I write today to honour, to remember, to mourn my friend, classmate, editor, fellow poet Lynn Sweeting.

I was out to dinner on Thursday night with lifetime friends, people who, like me, had known Lynn from our school days and who had grown up with her, together, apart, together again.

We were members of the QC Class of ‘79. Like me and Salina Eldon (whose family I was at dinner with), we went through both primary and high school together. But unlike Salina, whom I met in Grade One, Lynn and I also were at nursery school together, something she reminded me of sometime last year during the pandemic, when we were discussing a nursery school photograph. There was Lynn, and there I was too.

Last time I saw Lynn was during the election of 2017. She was spending more and more time in her house (the same house she grew up in, the same house I had always known). I never thought we wouldn’t see each other in person again.

This is not going to be a long eulogy. All I have to say about Lynn is that I honoured and admired her unquenchable spirit, her burning integrity, her vision, her righteous anger as a differently abled woman in this violent, unequal society of ours.

And I salute her for her vision, her art, her poetry. Let her words remember her.

Wheelbarrow Woman / lynn sweeting

tongues of the ocean NOVEMBER 1, 2009

(for the woman of difference)

Listen darling, I rode to my old friend’s cliff-top wedding in a wheelbarrow,
And everything was groovy,
I made a joke about Diane making me walk through the bush
My entire life,
Everybody laughed.
My lipstick was red, my Indian skirt to the floor was green,
I made that wheelbarrow look good, honey,
I was the prettiest crippled girl anyone had ever seen.

I am showing you this story
(see the Goddess in a wheelbarrow,
see the sun gone a lavender colour all the way
to his very edges,
see the broken pot where
the most beautiful of all the ferns will grow…)
to let you know,
you have the power
to spin bad luck
into green seeds
that do your soul so good
when you go planting.

Little sister let me tell you,
They’re going to stare anyway,
So give them something to look at,
A little womanish attitude,
A little glitter on your tennis shoes.

Some continue the campaign of lies against you
Even when you prove them wrong,
(She never walked around the room on her toes,
She doesn’t miss what she’s never known.)
Fear is the meaning of their favorite song,
but not the meaning of yours.
Love up your own self fearlessly.
Imagine the forest restored
and never forget
to bless your lovely wheelbarrow at the wedding.

These Are the Days / lynn sweeting

tongues of the ocean JUNE 5, 2011

these are the days
for caring about the poem,

let it be round,
softly curved like a moon,

washed in sandbank green,
tongue of the ocean blue,

let it bite your tongue
like mango in salt sea,

let it bring you to your knees
like the sight of a lost mother

coming through the door,
like blue sky raining,

like blood upon the floor,
let it reek of roses

as if grown among roses,
crabgrass and holy bones,

let it say everything
I dare not say

in a voice I’m content
to call my own.

The Lokono Priestess / lynn sweeting

tongues of the ocean JULY 31, 2011

she carved
the divining chair
from mahogany wood
with strong hands
and a good knife
then took her seat
in the midnight heat
of the island moon

she crossed over
into the other world
upon the duho
winged thing
and back again,
when her trip was done
she raised her voice,
having stories to tell.

in my dream
she stepped through
a green curtain
into the living room,
remember me,
she said, and
remember yourself,
so much depends on this.

And finally, heartbreakingly, most aptly:

Sonnet for the Moon / lynn sweeting

tongues of the ocean JULY 1, 2012

i feel like i have lived a thousand years,
i said to moon when she was fat and full,
when she grew dark i knelt and bled my tears
from wounds called eyes into a silver bowl.
i poured them down upon the plum tree root
as she went waxing through the midnight sky,
and though i never heard the drum and flute
young again i was, with wings to fly.
i saw her hanging with the noon’s sun king,
she never tried to make me understand,
nor did she ask for faith or blind believing
when eclipsed i couldn’t see her reaching hand.
o moon, i’m gone, i cried, and fell upon the earth,
yes, she said, but death is mother of rebirth.

Walk good, Lynn Sweeting, ancestress. Death is the mother of rebirth.