Alice Walker's Blog, page 86

From: Poems for My Girls

Sitting With the Angels Who Have Returned With My Memories

Pax Ameracauna: The Chicken Chronicles

Chapter Twenty-Two

© 2010 by Alice Walker

I

How can Humanity

look the deer

in

the face?

How can Mommy,

having built

my fence?

Sitting With the Angels Who Have Returned With My Memories

Pax Ameraucana: The chicken Chronicles
Chapter Twenty-One
By Alice Walker
©2009/2010 by Alice Walker

Dearest Girls,

It has taken all this time, decades, for Mommy to begin to comprehend what is going on. Why seeing a chicken and her babies in Bali so long ago struck me; why of all the magical encounters experienced in that astounding land this is the one that has stayed with me. It isn't simply that writers and poets are strange; we are. It is that we are sent, at least it seems so, that which...

A letter about Nature from 2005

A letter that offers thoughts on Nature. Perhaps it can be of use to those who, fearing earthquakes, floods, blizzards and storms of all kinds, now find Nature less of a comfort and far less beautiful. I discovered it as I was clearing my computer of old files. Please overlook the writer's shoptalk.

August 12, 2005

Karla Simcikova

Mongolska 1427/14

70800 Ostrava –Poruba

Czech Republic

Dear Karla Simcikova:

At first I thought...

The Song Behind the World: The Nuns of Dharamsala

The Chicken Chronicles
Chapter Twenty
© 2010 by Alice Walker

Girls,

Today Mommy is planting okra in another country. As she presses the soil around the seedlings she is reminded of many things: of you, and how you would eat the seeds and the seedlings, if given the chance, and of her visit to Dharamsala to visit His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The waiting and conversing rooms in the Dalai Lama's palace are very nice and spacious, not fancy, and the palace is on a hill; it is across from a temple w...

For What It's Worth: Some Thoughts on War, Disappointment and Anger

©2010 by Alice Walker

I do not believe in war at all; although I am as capable of anger as anyone. To me war is something to be outgrown, recognized as immature, wasteful and so destructive to life that human beings should shun it as they shun Swine Flu, or HIV/AIDS or as they once shunned Bubonic Plague. If our species survives, and it may well not, it will be because we learn not to fight to kill each other, though some of us may continue to fight as an expression of our not yet controlla...

St. Michael, Lover of Animals and Children

The Chicken Chronicles
Chapter Nineteen
©2010 by Alice Walker

That you offered
your light
while you were
too young
to comprehend
our darkness:

We promise, St. Michael
to learn from you.

That you were
injured in spirit
while still
a child
& that you
presented your
joy
regardless
of hurt:

We promise, St. Michael
to learn from you.

That you knew
you were love
loving itself
in those you
adored:

We promise, St. Michael
to learn from you.

That exhausted
from over-giving
you lost
the energy
to protect
your gift:

We promise, St. M...

St. Michael

The Chicken Chronicles
Chapter Eighteen
©2010 by Alice Walker

Dear Girls,

The week that Michael Jackson died, Mommy was in a state of shock. She could do nothing, really, but come sit with you. Or with her human sweetheart, or with the other "children;" the dog, Miles, and the cat, Surprise. Spending time with you was especially comforting, and she sat some part of each day with one or the other of you on her lap. She also became even more obsessed with your freedom. How to protect you from p...

Leaving You

Chapter Seventeen
The Chicken Chronicles
©2010 by Alice Walker

Leaving you that first day after my travel and illness, I was stopped at the gate to the chicken house by a strong sense that you wanted me to stay. Mommy stood for a few seconds with one foot raised in the air. What to do? Some of Mommy's feelings became a bit scrambled (no pun!) when she was a little girl; members of her family were always leaving home and she did not understand why they wanted to go anywhere, especially if they ...

Enough Mother

The Chicken Chronicles
Chapter Sixteen
©2010 by Alice Walker

My darling girls,
It has been too long! Mommy has so many things to tell you she doesn't know where to begin. Well! After two weeks of coughing with that nasty flu, named for pigs as innocent as you are, she finally staggered down the hill to see how you are. Of course you are the same as you always are, if nobody's gone missing. You are eager to see who's coming; glad to encourage them to bring you good things to eat; you're inter...

The Triangle of Life

I woke this morning thinking of Howard Zinn (see remembrance below) and of how much he loved us! Us, you know, humanity. And someone sent this piece about earthquakes from a person who reminds me of this caring. Caring is what will see us through. And yes, take a few moments to say, as we almost always do: What, even about this, earthquake survival, they lied? So they did. (Maybe they didn't know). But one of us found out, and told the others! That is the joy, and hope, of our age.

AW

D...