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The poet chooses nothing. We live in the spotlight of no one. We exists to weave words into consciousness. We were born with the capacity to stand on the head of a pin believing that the brisk winds of change will only help to grow our wings when we fall. Whether we crash into the cauldron of darkness or soar to newer heights is not our concern. Words choose us not the other way around. Today I choose wings lifting me to the higher consciousness of common human decency but, if I fall instead into the dark void, I trust that I will still find inspiration to guide me back to my longing for love.

For Leonard Cohen

“You want it darker

We kill the flame”

The knight of darkness

Has left his castle

To return to his king

On the battlefield

Where words, bleeding

Pleading, send us all into the abyss.

Leaving behind his pen and paper

He sketches a new image

of himself as his wings catch

The morning sun.

All he had to give, he gave —

Nothing more, nothing less.

Do not wear your mourning clothes

You wordsmiths.

Take up his pen and paper

And carry on.

© 2016 Bessie Adams Senette

 

“The people in town talk about the unseasonable weather as if they and only they can.”* As if the world of humanity hasn’t been pillaging and polluting their cadie for centuries. Planet earth groans with the weight of our species. Cracking open treacherous, rain-filled vortices, spewing toxic gases from the underworld as though begging for our attention. The tears of Gaia overflowing riverbanks, melting glaciers raising water levels to destructive depths, all the while we wade deeper into denial.

When hurricanes devastate our neighborhoods we pay attention for a little while then soon fall asleep while others around the globe awaken to their own disasters.

Are any disasters truly natural ones or do we contribute to them all? What cataclysm will it take to awaken us all to authentic empathy for our precious earthly home, its people, its creatures? History does not bear witness to the probability of that awakening but perhaps future avatars will prevail. My hope rest in them.

*Debra Bailey- writing prompt 10-5-16

Mothers Pray, What Else Can They Do?

The color green

Forms a core of strength in cruciform

At the bridge of her nose

She holds her infant

Gently in the crux of her arm

Swaddled there sleeping

 

Praying for a boy child

Born into a world of hate

Troubled

She reaches for heaven’s gate

 

Calling down

Ancestors, angels, and grace

To remember him now in this

Space of peaceful bliss

 

To walk with him

When what it means to be him

Awakens to what others think he is

 

Swirling violet ribbons into her love prayer

As they answer her desperate call

The ancients, spectral wisp,

Gather around, above and below

Dispelling doubt and tantalizing hope

 

She knows to teach him how to stand

Means watching him fall

Watching him break

Watching him forget

 

This moment

“This placement in faith.”

after Dennis Paul Williams’ “Placement in Faith” from “The Road to Indigo”

© 2016 Bessie Adams Senette

The result of one determined to heal at the Healing Art Retreat based on my book, “Cutting the Clouds.”

Photo by T Senette

Louisiana Pines

 

Gentle rolling highways through

Northwest corner, from the toes of the Ozark foothills

To the marshy toes of the boot-shaped state,

Host to cultures with unexpected wonders.

 

Acres of standing pines

Singing a river song in soft breeze,

The pounding of mechanical pumps on gulf waters

Pulling oil from primordial depths,

Singing a different song than those

Who fish the salty waters and

Chank-a-chank in a different language.

 

Pining for the old days

Before those sounds were known.

When pelicans filled the sky and

Seagulls shouted joyful finds of

Fish schools too vast to measure,

 

When Grand Isle’s shoreline was

Not yet dotted with platforms,

Christmas tree lights, and natural gas torches

Reaching thirty feet above the horizon,

 

When marshland covered itself in

Vibrant colors of migrating flocks,

Wings slapping salty humid air,

When my father and his father before

Had only one care — that day’s catch.

 

Catching now the scent of pine,

I remember his face as he retold

From childhood memory how

Plentiful our cadie once was

Before Louisianians pined.

© 2016 Bessie Adams Senette

Photo by Trudy Gomez

If you pronounce chère as in chère ami like the longhaired pop singer formally married to Sonny Bono you probably don’t know much about our beloved homeland in south Louisiana we call Acadie. You have probably never stood on the bank of Lake Martin as the roseate spoonbills paint that lake in sunset colors. Nor have you ever fished for blue point crab with chicken necks on a string. Most likely, you haven’t watched a flock of great white cranes overhead in a clear blue sky surrounded by so many shades of green you no longer wonder about the vast selection of paint chips at the local hardware store. If you say crayfish instead of crawfish and pee-can instead of pa-cawn you have probably never stood in your mother’s kitchen smelling a dark roux awaiting the holy trinity of onions, celery, and bell pepper or heard the sound of a spoon striking the black-iron skillet that was handed down through generations of one pot cooks. If you think only of mother and father and brother and sister when you hear the word family, then you probably never attended a Sunday dinner at your grandmère’s house that included four generations of family that could number 50 or more. If you don’t know that French is our first language and the ear of our elders translated English differently than you, you wouldn’t know that the zinc is where you wash the dishes, the ice box is a refrigerator, the hose pipe is used to water your garden and the campus parked in your backyard is the RV camper that your 30 year old cousin is living in until he can find a job. If you don’t know any of these things, then you probably don’t know that in this 500-year flood event of 2016 we do appreciate your prayers and your donations, and while we could use some help, we are not waiting on you. We are picking up the pieces and taking care of each other. We have been doing this in south Louisiana since before the Great Derangement. This land of abundance and immeasurable beauty is our home and we are its people who know it and believe in its resilience. How could we not when we have done it for so long? So if you want to talk about us on CNN, you might consider changing your tone from pity to admiration.

