Poem of the One World

 

Great White Heron (photo by William Majaros)

This morning

the beautiful white heron

was floating along above the water

and then into the sky of this

the one world

we all belong to

where everything

sooner or later

is a part of everything else

which thought made me feel

for a little while

quite beautiful myself

It's easy to feel beautiful when the pileated wood pecker flashes by with enormous wings in pretentious hurry.  Who cannot imagine feeling smashing with such a colorful red hat?

When a chimpanzees kills another chimpanzee, is he beautiful?

How about when a white heron spears a fish?

Is this not tragic for the fish?

How then do we hold both beauty and tragedy?

Answer: Silly, we hold always both in our heart, for we are of the same mix as they - beautiful, and harmful.

Request:  Remember that we all are a poem of the one world.  Breathe in beauty, but also breathe in suffering and tragedy. Then breathe out less harm.

Good-bye Fox

He was lying under a tree, licking up the shade, 

Hello again, Fox, I said. 

 And hello to you too, said Fox, looking up and not bounding away. 

 You're not running away? I said. 

Well, I've heard of your conversation about us. News travels even among foxes, as you might know or not know. 

 What conversation do you mean? 

 Some lady said to you, "The hunt is good for the fox." And you said, "Which fox?" 

 Yes, I remember. She was huffed. 

 So you're okay in my book. 

 Your book! That was in my book, that's the difference between us. 

 Yes, I agree. You fuss over life with your clever words, mulling and chewing on its meaning, while we just live it. 

 Oh! 

Could anyone figure it out, to a finality? So why spend so much time trying. You fuss, we live. And he stood, slowly, for he was old now, and ambled away. 

When we fuss, is that not living as well? Unless in fussing, I suppose, we block life's potential? But doesn't fussing guide us into knowing life? I think of the squirrel in the back yard with her chatter squeals at the red-tailed hawk, and the parent wren's insistent call to their 4 nestlings to leave the shelter of the porch nest, and their whining response. 

Go away! Get out! Come here! Feed me! Do something! Are we ever saying much else to one another?

And what about a fox fussing at the hen house, trying to find a way in. I think he is writing in a book too -

Whiskers full of cobwebs, paw scratches in the sand, blood drops on boards and feathers exploding out into the air. That's quite a story Mr. Fox.

The hunt is good for the fox!

If I Were

There are lots of ways to dance and to spin, sometimes it just starts my feet first then my entire body, I am spinning no one can see it but it is happening.  I am so glad to be alive, I am so glad to be loving and loved.  Even if I were close to the finish, even if I were at my final breath, I would be  here to take a stand, bereft of such astonishments, but for them.

If I were a Sufi for sure I would be one of the spinning kind.

Though we can't see it, we all spin, for we twirl as the earth dances it's daily rhythm and its yearly cycle around the sun.  If that's not astonishing enough. I don't know what is. Okay, maybe this - the human capacity to be loving and loved.  Now that is a force to be reckoned with, along with the other great forces of the universe:  centripetal, centrifugal, and gravity. Without all these forces we would lose our center and our grounding. Without them we would also lose the ability to fly off from the center to know something other than our more intimate circles. 

I'm glad we are of the spinning kind.