Four Sonnets - Part 2

2.

The kingfisher hurrahs from a branch above the river.

Under it’s feet is a fish that will swim no more,

That has its story, for another time perhaps.

Now it is the bird’s, pounding the fish then hulking it down its open beak…

Thought does not create the soul, not entirely, but it plays its part.

Meanwhile the bird is flashy body and the fish was flashy body and each

Fulfills what it is, remember little and imagines less.

And thus the day passes into darkness undamaged.

The fish, slippery and delicious,

The kingfisher, so quick, so blue.

Out on the river last night there were two kinds of fishers; the birds of which the blue racous Ringed Kingfisher streaks by and then the Amazona Kingfisher, green as emerald.  Both loop in and out of and then over the water to low lying branches.  Out on the water are also two of boat guides throwing lures into the bow lake of the Rupununi River, again and again, until at last they come up with two Peacock Bass which will be cooked in an outdoor kitchen for our dinner tonight.

Who am I to say that either fisher is wrong or not beautiful, though damage to flesh and rivers comes as does the darkness.

Swinging in the hammock under the sparking stars, a stomach content with delicious bass, I wonder how to live with nature, rightly, graciously, abundantly.  If I had feathers, would these long nights be any easier?

What parts of your humanity do you cherish?

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?

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?

Oxygen

Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even,
while it calls the earth its home, the soul.
So the merciful, noisy machine

stands in our house working away in its
lung-like voice. I hear it as I kneel
before the fire, stirring with a

stick of iron, letting the logs
lie more loosely. You, in the upstairs room,
are in your usual position, leaning on your

right shoulder which aches
all day. You are breathing
patiently; it is a

beautiful sound. It is
your life, which is so close
to my own that I would not know

where to drop the knife of
separation. And what does this have to do
with love, except

everything? Now the fire rises
and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red
roses of flame. Then it settles

to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds
as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:
our purest, sweet necessity: the air.

Oh my gosh, my last posting was about responding to a desperate need for union, or perhaps better said a plea for awareness of the already existing beloved union. My solution was to breathe, to share our lives with this next breath, the only gift we truly have to give and to receive. Then Mary writes this to my heart. Taking in one poem every day I am struck by the story I am retelling of our lives here on this planet. Mary's poems speak to me like a book of Rumi poems, like a book of Koans, like the Bible, like the Talmud, like the Quran, like an African chant, like a Hopi dance., and like a woodpecker's tapping on a tree. All these scriptures knock on the soul's door so that we may open to awareness, and if we just focus with intent, we can retell the stories of our lives based on love, and not on domination and power over others. It doesn't really matter what we choose to help guide us, especially since it seems that guides choose us. And Mary, you have chosen me so that I may with joy greet the sun's rising knowing that the air I take in and that becomes part of my body's molecules comes from the same air you have taken in, that the dinosaurs snorted out, and that Jesus cried. To breathe is to love our neighbors as ourselves.

What does breathing mean to you?

Honey Locust - August 8, 2010

Who can tell how lovely in June is the

honey locust tree, or why

a tree should be so sweet and live

in this world? Each white blossom

on a dangle of white flowers holds one green seed-

a new life. Also each blossom on a dangle of flower

holds a flask

of fragrance called heave, which is never sealed.

The bees circle the tree and dive into it. They are crazy

with gratitude. They are working like farmers. They are as

happy as saints. After awhile the flowers begin to

wilt and drop down into the grass. Welcome

shines in the grass.

Each year I gather

handfuls of blossoms and eat of their mealiness; the honey

melts n my mouth, the seeds make me strong,

both when they are crisps and ripe, and even at the end

when their petals have turned dully yellow.

So it is

if the heart has devoted itself to love, there is

not a single inch of emptiness. Gladness gleams

all the way to the grave.

floating in,

then the scouts going out,

then their coming back, and their dancing-

nothing different

but what happens in our own village.

What pity for the tiny souls

Who are so hopeful, and work so diligently

until time brings, as it does, the slap and the claw

Someday, of course, the bear himself

will become a bee, a honey bee, in the general mixing.

