And Bob Dylan Too

Anything worth thinking about is worth singing about.

Which is why we have songs of praise, songs of love, songs of sorrow.

Songs to the gods, who have so many names.

Songs of the shepherds sing, on the lonely mountains, while the sheep are honoring the grass, by eating it.

The dance-songs of the bees, to tell where the flowers, suddenly, in the morning light, have opened.

A chorus of many, shouting to heaven, or at it, or pleading

Or that greatest of love affairs, a violin and a human body.

And a composer, maybe hundreds of years dead.

I think of Schubert, scribbling on a cafe napkin.

Thank you, thank you.

It is July 1st - the beginning of Bob Dylan month in our household.  This is really just one family member's idea and the rest of us groan and roll our eyes.  "How is this music exactly?" we ask, and have been asking for years. 

Something has shifted over the years, however. On my Leonard Cohen Pandora Radio Station, frequently pop up songs by Bob Dylan, and to my surprise, I do not change the channel. As both Bob and Leonard croak, I hear beauty and life. They both are singing, thank you, as so scribbles Schubert on a napkin.

Our thoughts are but a few notes, and our lives but a bar of the infinite measures that make up the song of the universe.

Come, you, whoever you are, let us go where no two notes have gone before.

May we open ourselves across the universe.

Sounds of laughter, shades of life

Are ringing through my opened ears 

Inciting and inviting me.

Limitless undying love, which

Shines around me like a million suns,

It calls me on and on across the universe

- From "Across the Universe" by the Beatles

More Evidence - Part 3

3.

It is salvation if one can step forth from the clutter of one’s mind into that open space-that almost holy space-called work.

Emerson: how the elegance of his language can make me weep over my own inadequacy…

Do you hear the rustle and outcry on the page?

Do you hear it’s longing?...

4. 

Let laugher come to you now and again, that sturdy friend.

The impulse to leap off the cliff, when the body falsely imagines it might fly, may be restrained by reason, also by modesty.  Of the two possibilities, take your choice, and live.

Refuse all cooperation with the heart’s death.

5.

 Sing, if you can sing, and if not still be musical inside yourself.

Yesterday I visited Kaieteur Falls in central Guyana.  Here is the tallest single drop falls in the world.  While there we saw a pair of Red and Green Macaws circle through the rising mist of the falls, their calls echoing down the canyons and down deep in our souls.   


At the head of the falls are immense cliffs, to which we were invited to crawl onto our stomachs and peer over.  In between dizzy spells, I watched the White-collared Swifts approach the falls and then in twos and threes dive straight down the vertical wall of water,  twittering amongst themselves as they left us behind on the cliffs.  I would not be exaggerating to say that we experienced an impulse to follow them, and perhaps we did.  Somehow watching them and the macaws it was as if we ourselves were flying as they, the rainbow rulers and aerobatic champions of the falls.

Let us choose not to be restrained by either modesty or reason, but jump over the edge of perceived separateness so that we may put to death our egos so our hearts may yet live and our spirits at last soar.

What might you choose to day so that your heart may live and your spirit soar?

Four Sonnets - Part 1

1.       There appeared a darkly sparkling thin hardly bigger than a pin, that all afternoon  seemed to want my company,  It did me no hurt but wandered my shirt, my sleeve cuff, my wrist…

Oh, distant relative, we will never speak to each other a single kind word. And yet, in this world, it is no small thing to sparkle.

I am in Guyana and there are millions of things here I know not the name of – insects that bite and hum and chirp and whistle.  Along our walks today I hear a constant toning of a mediation bell, and it is a bee I am told.  Even if it is a large bee, it remains such a small thing to invoke the trees to bend in the wind as eaves in a chapel.  Out there with them I pray that I am aware that all beings sparkle.

What small things are with you in your life?

We Cannot Know

Now comes Schuman down the scale.

What a river of pleasure!

Where is his riven heart_

His ruined mind_

Lying in wait….

The Rhine turges along,

While the Rhine sparkles in the dark,

Lying in wait.

Do you ever wonder what lies in wait for you in the coming day?  Will it be upbeat, or down beat?  Will your fortunes leave you living more upscale, or down scale?  Wanting to know what will happen can take away our pleasure and experience of the moment, unless perhaps we just give in to reality.  There will be suffering, death, loss; there will be no suffering, death, loss; there will always be  beauty.

Last night I awaited on a dock on a  lake for the full moon to rise.  This was to be the biggest moon in decades because the orbit of the moon was at its closest point to us.  We got there around 6:55 p.m. with a clear view of the horizon.  I thought we were a little early for an expected moon  7:15 p.m. or so. This time came and passed, and then more time, and more.  Perhaps some with me were a bit antsy because there was another activity we all were missing.  I was as well.  But then we settled into it, this not knowing when it would happen, only that a beautiful moon would rise and make our hearts glad.

What lies in wait for you that you know is coming? That you don't know is coming?

Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night on the black river?

Did you see in it the morning, rising into the silvery air,

an armful of white blossoms,

a perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned

into the bondage of its wings: a snowbank, a bank of lilies,

biting the air with its black beak?....

