April 14, 2018
Sack
April
Bulmer
Ice
pellets pock my face. I walk to the corner store for bread and milk. Check my
lottery ticket: non cadeau. A dog
whines from a car. I imagine a time when I was a woman in an early life,
wrapped in skins, bags of fur tied around my feet. My companion a skinny
coyote. The thighs of the river quivered.
A
neighbour passes me bearing a box of Timbits and a tray of coffee. Her hood a wolf’s
cowl. She does not greet or offer a hot drink, for I am a lone migrant of a
fallen tribe, hugging a sack of meagre provisions.
April 26, 2018
Canes
I
praise the light like my cousins who have lost most sight. I think of them
often: white sticks tapping their Morse code, waking our ancestors and their
gods.
October 15, 2018
The Balm
Yesterday, I attended an autumn
celebration given by The Ontario Poetry Society (TOPS) in Oakville. The caf├й,
which was situated by a yacht club, offered an expansive view of Lake Ontario.
It was called Taste of Columbia and served delicious Spanish food and coffee. I
met a poet from India who is also an alternative nutrition expert. She taught
me that our sleep patterns can affect our weight. She was very personable.
Others were also supportive and kind.
I launched my new book, Out of Darkness, Light, which is about a
congregation of fictional women who worship by the Grand River here in
Cambridge. I have a sense that I confront listeners’ religious convictions and
they sometimes resist. Having studied women and religion at university,
however, I believe it is time to thoroughly acknowledge the feminine in our
spiritual practices and to also salve the Earth and her scars. My book is meant
for women and men who wish to anoint themselves with the healing spirit of the
Great Mother, the Goddess of balm.
November 29, 2018
Golden Rules
In astrology, a Saturn return occurs
when this planet returns to the same place in the sky that it occupied at the
moment of our birth. While it may not reach the exact spot until we are 29 or
30 years old, its influence is considered to start around age 27. The first
orbit is seen as a cosmic rite of passage, of reaching maturity and being faced
with adult challenges and responsibilities. Saturn is the tough taskmaster who
tests us and asks us to meet goals.
In my case, I lived alone in Toronto
at this time. It was as though I shared my apartment with a life coach who
demanded a rigorous psychological and spiritual workout. My astrologer told me
that angels and demons were literally battling over my spirit. I was soul weary.
I moved to Windsor, Ontario with the hope of kickstarting a new life, but I
encountered new challenges there. I met people I likely knew in past lives and
felt as though I was a fly caught in a sticky karmic web. One family spun a
trap that left me hanging like a helpless insect. When I pulled out of the
spidery den, it was as though my tender body had been dismembered. My wings
were clipped. But I crossed over this major threshold and entered a new stage
of my life.
The return of this planet is scheduled
to enter my chart next year and again in my mid 80s, as it takes roughly 30
years for Saturn to orbit the sun. I am anticipating significant changes and
patterns. I only pray I am not trapped inside one of its many gold rings.
January
17, 2019
Predictions
The
morning opens the palm of her hand. I read the blue veins, the mount of
Jupiter, the lines like rivers flowing into the hard, white flesh of her land.
I divine the bones of winter: limbs of trees fallen in pattern: the Lord will
rise again.
