It is Early - March 7, 2011

It is early, still the darkest of the dark.

And already I have killed (in exasperation)

two mosquitoes and (inadvertently)

one spider.

All the same, the sun will rise

in its sweeps of pink and red clouds.

Not for me does it rise and not in haste does it rise

but step by step, neither

with exasperation nor inadvertently, and not with

any intended attention to

any one thing, but to all, like a god

That takes its instructions from another, even greater,

whose name, even, we do not know.  The one

that made the mosquito, and the spider; the one

that made me as I am:  easy to exasperation, then penitent.

I have recently been watching bit and pieces of various programs about the nature of the universe.  My spouse is doing a sermon series on this topic, so I join him in his musings.

Just last night we watched Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe," that shows us the universe through the lens of mathematics and physics.  Last week I saw bits part of the series, "Cosmos" starring Carl Sagan. I never watched it when it first came out in the 1980's. As I see it now, I marvel how the words spoken there reveal to our kind how much the suns are like gods.  They are such a miracle in a vast ocean of mystery, and they bring so much life.  We are so small compared to the billions and billions of stars in the universe.  Yet, knowing this, we grow large and beautiful, for we are made of star dust.  We are stars.

Carl Sagan produced a fictional movie and book, "Contact," which is about how humans are stars, and also so childlike and fallible.  In this mix, always, is the awe and wonder of existence.  It is in my top ten favorite movies because the beauty there and the possibility of healing calls me to my better self.  Towards the end of the movie when the main character is hurtling towards other galaxies, she looks out on the birth and death of stars and says, "They should have sent a poet."

Well, they did.  The universe sent us Mary.  She calls me to my better self this morning.

What is the universe to you?

Thinking of the Swirler

One day I went out into a wonderful ongoing afternoon, in was fall,

the pine trees were brushing themselves against the sky as though they were painting it, and Swirler,

who was alive then, was walking slowly through the green bog, his neck

as thick as an ox, his antlers brushing against the trees,

his three good feet tapping

the softness beneath him and the fourth, from an old wound, swirling. I know he saw me

for he gave me a long look which was as precious as a few good words, since his eyes

were without terror  What do the creatures know? What in this world can we be certain about?  How did he know I was nothing

but a harmless mumbler of words, some of which would be about him

and this wind-whipped day?  In a week he would be dead,

arrowed down by a young man I like, though with some difficulty.

In my house there are a hundred half-done poems.  Each of us leaves an unfinished life.

My son recently returned home from a month's visit to his native country, Honduras.  He and his brother had been down at the river swimming, and growing bored, his brother raised his slingshot and killed two birds.  My son showed me pictures of the dead birds, one of which I could see was  a brightly colored "Mountain Trogon."  My son said he and his brother had never seen such a bird near their home before.  I wonder if they ever will again.

At the end of December, 3 Whooping Cranes were shot in Georgia.  These were young birds that had been raised in Wisconsin and this was their first migration south.    I wonder if hunters had gotten bored.

When I was 21 I visited a night club and sitting at a table full of locals, we told each other of our lives.  He asked what I did and I answered that I was a bird veterinarian.  He then said, "Shucks. I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I shoot hawks. Sometimes when I'm waiting for a deer or a duck, I get so bored. I just have to empty my gun into something."  I wonder what ever happened to that man.

What is it that pulls our kind to finish off another before their time?  Boredom?  Anxiety and despair mixed with feelings of being overwhelmed and perhaps mental incoherence?  Why did the shooter fire into the crowd, killing six and severely wounding Representative Gaby Gifford in Arizona a few days ago?

 I have hundreds of unanswered questions swirling around in my head, the fog of this morning echoing the murkiness in so many minds.  I wonder what we shall make of all these unfinished lives.

Is there something you wish to finish, or leave unfinished in your life?       

Desire

So long as I am hanging on

I want to be young and noble.

I want to be bold.

So said the great buck, named Swirlet,

As he stepped like a king past me

The week before he was arrow-killed.

And so said the wren in the bush

After another hard year

Of love, of nest-life, of singing.

And so say I

Every morning, just before sunrise,

Wading the edge of the dark ocean.

Me too!  I want to be the great prince of the forest that never dies.  I also don’t want to be in the wren category that only gets to live a few hard years. Even more so, I don’t want to deer to be hunted, wrens and children to know only a few years of singing, and for Mary to die.  It’s frightening to think that one day Mary will go for one of her walks, and she won’t come back to put beauty to pen.  She will be out brooding on the shore, imaging drowning and yet relishing the warm sun and the sandpiper chasing each wave in their daring games. Then, the ocean will rise up, grab on to her with a clutching wave, and take her back into the dark womb of everything.  The sandpiper looks on astonished, perhaps thinking, “could have been me today.” One day it will be. 

In Mary’s poem of yesterday she suggests that we be prepared for this goodbye.   

Here I awake in Boston and recall yesterday looking out on the Boston Common where the last golden leaves fell before me as I walked through the park.  Today I swear that I will act on my desire to run and chase the leaves, instead of brooding that soon winter will come.  And perhaps, if I am strong enough, I will lay myself down into that crisp grass, and let the waves of joy and sorrow take me. For I am yours, dear earth, dear ocean, dear life, and dear death.

What desires are alive for you today?

The Owl Who Comes

The owl who comes

through the dark

to sit

in the black boughs of the apple tree

and stare down

the hook of his beak,

dead silent,

and his eyes,

like two moons

in the distance,

soft and shining

under their heavy lashes-

like the most beautiful life-

is thinking

of nothing

as he watches

and waits to see

what might appear,

briskly,

out of the seamless,

deep winter-

out of the teeming

world below-

and if I wish the owl luck,

and I do,

what am I wishing for that other

soft life,

climbing through the snow?

What we must do,

I suppose

is to hope the world

keeps its balance:

what we are to do, however,

with our hearts

waiting and watching-truly

I do not know.

Indeed, what are we do with our hearts. We could close them off and not see the tragic, but then we would lose the chance to experience those grace filled days of belonging where everything is just as it should be, because that is the way it is. With such radical acceptance we would love the child molester, the dictator, and the cancer cells. We just aren't taught how to handle that pain. Though I engage in a number of spiritual practices to grow my awareness and acceptance, I find that I turn from the sorrow in all kinds of subtle ways. Sometimes though my subconscious lets me know that I have work to do. In dreams, in moments of anger, in depression or withdrawal, and in the times when despair surprises me, I get a hint of how I don't know how to witness the tragic and the beauty as an interweaving whole.

For instance, having seen so much suffering in wild birds kept inadequately in captivity, I chose to leave avian veterinary medicine for a while. It is only after much work that I can engage with people who care of pet birds so that together we can find ways to decrease the harm we do as humans to these birds. I still see the tragic consequences of the pet bird market, but at least now I can interact with people and parrots without suppressing my authenticity, love, and care. I believe I can only do this by growing my heart so that it can hold the pain as well as the love.

What do you do to hold the painful and tragic?