Four Sonnets - Part 3

3.

The authors of history are among us still.

And believe me they believe what they believe

As sincerely as the millions who are simply looking for a life, a purpose.

Who are the good people? We are all good people

Except when we are not.  Meanwhile the forests are felled..

Who despises us and for what reason? Whom do we

Despise and for what reason?....

“What’s on your mind” we say to each other.

As though it’s some kind of weight.

.

I’m in a forest that we speak of in the day as being in danger of felling. As night falls it is too close to nightmares to bring into conscious thought.  If we do, our enemies might stalk us in the dark and keep our dreams of a beloved community from forming.  It’s hard to say who the enemy is – the oil companies that will come in to drill, and build roads and communities around them?  The government in Georgetown, Guyana that sold the mining rights out from underneath the Amerinians?  Or we consumers with our electricity eating gadgets and cars? 

This despising is a weight – I see it in the conservationists around me and I feel it in my heart.  If I could have the yellow breast of the macaw, perhaps I would be too delighted with myself and my kind to look at anything or anyone but in awe.

Whom do you despise and why?

On the Beach

On the beach, at dawn:

four small stones clearly

hugging each other.

How many kinds of love

might there be in the world,

and how many formations might they make

and who am I ever

 to imagine I could know

such a marvelous business?

When the sun broke

it poured willingly its light

over the stones

that did not move, not at all,

just as, to its always generous term,

it shed its light on me,

my own body that loves

equally to hug another body

As a biologist, and a veterinarian, I have seen amazing variety in how animals express their bonding, gender, and sexuality, and I am learning all the time how this is true too in the human animal.  Just last night I saw a program about transgendered people, and a few years back I married a transgender couple and gave a sermon on the topic at my congregation.  Bodies and minds are such fascinating, awesome conglomerations of physics, physiology, chemistry, and biology, and then the macro-output comes out as one body hungering for the touch and affection of another in apparent infinite possibility, much of it beauty beyond words. I say "much of it" because harm can be mixed in with the body's powerful emotions and desires. So much of our ever present subconscious wiring motivates us, and also evades our understanding resulting in actions that are regretable. I speak of deceit, physical harm, and sexual abuse.

There is risk to responding to the body's intent, however I for one am glad that we live in age where the light of understanding "human" has shed a light on how to nurture healthy relationships. We know that we are capable of great love and remarkable companionship, as well as tragic actions and mournful  decisions.

I pray that today I, and others, will choose love and beauty over tragedy.

What choices are before you this day?

Prayer - January 28, 2011

May I never not be frisky,

May I never not be risqué.

May my ashes, when you have them, friend,

And give them to the ocean,

Leap in the froth of the waves,

Still loving movement,

Still ready, beyond all else,

To dance for the world.

Today I am attending the Parrot Festival in Houston, Texas. The people here are parrot lovers who have come to learn and to celebrate life.  I am their honored guest and have come to teach them about the human dimensions of conservation. However, it is I who am learning from them.

Last night was one of the evening festivals. I arrived late to a room of sparkling, babbling, brightly colored humans who reminded me of the parrots they adore.  As if they weren’t already having enough fun, each table was given a mystery bag full of crafts and materials with an assignment to dress one of their participants in a costume made from the bag’s contents to resemble a parrot species assigned to their table.  What a bunch of frisky people! After the contest, of which the Bare-eyed Cockatoo/Human won, some people just spontaneously began dancing.

Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe I was tired and in heels all day.  Maybe I just wasn’t ready to show my delight of the world by dancing.  But my mind was racing with the beauty of these people before me, and who knows, perhaps today or even tonight I will make some movement that aligns with the love that I feel for these people in this place.

Where will you dance today?

Swans

They appeared
over the dunes,
they skimmed the trees
and hurried on

to the sea
or some lonely pond
or wherever it is
that swans go,

urgent, immaculate,
the heat of their eyes
staring down
and then away,

the thick spans
of their wings
as bright as snow,
their shoulder-power

echoing
inside my own body.
How could I help but adore them?
How could I help but wish

that one of them might drop
a white feather
that I should have
something in my hand

to tell me
that they were real?
Of course
this was foolish.

What we love, shapely and pure,
is not to be held,
but to be believed in.
And then they vanished, into the unreachable distance.

I once had a dream that turned into a music video with the refrain, "love ain't enough, but it ain't dead yet."  In the dream, a couple who had once loved each other passionately could not stay together.  They were so disappointed that love could die so easily.  Yet, they had a beautiful daughter together who was the embodiment of their love. When she grew up she gave her love to millions through the gift of music and song.

