No apologies.

Poem for the early mornings.

This morning I stepped out the door
stained by sleep and heard 
a hummingbird, asking – 

her wings in the barely born sun 
were the gentlest form of wrestling. 
How many lives has she saved?

I do not know my way forward, or back,
or how to move in air and stay upright. 
Twenty-one crested cranes flew west past my door

a thunder of beauty cracking open 
the morning, saying
No apologies. No apologies. 

“No apologies” by Maaike VanderMeer. Acrylic on canvas paper.

I’ve returned to British Columbia from Uganda and I miss the birds that accompanied every part of the day. You have to listen closer for the birds in the Fraser Valley. I found a few yesterday in the forests, cheeky and solid.

I’m reading The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa and it’s amazing. A blend of fact and cosmology, documenting the traces of what’s known of a mysterious tribe in Peru, as well as the approaches the outside world is taking with them. I’m most intrigued by how Llosa found a “voice” for the storytelling. He followed Machiguenga language logic of using present tense verbs to describe past events, skipping between events and dreams, and not using proper names for people. It gives a dreamlike, entrancing quality to the stories.