Four Sonnets - Part 4

4.

This morning what I am thinking of is circles:

The sun, the earth, the moon;

The life of each of us that begins then returns

To our home, the circular world,

Even as in our cleverness we have invented

Invention – the straight line…

This morning what I am thinking about is circles

And the straight lines that rule us

While earth abides in all sorts of splendors,

Knowing its limitations. The light

Of every morning curls forth,

Oh beautifully, then circles toward the dark.

Obama works, prays, then grabs his scrim of sleep.

For five days I have seen every sunrise, and every sunset.  Round each day goes and I don’t know what day of the week it is.  Roundness, wholeness, belonging suffuses the air.  The rivers upon which we travel, the Rupununi and the Rewa, resist the straight and narrow of human culture as they curve around the hidden splendors of the forests, macaws, toucans, orchids, and Amerindian children.  Yet, I cannot keep my mind from work, from thought, from inventing some kind of project to keep this beauty safe.  I write here for this blog, I keep a bird species list, I journal.  What if I were to just breathe?  Would I find the rhythm of these 500 year old trees around me?

What happens if you were to just breathe with those you love and admire?

When

When it's over, it's over, and we don't know any of us, what happens then.

So I try not to miss anything.

I think, in my whole life, I have never missed the full moon

or the slipper of it's coming back.

Or, a kiss.

Well, yes, especially a kiss.

Just yesterday I was shopping in the food market store, wondering about so many different things, some of them worrisome.  Then I started looking around at what was there in front of me - bright large oranges, people with so very many interesting delicacies in their carts, and a baker decorating a cake.

If I could live with that presence all the time, then perhaps I would not have missed so much in my life - the neglected full moons as well as the chance to give and receive love. 

Mary's poems leads me to wonder...

Is life worth living if you aren't ready to kiss everything and everyone?

April

I wanted to speak at length about

The happiness of my body and the

Delight of my mind for it was

April, a night, a full moon and-

But something in myself for maybe

From somewhere other said: not too

Many words, please, in the muddy shallows the

Frogs are singing.

I am at the Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach giving a workshop of Nonviolent Communication. In my presentation I encourage people to use as few words as possible to keep the chance for connection and understanding alive.  Perhaps our brains do best in about 40 word segments.  Mary’s poem today is 51 words, just about right. 

It doesn’t take many words really to say, “Look, there goes beauty.”  “Hey, beauty is dwindling.”  “My heart hurts.”  “Now let’s do something about it.” 

What will you do “about it” – sing?  Change?  Open yourself to death and suffering?

The Sweetness of Dogs (Fifteen)

What do you say Percy?  I am thinking

of sitting out on the sand to watch the moon rise. Full tonight. 

So we go

as the moon rises, so beautiful...

makes me take measure of myself: one iota pondering heaven....

How grateful I am for the moon's perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich

it is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile,

leans against me and gazes up into

my face. As though I were his perfect moon.

I've got physics on the brain, hard not to given that my spouse the preacher has been doing a series on physics and spirituality.  Just this morning we marveled at how we can change the outcome of an event by watching it.  So I think of Percy watching Mary in his sweet way.  Does Mary change?  Does she become more loving, more beautiful, more open to the beauty of herself, dogs, and the moon?  What if I were to open my heart and see everyone today as perfect just the way they are. Would this change their behavior?  Would it change the world?

It might if we all did it.

Shall we?

Moon and Water

I wake and spend

the last hours

of darkness

with  no one

but the moon.

She listens

to my complaints

like the good

companion she is

and comforts me surely

with her light.

But she, like everyone,

has her own life.

So finally I understand

that she has turned away,

is no longer listening.

She wants me

to refold myself

into my own life.

And, bending close,

as we all dream of doing,

she rows with her white arms

through the dark water

which she adores.

I awoke this  morning several hours away from sunrise into the darkness. There is no moon in this predawn time for she hasn't risen yet. When she does, I still won't be able to see her through the horizon's cloud covers.  The sun might also not shine.  To whom shall I complain then?

Burrowing under my own covers I look out onto the woods and see faint shadows and hear a far off barred owl echoing my own lament

which is that I have ever wasted one moment

not being a good companion

not adoring the world

not grateful for this day, though it seems gray at its inception

not bending close to hear the smallest whisper

of my heart, of yours, of the earth's.

What are your complaints today?