What I learned from this dream (or was I teaching myself?) was that love cannot be imprisoned, it must fly free which means that it can, and will, leave you.  But then if we just keep our hearts open, the love surprises us in amazing ways.

So we are to have faith that love exists and can, but not in the exact ways that love manifests.

Oh that I was so strong to have this be enough.  But like Mary, I am foolish. So at home I have a white wing feather from a Snowy Owl that I place before me as I meditate daily.  This feather helps draw me into this practice, which I might otherwise neglect.  Being of flesh and of this world, it helps to hold love now and then, and be likewise held.

Where are you foolish in love?

Percy Speaks While I am Doing Taxes

First of all, I do not want to be doing this.

Second of all, Percy does not want me

  to be doing this.

hanging over my desk like a besieged person

  with a dull pencil and innumerable lists

    of numbers.

Outside the water is blue, the sky is clear,

  the tide rising.

Percy, I say, this has to be done. This is

  essential. I'll be finished eventually.

Keep me in your thoughts, he replies. Just because

  I can't count to ten doesn't mean

I don't remember yesterday, or anticipate today.

  I give you one more hour, then we step out

into the beautiful, money-deaf gift of the world

and run.

Just this last month I read about language research with a dog who knew 1000 words.  They do understand a lot.

Currently I am reading the book, "Parrot Behavior" and just yesterday read about parrots that know not just hundreds of words, but can combine words into meaningful sentences.  They do understand a lot.

All of this reminds me of the movie, "Forest Gump" where Forest says, "I may not be smart, but I know what love is."

No matter how we see the intelligence of another being, whether it is comparable to humans or to other species or not, I do believe that we share with the other social vertebrates a common neural structure of emotional responses that evolved out of this beautiful earth.

Baby, we were born to run, to love, and feel deep gratitude for the gifts around us.

What were you born to do?

The Gift

After the wind-bruised sea
furrowed itself back
into the folds of blue, I found
in the black wrack

a shell called the Neptune -
tawny and white,
spherical,
with a tail

and a tower
and a dark door,
and all of it
no larger

than my fist.
It looked, you might say,
very expensive.
I thought of its travels

in the Atlantic's
wind-pounded bowl
and wondered
that it was still intact.

Ah yes, there was
that door
that held only the eventual, inevitable
emptiness.

There's that - there's always that.
Still, what a house
to leave behind!
I held it

like the wisest of books
and imagined
its travels toward my hand.
And now, your hand.

Yesterday I attended a memorial service for Arnie Bleiweiss, a fellow member of my congregation.   We celebrated his life as we heard sharing after sharing about the remarkable life he had led. He had given a great gift of science, mentorship, and companionship to those around him.   The house was packed with people who had come to cherish, and to say goodbye.  Though there were moments of laughter, there were also tears. For the sanctuary was so empty without him. 

But what a house he left behind! I thank him for his wisdom and his memories, that travel from my heart and now to yours.

What house do you know that now stands empty, but is evidence of pricelessness?

One Hundred White-sided Dolphins on a Summer Day

1. 
  
Fat, 
black, slick, 
galloping in the pitch 
of the waves, in the pearly 
  
fields of the sea, 
they leap toward us, 
they rise, sparkling, and vanish, and rise sparkling, 
they breathe little clouds of mist, they lift perpetual smile, 
  
they slap their tails on the waves, grandmothers and grandfathers 
enjoying the old jokes, 
they circle around us, 
they swim with us - 
  
2. 
  
a hundred white-sided dolphins 
on a summer day, 
each one, as God himself 
could not appear more acceptable 
  
a hundred times, 
in a body blue and black threading through 
the sea foam, 
and lifting himself up from the opened 
  
tents of the waves on his fishtail, 
to look 
with the moon of his eye 
into my heart, 
  
3. 
  
and find there 
pure, sudden, steep, sharp, painful 
gratitude 
that falls - 
  
I don't know - either 
unbearable tons 
or the pale, bearable hand 
of salvation 
  
on my neck, 
lifting me 
from the boat's plain plank seat 
into the world's 
  
4. 
  
unspeakable kindness. 
It is my sixty-third summer on earth 
and, for a moment, I have almost vanished 
into the body of the dolphin, 
  
into the moon-eye of God, 
into the white fan that lies at the bottom of the sea 
with everything 
that ever was, or ever will be, 
  
supple, wild, rising on flank or fishtail - 
singing or whistling or breathing damply through blowhole 
at top of head.  Then, in our little boat, the dolphins suddenly gone, 
we sailed on through the brisk, cheerful day. 

