the longing to move to land,
then I gather new sticks of courage.
Stones of forgiveness.
Logs of compassion
and the deep sticky mud of love.
I wade to the middle
of the current.
I, like all the other mothers,
I build this home again.

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Incentive

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on April 26, 2021| Leave a Comment »


 
 
The beaver, gifted
with iron-strong teeth,
must use them to chew
on wood or the teeth will grow
and grow—up to four feet a year—
until the beaver can no longer
use its mouth.
 
Think of the gifts
alive and growing in you.
What will you chew on today?

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On Discovering I’ve Grown

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 15, 2020| 2 Comments »




It’s not forever.
When we fence a tree
down by the river,  
some slender tree
that a beaver could easily
gnaw through, the fence
only stays up until the trunk
grows big and thick,
wide enough to discourage
any who would try take it down.

Just today, I realized I’d built a fence
around me. Noticed it
only because, while routinely
clearing out,
I dismantled the fence
and took it away.
How invisible a wall can be.

What amazed me:
how enormous I’ve become—
vigorous, robust,
sturdy enough not to worry
about little bites.
I remember how, not so long ago,
I was so vulnerable.

You could hug me now,
now that the fence is gone,
though your arms wouldn’t quite reach
all the way around.
Perhaps that’s as it should be.
Part of me belongs to you.
Part of me is still growing
into the world.

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