There Are a Lot of Mockingbirds in this Book

Yes, there are many

of those wondrous creatures

who live in the thorns

and are musical all day...

but this isn't nature

in which such birds

want, each pair,

their own few acres-

this isn't nature

where the sweetest things,

being hidden in leaves

and thorn-thick bushes

reveal themselves rarely-

this is a book

of the heart's rapture,

of hearing and praising

and  never forgetting

so that the world

is what the world is

in a long lifetime:

singer after singer

bursts from the thorn bush,

now, and again, and again,

their songs in the mind forever.

  

Isn't that what each are - singers in thorn bushes?  Somehow, during the course of the day we manage to reveal our true, wondrous selves and this song builds the world as it is.

Which is a world where no acres belong to anyone

Where beauty and love are ever revealed

Where the day is full of hearing songs of wonder

And our responding praise   -

pulling thorns from those have burst forth

or have yet to escape.

What thorns might you remove today?

Li Po and the Moon

There is the story of the old Chinese poet:

At night in his boat he went drinking and dreaming

And singing

Then drowned as he reached for the moon’s reflection.

Well, probably each of us, at some time, has been

As desperate.

Not the moon, though.

Let me just be cantankerous this one day.  I can’t help it, or so I say. When I hear or sense a separation between myself from the rest of existence, I want to balk and say, “it’s not so!”  In this case, moons have been known to fall into their earth’s gravitational pull and lose themselves as they explode into planetary merger.  They become one heavenly body or trillions upon trillions of particles swirling about in the universe’s ocean.  Either way, it’s the end of their separate selves for they cannot deny the pull of the other.  Moons swoon as much as do we.

For whom or what shall you swoon today?

Hannah's Children

They will come in their own time,

probably in the black

funnel of the night,

and probably in secret-

No one will see

their marvelous coming

But the other goats,

and Maple the pony.

Now, on the evening

of the last counted day,

We latch the stable door.

As the white moon rises

She settles to her knees.

Her curious yellow eyes-

Old as the stones

of Greece, of the mountains

That were born with the world-

Look at us in friendship,

and then look away,

Inward, Inward

to the sacred groves

In Jewish stories there are two prominent Hannahs. One is the mother of Samuel, who was the last of the Hebrew Judges, the first of the major prophets, and the anointer of the first  kings of Israel, Saul and David.  He warns the people of how kings should be held to account.

The other has sevens sons who along with her were arrested shortly before the revolt of Judas Maccabees (2 Maccabees 8).  Antiochus IV Epiphanes attempted to force them to eat pork, and when they refused, he executed all 7 sons before the mother's eyes. 

What will happen to Hannah's children?  Will her kids know boredom, captivity, and slaughter?  Through their eyes will we see into other kingdoms, and refuse to eat of their flesh and sacrifice others?  Will they ask us to hold ourselves to account?  Out of the oceans, out of Africa, out of the sacred groves we come - let us not kingdoms rue but friendship rule. 

What prophecy do you hear in this poem?     

Night and the River

I have seen the great feet

leaping into the river

and I have seen moonlight

milky along the long muzzle

and I have seen the body

of something scaled and wonderful

slumped in the sudden fire of it mouth,

and I could not tell which fit me

more comfortably, the power,

or the powerlessness:

neither would have me

entirely; I was divided,

consumed, by sympathy,

pity, admiration.

After a while it was done,

the fish had vanished, the bear

lumped away

to the green shore

and into the trees. And then there was only

this story.

It followed me home

and entered my house-

a difficult guest

with a single tune

which it hums all day and through the night-

slowly, or briskly,

it doesn't matter,

it sounds like a river leaping and falling; it sounds like a body

falling apart

Being a prey item myself, you would think that I would root for the fish in this story, or the small dove loosing feathers in a explosion as the falcon hits. I am also a predator and have, and I admit it only a few times, been hungry in my life. Mostly I know how hard it is to be a predator, being a wildlife veterinarian who has treated the young raptors who have not learned the difficult task of hunting or fishing. So I root for the predator.

In short, I am torn. Seeing an Eagle scoop down over the river I whisper "careful" to the Pintail ducks on the water. Then my breath stills and when the Eagle's talons are full of meaty feathers, I should, "Wow! Well done!" Then I think of the eggs to grow cold on the nest and what will not come to be for the sake of dinner. I ache.

What a mess this life is. I awake this morning so pleased that I have the resources to contribute to life through writing, speaking, and consulting. As a predator I have hunted well in my life, accruing resources so that I may rest in my nest lined with feathers. But they are feathers of others. Just yesterday I awoke, weepy, thinking of the masses whose children will die of dysentery before the day is over, one who might have an older brother here in the U.S., perhaps even the one who cooked a burrito for me over the weekend. I am for the prey, and I am for the predator. I am for power, I am for sharing power so that it does not accumulate in the upper echelons of the food chain.

