I had not penned a poem for years but as I lay curled up in my bunk rocking from side to side, my mind light from the two-day fast and the drugs to try control the nausea, my thoughts floated away.

I grasped these words out of nowhere when I realized how important it was for me to touch people, physically and with an aura of thought expressed in writing and pictures.

Liz and I had some deep conversations when she visited me but I cannot remember any details. We spoke of travel, of exploring, of growth, of wilderness and of the collective subconscious.

Then out of nowhere came this poem:

Far away, where even eagles do not soar,

Where sunset never happens but can hold the evening.

A land so harsh, yet a land so beautiful.

 

A land where our dreams are lost, where the spirit is gone.

Emptiness fills the silence and the white.

 

A land where the sea closes you off with waves,

Or great ice blocks your passage.

An empty land, cold and fearless,

Where our collective unconscious fails.

 

God fails almost?

Something I saw a lot of was bird feathers; when the penguins moult the feathers collect in patches at the water’s edge and then get blown into the snow to form pockets or ice to form frozen fossils. Finding feathers all over the place was reassuring, and slowly I began to record the dreams I had and look for the feathers. My spirit was connecting but I was struggling to define to what. There seemed a paucity of spirits in this place, like no other wilderness I had been to.  Yet there were just so many messages that I saw but I was just not ready.

Quiet in heaven’s soft light

Glaciers glowing blue at the water’s edge

Cold feet and fingers frozen

Eyes watery to frame a feeling

 

Close enough to touch

And to dive into the water

Black blue land on the horizon

Swallows a single stony peak

 

White fades into blue into grey

Absolutely nothing in the way

The sea waves stop moving

The world is growing  closer

 

Still colder camera battery fails

Slow picture making

Thinking, meditating

No wind or sun just being

 

Slowly a picture appeared at my  side  and then in the camera:

Three weeks later as I walked down the steps into my home a single feather floated down in front of me and whispered: “ Everything is going to be just fine. You’ll see.”

I felt an immense peace descend on me in the midst of the bedlam of city and surgical life.