Mary, Mary, quite contrary

How do your joy poems grow?

With dolphin swims and human whims

And so my own heart grows.

I once swam with dolphins. They were captives in a tourist park near Cancun Mexico.  I kept telling myself that I wasn't part of the oppressive system that ruled these wild ones for the whims of tourists. I was there as a veterinarian consultant and was offered a chance to be with these sea-going mammals as a gift.  Into the pool I went and the dolphins barely acknowledged me as each put a nose to my foot, and then propelled me through the water. It was a photogenic moment, a picture taken that I've not seen in years.

I wonder what happed to those dolphins?  Are they still pushing round tourists through their water pens?  Shame arises with me over my past participation in such a scheme when I see dolphins playing around the coasts of Florida now. They seem so free, so wild, so themselves, and hence so much of God before me. 

I wonder where else I have captured joy, and therefore turned from God before me, in me, all around me.

They who bind to themselves a joy

Do the winged life destroy

But they who kiss the joy as it flies

Live in eternity's sunrise (adapted from William Blake)

            

What is the Greatest Gift

What is the greatest gift?
Could it be the world itself-the oceans, the meadowlark,
the patience of the trees in the wind?
Could it be love, with its sweet clamor of passion?

Something else-something else entirely holds me in thrall.
That you have a life that I wonder about
more than I wonder about my own.
That you have a life-courteous and intelligent-that
I wonder about more than I wonder about my own.
That you have a soul-your own, no one else's-that
I wonder about more than I wonder about my own.
So that I find my soul clapping its hands for yours more than my own.

Every day, at some point, I find myself bringing my hands together and offering a Namaste bow of humility to someone or something in my life.  Yesterday I bowed in words to others on a conference call - their beauty and depth, heck, their very existence wowed me. 

Maybe today I will only bow to the sun's rising (quick, my friend is rising now, I'll be right back).  Perhaps I'll look at my spouse with open curiosity, and squeal like a child as I clap my hands in delight at some antic he performs for my benefit.  Such as breathing. Such as existing.  Such as not being me.  What a relief that there are countless others who are not me.  Wait, who are also me.  I applaud this abundance.

Where does your soul clap for others?

There you were and it was like spring

There you were, and it was like spring-

Like the first fair water with the light on it,

Hitting the eyes,

Why are we made the way we are made, that to love

Is to want?

Well, you are gone now, and this morning I have walked out

To the back shore,

To the ocean which, even if we think we have measured it,

Has not final measure.

Sometimes you can see the great whales there,

Breaching and playing.

Sometimes the swans linger just long enough

For us to be astonished.

Then they lift their wings, they become again

A part of the untouchable clouds.

We are the ideas of God, we are not, and we are the clouds – so sayeth Mary in the last 3 poems.

What I hear is that we are like the ocean and we have no final measure.

We are not just this, or only that.

I am not woman, mother, veterinarian, minister, middle-aged, nuts for birds, lonely, or in love

I am not

I am

Untouchable

What are you or are you not?

If the Philosopher is Right

If the philosopher is right,

that all we are

and all the earth around us

is only a dream,

even if a bright, long dream-

that everything is nothing

but what sits in the mind,

that the trees, that the red bird

are all in the mind,

and the river, and the sea in storm,

are all in the mind,

that nothing exists fierce or soft or apt to be

truly shaken-

nothing tense, wild, sleepy-nothing

like Yeats' girl with the yellow hair-

then you too are a dream

which last night and the night before that

and the years before that

you were not.

My partner is a philosopher, and over the years I have learned how right he has been.  It's a bit appalling to admit, but heck, I already admit to being lost and mad with love, so why not also be "wrong?" 

For instance, we've had this discussion dozens of time where we ask, "What exists outside of the mind?"  At one time I would have said,"How silly, everything exists and is real."  What I believe he has always said, although he can't speak for himself as he is off on a Zen Buddhist retreat, is that the question no longer matters to him.  Whether dream or not, the important question is "How do you treat those with whom we share this planet?" 

I might ask it this way...

"How can you be shaken to your core every day so that the dream of beloved community comes into being - not just in our mind, but in all minds?" 

If we as a group of people can envision this way of living, with our hearts broken letting in the whole world, love and compassion is real. Isn't it?    

It might be if this day, you and I, admit we are all wild fools.  We are not ourselves. We are the world.

Where are you not?