Pipefish

 

In the green and purple weeds called Zostera, loosely swinging in the shallows,

I waded, I reached my hands in that most human of gestures-to find,

to see, to hold whatever it is that's there-and what came up

wasn't much but it glittered and struggled, and it had eyes, and a body

like a wand, it had pouting lips.  No longer, all of it,

than any of my fingers, it wanted away from my strangeness, it wanted

to go back into that waving forest so quick and wet. I forget

when this happened, how many years ago I opened my hands-like a promise

i would keep my whole life, and have-and let it go.  I tell you this

in case you have yet to wade into the green and purple shallows where the diminutive

pipefish wants to go on living. I tell you this against everything you are-

your human heart, your hands passing over the world, gathering and closing, so dry and slow.

We soon approach the time of promises - the New Year's time of resolutions and the hope of will.  How do we make commitments against who we evolved to be?  For our hands were made to close so we could  gather in all that we can  - mates for children, kin for protection, foraged plants and hunted beings for food, and rocks and metals for weapons.  Our hands were also made to open so that they could fill again. Likewise our hearts were made to break open so that they could fill again and again.  How do we tip the scales so that our hands work more towards life, than for death? 

My answer:  letting go.

My promise:  letting go

What is your promise that you would keep your whole life?

The Poet Comments on Yet Another Approaching Spring

Don’t flowers put on their

Prettiness each spring and

Go to it with

Everything they’ve got? Who

Would criticize the bed of

Yellow tulips or the blue

Hyacinths?

So put a

Bracelet on your

Ankle with a

Bell on it and make a

Little music for

The earth beneath your foot, or

Wear a hat with hot-colored

Ribbons for the

Pleasure of the

Leaves and the clouds, or at least

A ring with a gleaming

Stone for your finger; yesterday

I watched a mother choose

Exquisite ear-ornaments for someone

Beloved, in the spring

Of her life; they were

For her for sure, but also it seemed

A promise, a love message, a commitment

To all girls, and boys too, so

Beautiful and hopeful in this hard world

And young.

Yesterday Mary spoke of children who look out on a broken world. We the readers, and certainly myself, wondered what to do with that deep sorrow, and perhaps even despair. Here, a day later, Mary speaks to my heart and outlines my strategy. Let us know that there is both tragedy, and beauty in the world, and let us help our children see this. Surely every child born will look out on fragmented and wounded lives. We cannot stop this. This doesn’t keep us from doing all we can to mend that brokenness that seems far too difficult a task to “fix” in one lifetime or even thousands. Knowing that the arc of the moral universe bends so very slowly towards justice, what can we do while we wait for the beloved community to come into being? I think we might also commit our lives to beauty and to joy. For when we do, if even for one fleeting moment, we give others a chance to rejoice in the splendor of our world . May we so do this, giving hope in our hard world.

Where do you adorn your life for the sake of beauty and hope?

Terns

Don’t think just now of the trudging forward of thought,

But of the wing-drive of unquestioning affirmation.

It’s summer, you never saw such a blue sky,

And here they are, those white birds with quick wings,

Sweeping over the waves, chattering and plunging,

Their thin beaks snapping, their hard eyes

Happy as little nails

The years to come-this is a promise-

Will grant you ample time

To try the difficult steps in the empire of thought

Where you seek for the shining proofs you think you must have.

But nothing you ever understand will be sweeter, or more binding,

Than this deepest affinity between your eyes and the world.

The flock thickens

Over the rolling, salt brightness. Listen,

Maybe such devotion, in which one holds the world

In the clasp of attention, isn’t the perfect prayer,

But it must be close, for the sorrow, whose name is doubt,

Is thus subdued, and not through the weaponry of reason,

But of pure submission. Tell me, what else

Could beauty be for? And now the tide

Is at its very crown,

The white birds =sprinkle down,

Gathering up the loose silver rising

As if weightless. It isn’t instruction, or parable.

It isn’t for any vanity or ambition

Except for the one allowed, to stay alive.

It’s only a nimble frolic

Over the waves. And you find, for hours,

You cannot even remember the questions

That weigh so in your mind.

I wonder what beauty is for? Why did we evolve with such a close affinity to what is beautiful in this world, or to make things of beauty? I have heard some say we move towards beauty so that we can stand to be in the world. Otherwise the pain and the loss would be too great. Some trigger needs to soothe the aching brain that must hold how harm is all around us, some of it performed by our very words and hands. This leads me to suggest indeed religion, or meditation, or nature walks, or whatever intentional practice you cultivate for the awareness of interconnection, is perhaps an opiate of the masses. We adhere ourselves to faith claims of interdependence so that we know we will always survive and all we see before us continues on in one form or another. Said another way, if we as isolated ego driven individuals never exist, how can we disappear?

Here I spin in the realm of doubt and thought, and right now, I see the sun filtering through the trees in the nearly fall like air. Soon I will be holding a cup of coffee graciously prepared by my hosts, and then have a walk down by Lake Erie before heading to a veterinary clinic to watch how people fumble with their love of birds and their draw towards their beauty. Perhaps my faith is misguided, but I know not what else to do but to submit to these blessings, this merger of life coming to me and through me. I am a tern going fishing.

What do you have faith in? Where do you doubt?

Roses - January 28, 2010

The look on her face in a dream

Stayed with me all day

Like a promise I had failed...

....And the grass on which she was standing,

Ante the roses thick on the fences

Were soft and bright, able to renew themselves

As a woman, finally, cannot do.

In this world of climate change, and of a political process that promises a persistent dull ache that is slowly killing spirit and earth, who is not looking north into a future where so little grows? Who among us can look into the long years ahead and not see their own death, or the slow dying of body and mind? I yearn for life and when there is death, suffering, or decay it rises in me in this dark hour as a failed promise. Who does not spend the hours of the day blaming others and oneself for the failed dreams and ailing body, accusing the gods of abandonment, and even, judging the earth and her beings for not being enough. Ah Mary, even in listening and resting, we cannot break our fast with death.

Who do you blame for what might have been? What promises have you made that remain unfulfilled?