L' ile

C'est un endroit tres secur, ou ni la pluie ni la neige me troublent,
c'est ou ma maison est bien heureuse, avec une porte au clef grand,
c'est ou les etoiles la nuit nous gardent et il n'y a pas de loups nulle part.

Mon costume de pirate pret et plisse, le coffre fort de mes aventures
a mes pieds, je dors tranquille pres de l'ocean ou mes reves me visitent,
le silence frais et leger comme l'air et le ciel autour.

Avec toute et chacque exile, que ce soit volontiers ou impose,
le prix doit etre paye, son poids est lourd et ne se cache pas facilement, la musique de cette liberte achetee si chere ne peut pas ecraser la chaine qu'est cette solitude.

Et quand on vit sur une telle ile, il y a de l'eau partout, belle, claire, bleue,
mais il faut un bateau pour les amis qui veulent y visiter, et pas tous ont le courage
de faire le voyage et risquer les tempetes et les nuits sans lumiere.

So, it's a message in a bottle, if you heed the call, sent from across
my island to where you reside in solid mountains on solid ground.

Et qui sait, peut-etre vous avez deja recu la note dans cette bouteille fragile?
Mais elle s'est perdue dans la foule et la plage et vous la trouverez un jour,
et vous alors pourrez vous souvenir de cette pirate qui cherchait toujours
la chance d'obtenir parley sur ce chemin de votre desert brulant.


Trudi Ralston.
Pour Dr. Driss Ouaouicha.
March 21st, 2017.   

C'est Qui ce Cannibale?

C'est qui ce cannibale, qui me traite si mal,
qui me mange chacque jour a nouveau, sans avoir besoin
d' une fourchette ou couteau?

Il me suit partout, nuit et jour, une ombre qui n'a pas besoin
ni de soleil ou etoiles, et comme un loup afame sait qu'il va gagner.
C'est qui ce cannibale, qui se moque de moi, et mes efforts tetus
pour m'echapper de ses intentions?

C'est qui ce cannibale, qui me traite si mal?
Cette presence qui profite de mes doutes et chagrins,
qui n'a aucune confiance dans mon courage et mes chansons?

Il est la quand je suis fatiguee de chasser mes reves,
et quand j'ai mal au coeur, il est la quand les couleurs heureures de mon ame
se perdent dans le noir de ses ailes effrayantes et lourdes.

C'est qui ce cannibale, qui me traite si mal?
Cela doit etre l'esprit mechant de la vie sur cette terre,
qui n'a rien d'autre a faire que d'embeter les gens,
jusqu'a ce que la mort meme prend pitie de nous et ramasse
ce qui reste une fois qu'il termine ses repas sanglants.


Trudi Ralston
March 1st, 2017.

The Space Between the Words

On quiet days, when rain sings its distracted melodies, and clouds drift low and stoically,
the small shadows between words of friends recalled are genteel visitors reminding me
of peaceful moments that drift like small sailboats near the shores of my beating heart.

There is such sweetness in tenderness recalled, wrapped in silent and tender refrain,
on those days when solitude wears like a soft and familiar sweater, and brings a smile
where perhaps on a less merciful sunrise hope might be met with a bitter taste.

Time flows like a breeze on a benevolent sea, with the sun and stars above in
playful synchronicity, seagulls keeping pace with the relaxed step of my memories,
as I gather new strength and energy for days of less bright light and harmony.

Poised to accept the winds of destiny, I welcome the warmth of today's reveries,
thankful for good friends along the way that help me get from here to there, by
reaching out with silent but sonorous touch to ease the burden of my life's uneven path.


Trudi Ralston.
February 27th, 2017.  



 

Icarus

The ocean below, the high searing sun above, enclosed in a labyrinth
not meant to leave behind, my spirit finds a way to fly on makeshift wings,
hoping neither water nor fire will trap its freedom song and beating, feverish heart.

But why bother, reason comes to mind, when all you have to be is content with the earth
beneath your feet. Does it not provide you with abundant green grass at day and the light
of stars at night? Is there not a song in your heart, must you also want it to fly?

In between acceptance and delusion, the ocean's roar lulls me to sleep each time,
only to haunt my dreams on wings of fancy where my words can toss their shackles
to roam free, high in the sky where your dreams have found safe anchor among storm and tides.

Who can know why your feet fly free, neither too low, nor too high, your course not sluggish,
nor running too fast and avoids leaving tracks that are nothing but dry, withered, charcoaled paths?
There is a place for you that is just right, your wings are strong and not held together with dead feathers and wax. 

So I will keep on and fly on high, leaving the foaming ocean's roar to scream its discontent,
to feel the sun burning its mark upon my brow, to scowl at my fierce attempts to be free.
Do not dismiss my odyssey as I reach up with seared wing to where you drink from ample fountain
where neither sea nor desert mountain burn your step or flight.


Trudi Ralston.
February 25th, 2017.
For Dr. Driss Ouaouicha.