Being on the team of life, also means cheering for death.

I wonder if the only sane response is the crazy one - to go through this day with a broken heart, open to what is and letting in everything, so that my heart grows bigger and stronger.

Who do you root for, prey, predator, both, neither?

Great Moth Comes From His Papery Cage - September 12, 2010

Gone is the worm, that tunnel body. Gone is the mouth

That loved leaves and tomatoes.

Gone are the innumerable feet.

He is beautiful now, and shivers into the air

As if he has always know how,

Who crawled and crawled, all summer,.

He has wide wings, with a flare at the bottom.

The moon excites him. The heat of the night excites him.

But, where did the dance come from?

Surely not out of a simple winter’s sleep.

Surely it’s more than ambition, this new architecture?

What could it be, that does it?

Let me look closer, and a long time, the next time

I see green-blooded worm crawling and curling

Hot day after hot day

Among the leaves and the smooth, proud tomatoes.

We have had a long, hot summer; record breaking in fact. That relentless heat, for which there seems no purpose, has been accompanied with a profusion of garden spiders around our home. Throughout the summer they have grown enormous. I mark my days by observing their webs, each time grown slightly larger in proportion to their bodies, and wonder how it is they “know” to build their webs. Where did this knowledge come from? I also wonder where will the spiders go to when fall finally breaks the wall of heat and humidity? Maybe the from and to location is the same. Spiders and knowledge, moths and tomatoes, humans and mice – in the watching and listening the source and our future unite and we can but dance in wonder.

Where does life come from and where are we going? Our breath unites us, no matter if we know the answer of source and future.

Patience

What is the good life now? Why,

look here, consider

the moon's white crescent

rounding, slowly, over

the half month to still another

perfect circle-

the shining eye

that lightens the hills,

that lays down the shadows

of the branches of the trees,

that summons the flowers

to open their sleepy faces and look up

into the heavens.

I used to hurry everywhere,

and leaped over the running creeks.

There wasn't

time enough for all the wonderful things

I could think of to do

in a single day. Patience

comes to the bones

before it take root in the heart

as another good idea.

I say this

as I stand in the woods

and study the patterns

of the moon shadows,

or stroll down into the waters

that now, late summer, have also

caught the fever, and hardly move

from one eternity to another.

Here we go again, no answers as we teeter on the brink of relativism. Is there no absolute "good life" but only stages that we go through? The good for some is to hurry and do wonderful things in our earlier years, and for others a welcome idea is patience as we come to the edge of eternity's seduction in the form of decay, dying and death? I do believe that our experiences and our bodily sensations in our daily lives define how we may live the best that we may, offering us insight and wisdom.

I spent many months of my childhood on crutches with a knee gone bad and no current surgical techniques available to fix the injury. Rather abruptly I was forced to slow down in a big way, not able to run, catch balls, and jump over creeks with the other kids. It was in this time that I discovered reading and how much I loved my little parrot companion. Both kept me company during the painful healing and the reoccurring injuries. Eventually the doctors were able to stabilize the knee and I was able to run again, play sports, and take to the woods. I did not lose, however, the reading or the parrot companionship, and both are a big part of the good life for me today. My bones taught me in those years patience, and to accept what the body tells us is good for us, and what is painful. I pray today that I might be open to the very simple messages of my body, that this breath and this heart beat is what connects me to eternity and to you.

Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith

Every summer

I listen and look

Under the sun’s brass and even

In the moonlight, but I can’t hear

Anything, I can’t see anything-

Not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,

Not the leaves…

And still

Every day,

The leafy fields

Grow taller and thicker-

Green gowns lofting up in the night,

Showered with silk.

And so, every summer

I fail as a witness, seeing nothing-

I am deaf too

To the tick of leaves,

The tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet-

All of it

Happening

Beyond all seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.

Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.

Let the wind turn in the trees,

And the mystery hidden in dirt

Swing through the air.

How could I look at anything in this world

And tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?

What should I fear?

One morning

In the leafy green ocean

The honeycomb of the corn’s beautiful body

Is sure to be there.

Faith: Listening even when we can’t hear anything, can’t see anything, can’t feel anything.

Faith: What moves through us in beauty, even when we are afraid.

Faith: That the sun will rise, as will summer’s corn.

What is faith to you?