Does it suit you to laud it over others the free reign you have been given to do and say whatever, whenever? I have a message for those who scoff at common human decency. We all are a little crazy. We all have something that we think, do or say that would offend someone, somewhere. Consciously or not, we all contribute to suffering. Maybe that is why all the sages of all the ages agree that peace is an inside job.

Photo by Bessie Senette

I find myself wondering recently about what it would take for me, a woman of deep faith in Divine Right Order, to become hopeless. Are there not enough global horrors already for that to happen? Then, the evil strikes so close to home that I awaken each day asking what next? I could so easily succumb to the numbness that threatens every aspect of me. Have I become too soul weary to hope for love to conquer all evil? That is the belief that sustains me —  that love always prevails.

If you spell guru out loud you will hear, ” Gee You Are You.” All that we need to guide us through life is a connection to our truest self. Any decision we make that is based on someone else’s  belief will have consequences that might be good in the short term but eventually will fail us. If you don’t know what to believe or who to trust, you have probably lost your ability to trust yourself. You were born with that ability and all you need to know lives within your own heart.

Don’t Call Me Eve and Then Curse Adam

Don’t credit me for your successes then curse me for your failures.

My job is just to point to the apple.

I have no role in whether you bite or not.

Make a choice and let the consequences teach you the next step.

If you think your choices don’t matter,

Ask yourself why the ancients created all those gods to worship —-

They wanted a puppeteer to blame or sing praises to.

Even then, no one wanted responsibility

And no one understood the Great Mystery.

That hasn’t changed.

The words fate and destiny speak of interconnection,

But we just want control —-

Someone else to bite the apple

So we can say, “See, I told you so.”

If our paths cross and you credit fate

Because all you found here was love,

Will you blame me when I’m gone?

Look inside yourself for the answers,

Trust that any choice you make will have consequences,

Good or bad, own them.

Don’t call me Eve and then curse Adam.

I bit the apple because I wanted its sweetness.

He bit the apple because he didn’t want to be alone.

Don’t feel sorry for either of us,

We navigated the consequences well

Even if the story people still tell about us

Is that we created hell.

Hell is real but we each create our own.

 

© 2016 Bessie Adams Senette

 

The Front Door

What did it mean to be considered middle class in the 1950’s?

My father owned a shipyard in Larose, Louisiana. He built wooden boats used by oystermen and shrimpers tailored to their specific needs and steel-hulled boats to carry supplies and crews to offshore drilling wells. He built the house we lived in for 10 years a short distance from the shipyard on Ledet Lane in 1956. It had a formal living room decorated in fine wood paneling, a dark green, plush sofa, rough wood ceiling tiles painted a deep burgundy, and a large mahogany coffee table. It was kept in perfect order at all times. Every home I visited in that time seemed to have one of these unused rooms, some even had the furniture covered in plastic, presumably to keep its pristine condition. I imagine my father showing his blueprints to potential customers and signing contracts there. Our front door led into this room through a small foyer with a coat closet at the far end. The doorbell, when rung, was a chime that was so unfamiliar a sound that when it rang we all knew a stranger was at the door. My mother would take a moment to preen and ask us to be good. My brother and I waited behind the interior door listening with excitement and anticipation.

It was at this door that my mother greeted a World Book Encyclopedia salesman who sat with her in that special room and at the end of that week a whole new world would open up to all of us. Mom also agreed to buy (and I think this was the deal clincher for the salesman) a set of Children’s Bible Stories. My parents’ first language was French. My brother and I taught Mom the pronunciation of many English words while she read to us from the Bible stories she was so familiar with. Even at the end of their lives, Mom and dad would not have been considered educated or fluent in English.

Later on, Dad bought a Chrysler New Yorker, that he called a New York Chrysler but soon traded it for a Chevrolet Impala because he could not get used to the push button technology of the Chrysler. We all had plenty of clothes and food and good healthcare and primary education. We went to church on Sunday, (well, all but Dad) not to the Catholic Church in our town but to the First United Methodist Church of Golden Meadow.

My parents were considered wealthy by the abject poor and blue collar by the wealthy. I suppose that made us middle class. I wonder though, if today a family’s description contained everything we had then, would they be considered part of the middle class?

“When does it end?” he said. In all of recorded history there has never been a time when the whole of humanity has been at peace. The seven deadly sins in Dante’s “Inferno,” may very well be at the root of all destructive acts, but long before he wrote his first word the ancients suggested remedies for those sins in their storytelling. The laws of duality and polarity are at play and have been from the beginning. I am not fatalistic in this understanding but rather, realistic. I believe that all the heroic acts of tolerance and compassion are the counterbalance for mankind’s cruelty, just as day follows the night. Is it possible that the only way our stubborn species can evolve is to witness horrors that awaken our hearts to compassion? “When does it end?”   —never is the answer.

“ There will be poor always, pathetically struggling. Look at the good things you have.” Jesus in “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Adapted from Matthew 26:11

 

                                                                                                    © 2016 Bessie Adams Senette

 

 

 

“Just say, “No!” Adam”    Photo collage by Bessie Senette