And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?

And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?

And have you changed your life?

Yesterday I got an email update of "birds to see" in  my north Florida area. One sighting is of a Tundra Swan that has been with us remarkably all winter.  I wonder about taking the time from my day to go look for the bird, to slap my eyes upon the beauty if only through the binocular or spotting scope lens.  Perhaps today it is enough to just know that such marvel exists out there, somewhere - a kernel of excitement and belonging that grows my faith this day.  If I can manage to wake up today ( at least dear god let me do so in part), I won't need special optics to see beauty.  I'll just open my heart and be the change I wish in the world.

What is beauty for?

Just Rain

The clouds did not say soon,

but who can tell for sure, it wasn't

the first time I had been fooled;

the sky-doors opened and the rain began

to fall upon all of us...

and then the birds joined in

and I too felt called toward such throat praise. Well,

the whole afternoon went on that way

 until I thought I could feel the almost born things

in the earth rejoicing. As for myself, I just kept walking, thinking: 

once more I am grateful to be present.

How many times today will I say, "just?"

When I see the sun's light move the owl in the leaves into focus -

ah, it's just the early morning light that is a prayer

When my son awakes and trudges towards the coffee machine-

ah, it's just a young man, miracle of birth and circumstance,

and ah, yes, just love

When my spouse sings hymns in the shower,

ah, it's just a man who loves so much that he'll give his life just for me, and ah, yes, just for you too

When I write these words,

ah, they're just me aching to be present

Just for today

just for the next moment

Is there anything you take for granted for which you would like to sing praise for today?

Schubert

He takes such small steps

to express our longings.

Thank you, Schubert.

How many hours

do I sit here

aching to do

what I do not do

when, suddenly,

he throws a single note

higher than the others

so that I feel the green field of hope,

and the descending

all this world's sorrow

so deadly, so beautiful

I know almost nothing of Schubert. As a child my fingers stumbled over his concertos during piano practice, but that was decades ago.  Heck, my radio station on www.pandora.com the last few weeks has been country gospel songs.  I guess I'm a regular philistine when it comes to music.

Except I know how deadly sorrow can be and too, how beautiful.  And I know that almost anything in my world can remind me of beauty, and the ache that comes with it. 

I just have to be open to hearing the daily low notes, and the surprising high notes that are always there waiting to break through to my consciousness.

So today, in this grey, rainy morning light, let me turn my station to Schubert and see what I might hear today.  It's a short step for the longing heart.

What strikes a note for you today to know sorrow and beauty?

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?

Heart Poem

My heart, that used to pump along so pleasantly, has come now to a different sort of music.

There is someone inside those red walls, irritated and even, occasionally, irrational.

Years ago I was part of an orchestra: our conductor was a wild man. He was forever rapping the music stand for silence. Then he would call out some correction and we would begin again.

Now again it is the wild man.

I remember the music shattering, and our desperate attentiveness.

Once he flung the baton over our heads and into the midst of the players....What silence!  Then someone picked it up and it was passed forward back to him. He rapped the stand and raised his arms. Then we all breathed again, and the music restarted. 

Oh Mary, is your heart faltering?  Does it in the middle of the night awaken you with it's crazy out of synch rhythm, sharply drawing your attention to your body, and to what your life may be?  Perhaps you lie awake for hours, wondering if the coming rising will be your last.  Then the day lightens, and you restart your day like you have thousands of times, ever more grateful for the music of the spheres?

Have you had nights like this, and mornings as well?

The Chance to Love Everything

All summer I made friends

with the creatures nearby ---

they flowed through the fields

and under the tent walls,

or padded through the door,

grinning through their many teeth,

looking for seeds,

suet, sugar; muttering and humming,

opening the breadbox, happiest when

there was milk and music. But once

in the night I heard a sound

outside the door, the canvas

bulged slightly ---something

was pressing inward at eye level.

I watched, trembling, sure I had heard

the click of claws, the smack of lips

outside my gauzy house ---

I imagined the red eyes,

the broad tongue, the enormous lap.

Would it be friendly too?

Fear defeated me. And yet,

not in faith and not in madness

but with the courage I thought

my dream deserved,

I stepped outside. It was gone.

Then I whirled at the sound of some

shambling tonnage.

Did I see a black haunch slipping

back through the trees? Did I see

the moonlight shining on it?

Did I actually reach out my arms

toward it, toward paradise falling, like

the fading of the dearest, wildest hope ---

the dark heart of the story that is all

the reason for its telling?

Once, a thrice of decades ago, I was in a tent on a New Mexico plateau.  In the night there came a sniffing and prodding at the tent, much as Mary describes in her poem.  The animal(s) circled many times and I held my breath trying to not be noticed in the silence, and to also listen. Were those the feet of bear, coyote, wolf?  And depending on which, what was the best strategy?  To charge, to run, to cower? I had no weapon in the tent.  Fear defeated me and I had no courage to step outside to see who was stalking my body and my house for possible food.

Since that time whenever I go camping, I take something to bludgeon life with me in the tent - a bat, a golf club, my camping knives. I've heard too many bear stories to have my life story end with, "The bear ran with her off into the wilds and she was never seen again."

