Discipline

“Don’t hit your brother.”
“Don’t fight!”
“We don’t hurt people. It’s not nice.”
On the playground, at the grocery store,
on children’s TV shows;
out of our grown-up mouths.
Hear it, believe it, repeat it.

“Don’t fight.” “Don’t hit.”
Drill it into their moldable minds
like an annoying Internet ad,
always in the background.
Be effective parents.
Be consistent; be real.
Teach them about non-violence,
sharing, honesty—
Life’s greatest lessons.

And when you find your youngest
colouring the National Post in purple,
his innocent fingers tracing the truth:
Fighting in the Gaza Leaves 18 Dead;
Pudgy, Band Aid-patched legs
barely covering gruesome photos of
“necessary hits” on families like yours,
hits justified by fear, by greed—
by nothing at all,

Don’t see it, don’t believe it,
Don’t bother to explain it.
Only now learning to read,
he’ll flash an oblivious smile,
his crayons erasing the dead.

'At War' by Heather Grace Stewart

Instinct

Golden sunshine shimmers
on this lazy lake
like sequins. A lone cormorant
flaps its wings incessantly,
as if in defiance
of the coming cold.
Oblivious couples walk
arm in arm beneath
the weeping willows,
kicking up dead leaves like
forgotten arguments.
They sport only t-shirts—
the joggers, shorts—
as if wearing them
will impede the inevitable:
snow, sleet, heavy traffic,
Christmas crowds,
cell-phones ringing
in the middle of a movie.

The cormorant spreads his wings
and praises the sun;
preening on his rightful throne,
unaware that winter is late this year—
going by instinct because
that is all he knows.

light moments

I want to remember
the look on your face
when you walked my way;
the feel of your hand
on the small of my back
when you walked me home.

You must have worn blue;
maybe an overcoat
as we rushed into the rain.

We drank coffee,
talked about writing;
the state of the world.

Did you make an
awkward joke?
Take my hand?
Say my name?

We measure national debt,
average rainfall, yearly income,
overall satisfaction with everything
from online banking to
mail order brides.

We mark height and holidays,
historic moments, essays, exams,
final resting places—
then celebrate or mourn them
with cheesy greeting cards.

We don’t mark
light moments
like we mark the dead.

I want to remember
the look on your face
when you walked my way;
the feel of your hand
on the small of my back
when you walked me home.

Honey-Do List

I’ve been meaning to tell you.
There was this guy, Mike—
I think that was his name—
on TV today.

Mike can kick himself in the head
over and over and over,
twenty-five times in one minute.

It gave me this idea.
A time-saving technique.
When we’re fighting about
nothing and everything all at once;
When you’ve just said it’s only PMS,
and I’m glaring at you with that
“You’re so not getting laid tonight!” look;
When you’re throwing your
hands up in the air, yelling,
“What do you want from me?”

Give Mike a call.
Learn how to do that.

When Freedom Stands

Babies are born and lovers lie;
We’ll make plans, when Freedom stands.
Do not let their stories die.

We teach the how, perhaps the why;
Teach to repeat, to ace exams;
Heart and truth would make them cry.

He stayed inside, in search of his brother.
The second plane hit, lens on his mother.

They put on their fire suits, knowing the worst.
They stormed the pilot; called home first.

Some got relief. Some got the wall.
Nine-thousand remains: nothing at all.

Heartbeats skip and minutes fly
like spy planes with capture plans.
And the dead cannot ask why.

It’s not the oil. Truly, we’ll try.
Allied lands, joining hands—
Empty space in our New York sky.

Babies are born and lovers cry;
We’ll make plans, when Freedom stands.
Do not let their stories lie.
Do not let their stories die.

The Twin Towers, by Heather Grace Stewart (2000)

There Will Be Giants

I was watching the morning news with our 4-year-old daughter, and couldn’t help but say aloud, “Oh no, Ted Kennedy died.”

I usually try to hide the heavier topics from her but for some reason, I didn’t this time. I thought she could handle it.

“Who was he?” she asked me.

“A pretty important politician in the States. People are going to be sad,” I replied.

She put her arm around me. “Well, did he get a chance to help people in the world before he died?”

I nearly spit out my coffee. “Yes, honey, I think all in all, he did.”

“Well, that’s good then.” And back she went to colouring Dora and Diego.

Everything became clearer to me in one short conversation with a four-year-old. We’ve lost a lot of Giants this summer,
but that loss seems a little less overwhelming when we look to the giant potential of our younger generations.

We just need to keep on listening to them, and pointing them in the right direction.

Valley

for Larry and Robin

Your pillow has a valley;
that soft place
where your head would rest.

This first night without you,
I’m lost in the valley.
I never want to climb out.

I breathe in your scent,
memorize every note;
pretend you’re still beside me.
My delusions are quickly
interrupted by an incessant
buzzing:  I’ve left my
cell phone on vibrate.