Backlog

The February 2017 issue of National Geographic Magazine has an article dedicated to the hundreds of millions of women worldwide who in a staggering number of countries are subjected to incredibly unfair and medieval discrimination and abuse once they become widows. The problem is creepy in its  scope. The small ray of  hope in this dismal situation is that some women are fighting back  and in some cases are able to gain a sympathetic eye and ear of hopelessly outdated laws mired in rigid and biased traditions. There is one double page picture that sums it all up: the view of a room filled from the floor to the ceiling in a young archivist's office in Uganda. The earnest looking man seems dwarfed by the mountains of files all around him. The files are claims to settle property rights of widows, even rights to their own children. The files on the floor and high up by the ceiling are coated in dust and yellowed with time. It is a stunning photograph. The young archivist looks sincere and it is hard to tell from his turned away gaze how he might feel about  the perplexing enormity of his task.
The photograph is spellbinding, in the scope of human tragedy it captures, and the often absurd conditions of life in so many parts of our world. In an effort to catch my breath emotionally, as I delved into the article and its stark stories, a different thought intruded on my mind. How often do we allow backlog in our relationships to overwhelm us to the point where it becomes almost impossible to repair the damage? Every connection we have, whether recent or longstanding, whether it be family, friends, neighbours, lovers, can fall into the backroom archives of our heart and mind, where eventually the dust overcomes the life and vibrancy of the connection, and we just give up.
Relationships take a lot of effort and time to maintain, to keep them dust and cobweb free. Complacence may let us slip the importance of one or another connection closer to the floor, closer to the back of the desk that is our mind, until eventually some relationships vanish all together from our view, stacked somewhere high out of our reach, until we even forget their importance to us. Other relationships come in, and pretty soon they too, with time, if we become careless or distracted, might slip further back. It is a daunting realization. One way to avoid this, is to let our family, friends and neighbours know that they matter, let them know we care, we appreciate what they mean to us, if we want to stop losing people we care about, and realize we let them get covered up like so many papers in a dusty file in a dusty backroom of our hearts and minds.

The Sandcastle

Blinding in its white light, the tide pulls back,
letting the sand glitter, wet and sticky to the touch.
I reach down with my eager hands and start building
my sweet castle in the sand.

A high tower to look out into the blue windswept sky,
a door to leave the storms behind, and windows everywhere
for my heart to hear the seagulls' high pitched call.
There is room for you and me to dream.

The stars above bright and far colour the castle proud and strong,
we go walking hand in hand, a rainbow kite following us along,
I hear you laugh into the late afternoon before the sun casts its orange glow,
and before the waves hypnotize us with a deep, deep sleep.

But it is a castle in the sand, and sand is what its walls are made of,
and so they will come crashing down, the waves' foamy gown
dragging it into the timeless ocean to its restless sirens and drifting shells,
and there is nothing I can do but watch it take our dreams away.

Perhaps we will live another day to see the tide make way for us
to build yet again our own castle made of wet sand and hungry dreams
close by the deep, deep blue sea.


Trudi Ralston.
January 27th, 2017.
" The innocent often suffer from the liberties of clever tongues." Kahlil Gibran ( 1883- 1931 ) " Sand and Foam "( 1926).

Neil Young : Healing through the Raw and Tender

It was one of those inevitable mornings where I woke up and all I wanted to do was hear Neil Young's " Harvest ". I first heard the 1972 album when I was 22, and it seared itself into my soul from that moment on.  From then on, when I am in the grips of a deep blue funk, where it feels like my soul hangs around me like melting lead, the only way I can exorcise the spell is to hear Neil Young sing some of the first songs I ever heard him sing as a naive college kid in Texas, battling homesickness and cultural alienation and confusion as a foreign student from Belgium. There is an urgency and visceral
quality to his voice, his words, that turns my soul upside down, and inside out, but in the most healing and immediate manner. Songs like " Old Man ", and "A Man Needs A Maid", " Heart of Gold " and the haunting " Words ( Between the Lines of Age)". When I feel disconnected form this huge, contradictory and complex country, discouraged by its at times maddening extremes, I go back to Neil Young's music, and it feels like a tonic, that rehydrates my heart, my mind and reassures me everything will be okay, even if it's not, because his raw guitar melodies and his painfully tender voice drive away my dark mood as were they coming from a medicine man pleading my case to the distracted gods. There is both a mercy and a ruthless honesty in Neil Young's music, he is both an observer and a participant in the malaise that often plagues this nation's soul. At the same time, his love and passion are full of the poetry of hope, of determination, of searching feverishly for what beauty and innocence is left to retrieve, to celebrate, to heal and safeguard. He loves this country  with eyes wide open, scolding and caressing all in one, willing it with his fierce instrumentals and aching voice to submit to his desire for its wholesomeness, its redemption, time and again. His music is timeless, but always very relevant. The immediacy of his concerns, his sarcasm, his anger is tempered by his longing time and again to see this country live up to its promises, its possibilities. The tension his music creates is hypnotic to me, the profound melancholy fused with the bare knuckle fight it puts up against all that his poetic being absorbs as so much bitter water transcends all preconceived notions of predictability. Neil Young's music is a surreal experience to me because it melts away the existing norms of Americana with a machete wielding iron will that insists on dignity, on fair play.