Yet, what better ending might there be?  To be taken into the wilds, to become one with teeth, earth, the spring's cubs, and droppings?   

In fact, is any other ending possible?

How would you have your life end?

Red Bird Explains Himself

Yes, I was the brilliance floating over the snow
and I was the song in the summer leaves, but this was
only the first trick
I had hold of among my other mythologies,
for I also knew obedience: bring sticks to the nest,
food to the young, kisses to my bride.

But don’t stop there, stay with me: listen.

If I was the song that entered your heart
then I was the music of your heart, that you wanted and needed,
and thus wilderness bloomed that, with all its
followers: gardeners, lovers, people who weep
for the death of rivers.

And this was my true task, to be the
music of the body.  Do you understand? for truly the body needs
a song, a spirit, a soul.  And no less, to make this work,
the soul has need of a body,
and I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable
beauty of heaven
where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes,
and this is why I have been sent, to teach this to your heart..

Mary, you are the brilliance and the song.  You bag of tricks includes obedience to work, to paper and pen, to breaking the heart open like an egg - but what delicious sweetness you cook up with your words!

I will stay with you and listen.

For the song of my heart I hear more clearly in your song - you help me grow, love, and weep.

You are both of this earth and of the ethereal vision that beauty resides here with me, down in the mud, and over and around me, bathing me in light and feathers with each rising sun. 

You were sent to this life to teach us our hearts.

I bow in gratitude to you - your feathered soul now flying with mine.

What does redbird, Mary, and this day teach you?

Of Love

I have been in love more times than one,
thank the Lord. Sometimes it was lasting
whether active or not. Sometimes
it was all but ephemeral, maybe only
an afternoon, but not less real for that.
They stay in my mind, these beautiful people,
or anyway beautiful people to me, of which
there are so many. You, and you, and you,
whom I had the fortune to meet, or maybe
missed. Love, love, love, it was the
core of my life, from which, of course, comes
the word for the heart. And, oh, have I mentioned
that some of them were men and some were women
and some—now carry my revelation with you—
were trees. Or places. Or music flying above
the names of their makers. Or clouds, or the sun
which was the first, and the best, the most
loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into
my eyes, every morning. So I imagine
such love of the world—its fervency, its shining, its
innocence and hunger to give of itself—I imagine
this is how it began.”

I am startled that Mary knows that love was the core of her life.  How many of us can say this?  I imagine that you strive to make it so, but do you sense that you fall short? For if you truly touched love with your very essence your life would be lived in bliss. Right?

I think not.  For to be in love is to ache with the separation that is ever present.  To be in love is to know the intimate caress of loss. To be in love is to give oneself over completely to that which is loved.  This doesn't sound like happiness to me, but torture. 

Oh Lord, who would want it any other way?

May we begin this day with the innocence of first love, so hungry to love that we do not take our eyes from the sun or the infinite beloveds that surround our days in beauty.

With whom have you been in love?

Straight Talk from Fox

Listen says fox it is music to run

over the hills to lick

dew from the leaves to nose along

the edges of the ponds to smell the fat

ducks in their bright feathers but

far out, safe in their rafts of

sleep. It is like

music to visit the orchard, to find

the vole sucking the sweet of the apple, or the

rabbit with his fast-beating heart. Death itself

is a music. Nobody has ever come close to

writing it down, awake or in a dream. It cannot

be told. It is flesh and bones

changing shape and with good cause, mercy

is a little child beside such an invention. It is

music to wander the black back roads

outside of town no one awake or wondering

if anything miraculous is ever going to

happen, totally dumb to the fact of every

moment's miracle. Don't think I haven't

peeked into windows. I see you in all your seasons

making love, arguing, talking about God

as if he were an idea instead of the grass,

instead of the stars, the rabbit caught

in one good teeth-whacking hit and brought

home to the den. What I am, and I know it, is

responsible, joyful, thankful. I would not

give my life for a thousand of yours.

In an earlier poem, Self-Portrait, Mary shows a bit of herself. Here too is a self-portrait. I wonder if in so many of her poems when I have thought she made a boundary between human and nonhuman, (which I railed against) maybe it wasn't herself she was talking about, but us. She's a foxy one. This poem isn't her dilemma, but ours. We are the voles cowering in our dark awareness that death is out there somewhere. If we just curl up enough and constrict our hearts enough, perhaps danger and risk will not sniff us out.

Though we may be small prey items in the scheme of existence, I believe we are also predators. Grateful and joyful, even in the face of death.

My spouse reads this poem at the bed side of gravely ill and dying people from his congregation. I don't know if these people are thankful or if joy or peace graces their end days. As they lay dying, do they uncurl and invite in death, open up their hearts to the stories of their lives? Find gratitude? Of course, Mary's poem asks, what will I do when the time comes? I don't know, but what about this very next moment as I look to the day. May I embrace those teeth-whacking hits that come my way, and dance with both acceptance and pouncing back.

Do you find it possible to welcome death in the midst of so much life?