The minutiae of life
must go on; I must go on.
Somehow, I’ll make up
your side of bed.
Someday, your pillow
will lose its soft scent;
your clothes will be gone;
all traces of you
will have faded from view.

But you were my valley;
you were that soft place
where my head would rest;

Love like that
is a flower
that never fades.

April Snow

The evening news
left us sleepless
with images of protests
in the holy city, terrorist
bombings, drive-by shootings
in our own town.

Yet on Easter morning
we awoke to snow sheets on
a wishing-well roof,
unexpected purple buds
bursting through the frost,
a silver steeple glistening
against the cerulean sky,

and our little girl toddling outside
to find golden eggs in the snow;
barefoot on icing-sugar-steps,
laughing and dancing
with her sister-cousins.

Driving west at sunset,
morning snow a memory,
the returning geese
called out to us
like old friends,
leading us home.

Closer

There are no ordinary days.
Yes, coffee so often gets cold
before you drink it,
work gets trite and tedious,
traffic jams in the same place every day,
love and family fall into routine—

But look a little closer
in that rear view mirror:
There, in that car behind you.
That young girl, her face aglow;
She’s on her way to the hospital
waiting to get her cochlear implants—
waiting to hear birds sing,
a running stream,
her mother’s voice.

Or there,
in that long lineup at the grocery store.
See that woman in the tattered grey coat?
She’ll only be able to buy the milk.
Everything else will be put back
and she will walk out in shame;
her three hungry children
tagging along behind her.

Look there, at that big, beautiful home
with the blue shutters.
He’s just left her and their children.
Moved away; told her in a text message.
She’s feigning an “Everything’s Great” grin
for acquaintances on the street,
but inside, she’s broken.
How can he erase them
so easily, without emotion?
Erased like chalk-drawn hearts,
not the tiny, beating hearts
they once lulled to sleep.

Look again.
Objects in that mirror
are closer than they appear.

There are no ordinary days.
Not for you, not for me,
not for our angels.

'The Empty Bowl', taken on an "ordinary" day in Paris. HG Stewart.

All I Want for Christmas…

The greatest lesson I learned this year was that I don’t need great power or money to make a difference in the world. I can use my talents to help others. I got a much greater reward than any award or sum of money simply by learning how children in the third world have benefited from the donations I’ve been able to offer Unicef and Grace Educational Trust School.

Thanks to your interest in my poetry collection, I’ve surpassed my goal of being able to give a child in the third world the Gift of Education for a year. In addition to that Gift, I recently donated money from the proceeds of my book sales to buy bed nets to help children avoid malaria, and just bought a child the Gift of Play. A lot of children have never seen art supplies or a jump rope. Shouldn’t every child in this world know what it is to create and to play?

Earlier this year, thanks to an interview I did with Neelima Pratap for one of my magazine articles, I discovered a wonderful school in Goa, India that is in its beginning stages and needs financial help so the children can have supplies, desks (they currently sit on the soil to study) and a larger room to serve as their classroom. After I donated to Unicef,  I was able to donate proceeds from WTBG to Grace Educational Trust School to help them out a bit with the construction costs for the chairs and desks. I hope with Christmas sales and throughout 2009 I can continue to donate to both Unicef and Grace Educational Trust School.

I am still committed to donating half the proceeds from sales of Where the Butterflies Go to third world educational projects, even though I initially said I’d just try to fund one child’s education for a year. I didn’t want to stop at that once I realized how many lives could be touched with the small donation each book sale offers. I want to keep going, and I hope you’ll help me by buying the book for Christmas gifts this year; Mother’s Day gifts next year, or just for yourself. That’s all I want for Christmas!

People of all ages and backgrounds enjoy my poems – there really is something in this collection for everyone, so it makes a great gift for that person who seems to have everything. You can read the reviews here: Reviews of Heather’s poetry collection. This is also the spot where I’d prefer you buy the book, as Amazon takes a heftier royalty, leaving less for me to donate to Unicef. Just a request

Autographed copies are available by emailing me at writer@hgrace.com. I can ship the signed book to you once I receive payment via Paypal. Unsigned copies are easily bought via lulu.com as well as amazon sites internationally.

It’s been such a joy to receive notices from Grace School updating me on the school’s progress. Recently, the school’s small staff organized a Children’s Day at the school. The children had never seen party hats or favours before, and were so excited to receive the simplest things most of us take for granted, like pencils and erasers.

Pencils and erasers. I’ve learned through my involvement with Unicef and Grace Educational Trust School this year that the simplest, most seemingly insignificant gifts can give children in third world countries a sense of well-being, self-worth and pride. Those are the gifts I can’t wait to give this Christmas.

Children's Day at GET: Their faces say it all!

Order unsigned copies of my book here and receive them in time for Christmas: Where the Butterflies Go

Signed copies ordered through me before Dec. 15 should also make it in time for the 25th!

Learn more about Grace Educational Trust School through a CBC special here  Giving Hope).

Gifts of Magic are a great stocking stuffer idea – see more about Unicef’s Gifts of Magic here).