Mockingbirds

This morning

two mockingbirds

in the green field

were spinning and tossing

the white ribbons

of their songs

into the air.

I had nothing

better to do

than listen.

I mean this seriously.

In Greece,

a long time ago,

an old couple

opened the door

to two strangers...

It is my favorite story--

how the old couple

had almost nothing to give

but their willingness

to be attentive-

and for this alone

the gods loved them

and blessed them...

Wherever it was

I was supposed to be

this morning-

whatever it was I said

I would be doing-

I was standing

at the edge of the field

I was hurrying

through my own soul,

opening its dark doors-

I was leaning out:

I was listening.

This morning I drive towards the gulf, 3 hours there and back to attend a half day training for rescuing birds in what I hear today is the worst oil spill in US history. To respond to such tragedy in the world, I wonder if you too feel a sense of supposing to do something this morning? No matter our gifts, importance, abilities, or resources, the hope of what we can all do is to lean out from our lives and listen to the world's cries of suffering, squeals of joy, shattering silences of beauty, and our own heart breaking?

Where do you "lean out" from your life?

Yes! No!

How necessary it is to have opinions! ..

How important it is to walk along, not in haste but slowly, looking at everything and calling out

Yes! No! The

swan, for all his pomp, his robes of glass and

petals, wants only to be allowed to live on

the nameless pond. The catbrier is without fault.

The water thrushes, down among the sloppy rocks, are going crazy with happiness. Imagination is better than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

Oh Mary, are you throwing a parable our way? We are to have thinking opinions of yes, no, yet you imply that we are at fault. Is it because of our opinions that come from paying attention? Are we saying yes to life, and no to our species? To thinking? To not being satisfied with what is before us? If you were a rabbi, I'd say you are using a rabbinic device in parable form that confused the readers. So that within all these contradictions there is only one thing unopposed - God. Is your God awareness? I don't think so because it appears opposed to opinion, to wanting, to being at fault. So what is your unopposed God? Perhaps in your world God too is opposed, and we, the reader, are left with nothing. And everything.

What is ultimate meaning for you? God/goddess?

The Moths - March 31, 2010

There's a kind of white moth, I don't know

what kind, that glimmers

by mid-May

in the forest...

If you notice anything,

it leads you to notice

more and more...

I was always running around, looking

at this and that.

If I stopped

the pain

was unbearable.

If I stopped and thought, maybe

the world

can't be saved,

the pain was unbearable.

Finally, I had noticed enough.

All around me in the forest

the white moths floated.

How long do they live, fluttering

in and out of the shadows?

You aren't much, I said

one day to my reflection

in a green pond,

and grinned.

The wings of the moths catch the sunlight.

and burn

so brightly...

Mary is watching the moths, and who is noticing us? Who looks at us as so short lived, burning so brightly, and nurtured in the sweet abundance of the world out of which we metamorphosed? I could answer this that we humans notice one another, but is there not a greater Watcher? Life itself? And of course I ask, are we not life itself? The mirror held up to the sun?

If I don't notice my reflection in the pond, the pain can be unanswerable for I want to run around saving everything. When I slow down, and over the long years this has come somewhat naturally, I notice more and more that there perhaps isn't anything to save, only to notice. No action needed other than a grin, a smile.

In the movie, The Thin Red Line, the hero sees a baby parrot bombed out of a tree and says:

"Why is it that one man looks at a dying bird and sees unanswerable pain. Another man looks at the same birds and feels the glory, feels a smile shining through."

Where do you see your reflection in the world around you and what is your response to seeing yourself in the world? What do you notice today that you might not have noticed years before?

Ghosts - March 1, 2010

1

Have you noticed?

2

Where so many millions of powerful bawling beasts

lay down on the earth and died

it's hard to tell now

what's bone, and what merely

was once...

4

...In the book of the earth it is written:

nothing can die.

In the book of the Sioux it is written:'

they have gone away into the earth to hide.

nothing will coax them out again

but the people dancing...

6

...Have you noticed? how the rain

falls soft as the fall

of moccasins. Have you noticed?..

...the packs of yellow-eyed wolves that are also

have you noticed? gone now.

7

...in a dream

I watched while, secretly

and with the tenderness of any caring woman,

a cow gave birth

to a red calf...

...in the fragrant grass

in the wild domains

of the prairie spring, and I asked them,

in my dream I knelt down and asked them

to make room for me.

Oh Mary, here you are always with questions and answers. You ask if there is room for yourself. Is there room on this planet for a species such as ours? Will there ever be enough room in the earth, in the grass, and in death? This leads me to another question: How can I make room for death and extinction, now this moment in my heart, for myself, for the buffalo, for the Passenger Pigeon, for the Carolina Parakeet, so that I may make room for life?

Where do you make room to ruminate over the losses of the past, which endure today?