I was reading about Ottawa’s newest Poet Laureate: Albert Dumont. This accomplished Algonquin poet, storyteller and elder believes that to write poetry, one need not be refined or polished (thank goodness). Instead, one simply needs to be a human being with a heart.

Write from the heart, he says.

Speaking of the heart, I got viscerel pangs in the ol’ ticker when I learned that he wrote his first poem, The Path My Children Would Travel, for his daughters after breaking his back on a job site. Impoverished and incapable of offering them items of any materialistic value, he offered this vulnerable heart song instead.

Taken down but not out, he has found freedom by putting pen to paper.

What I have to say is this: Let us all enjoy life to the fullest. Look to the sacredness we can enjoy together, today and tomorrow. The past is the past! If it has no blessings to offer, then let it decay.

Albert Dumont, Turtle Moon Contemplations

To celebrate our local poet laureate with a rippling wave of Woot Woot! and to honor his respect for the sacredness of life and nature, I offer up Shootin’ the Breeze:

What say you? whispered girl 
gaze lifting to dancing trees, 
choreographed sways and dips and swirls.   

What hear you? answered trees  

Do you hear us rejoice in this one, perfect day 
the ebb and flow of our melodic green,  
while Sun blazes yellow and  
Sky gently pours blue?  

Do you feel our boundless joy in the perfection of life 
the sacred covenant between Mother Earth and her guests? 

Do you understand that our solitary stance is made possible 
through symbiotic community?  

Do you, girl? 

Oh, you talkative trees! replied girl 
Will you forever speak your wisdom to me? 

Hah! laughed leaves 
We will never cease shouting 
from our roots to our tippy-top branches.  

It is the reception that requires silence.