Friday, January 29, 2010

Winter in the Country - January 29, 2010


The Terror of the country

Is not the easy death,...

...The terror is that nothing

Laments the narrow span...

..The terror of the country

Is prey and hawk together,

Still flying, both exhausted,

In the blue sack of weather.

We, away from the country, so little know of the prey and hawk together. I dreamt last night of sleeping with tigers, of longing for that hunter to be close to my skin, in my skin, to be me. Yet it is that very longing that would kill me if I were in tiger's country. It seems too that if I were always to have a tiger on my tail, that fear itself would kill me. How can we live with predatory death echoing our every foot step forward?

We, here in the suburbs, have death all round us, but it's harder to see perhaps in these Florida winters. Along my path of gym, work, and home there is a dried out shell of a sea gull on the sidewalk's margin near a busy road. It's been there for over a month. Does anyone else notice it as they fly by? Do these battered feathers herald our own death, or a life lived on the edge of knowing that hardship is the standard of our evolved state, only now we can now it and lament our narrow years upon this planet. I wonder if Mary is saying that if we just fly, though it exhausts us, we would not have time for terror and fear except in the ultimate exquisite moment? That we should try to catch a tiger by the tail and let the wings of death liberate us.

What are you afraid of? Does this fear keep you from really living?

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