Nature, under her long green hair,

has such unbendable rules,

and a bee is not a powerful thing, even

when there are many

as people, in a town or a village.

And what, moreover, is catastrophe?

Is it the sharp sword of God,

or just some other wild body, loving its life?

Not caring a whit, black bear

blinks his horrible, beautiful eyes,

slicks his teeth with his fat and happy tongue,

and saunters on.

to follow a thought quietly

to its logical end.

I have done this a few times.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field,

in the middle of the world, breathing

in and out. Life so far doesn't have any other name

but breath and light, wind and rain.

If there's a temple, I haven't found it yet.

I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass and the weeds.

As a child I loved the game kick-the-can. When the seeker would tire of the game or when the seeker had been defeated, we would yell All-y all-y in come free which means that all those still out could come in without receiving a penalty or losing the game. This phrase comes from "All ye, all ye outs in free." So to Mary, I say, all-y, ally-in come free. She as has me pinned to the mat, my heart clinched in an inescapable hold. I cry uncle and give myself over to absolute reality - that my hurt and suffering is due to some other wild body loving life. How can one live with such glad interconnectedness? Drifting I suppose in the heaven, no purpose, no agenda, nothing but breath and light. I lose myself but win the game of life and death. Mary has defeated this seeker.

How do you give yourself over to that which is greater than yourself?

North Country

In the north country now it is spring and there

Is a certain celebration. The thrush has come home…

It is okay to know only

One song if it is this one. Hear it

Rise and fall; the very elements of your soul

Shiver nicely. What would spring be

Without it? Mostly frogs. But don’t worry, he

Arrives, year after year, humble and obedient

And gorgeous. You listen and you know

You could live a better life than you do, be

Softer, kinder. And maybe this year you will

Be able to do it. Here how his voice rises and falls. There is no way to be

Sufficiently grateful for the gifts we are given, no way to speak the Lord’s name

Often enough, though we do try, and

Especially now, as the dappled breast

Breathes in the pines and heaven’s windows in the north country, now spring has come,

Are opened wide.

There has yet to be a day when I read one of Mary’s poems that I don’t feel as if I have witnessed a miracle. Some days the miracle brings a tightening to the chest that proceeds an “oh yes, this is what love is.” Today is one of those days and poems. I have been lately thinking how what I have to give and receive is the next breath. It is all that I have control over – to breath in peace and to breath out love. To breathe, dedicating absolute love and union with the beloved world is the one song I have and it is sung in the rise and the fall of my chest. I do not know if I can live a better life next year or be kinder even to those I love most, but I do know that now, for at least this next breath, I can pray with my breath and so speak the Lord’s name. In this way, perhaps I can lessen a bit hell on earth and give heaven’s hope to others, one breath, one song, and one bird at a time.

What song do you sing in gratitude?

The Soul at Last

The Lord's terrifying kindness has come to me.

It was only a small silvery thing-say a piece of silver cloth, or a thousand spider webs woven together, or a small handful of aspen leaves, with their silver backs shimmering. And it came leaping out of the closed coffin; it flew into the air, it danced snappingly around the church rafters, it vanished through the ceiling.

I spoke there, briefly, of the loved one gone. I gazed at the people in the pews, some of them weeping. I knew I must someday, write this down.

The Lord has been terribly kind to me, and I mean the sacred has been terribly-laden with beauty, power, and freedom. On some days there is fear, but mostly there is a humbleness that I am nothing but the will of life and love. Perhaps nowhere else does this come as strong except in church preaching and praying, and even more so at memorial services. The first time I preached at a church I thought, "Ah, this is what it means to fly free with love", with no bounds or constraints on that pure essence that flows through me to the people, and through the people to me. The world's soul holds me and sets me free. I give thanks to Lord Death who has a way of graciously awakening us to communal love.

What does the soul look like to you, and have you seen it?

Bone July 4, 2010

1.

Understand, I am always trying to figure out

What the soul is,

And where hidden,

And what shape-

And so, last week,

When I found on the beach

The ear bone

Of a pilot what that may have died

Hundreds of years ago, I thought

Maybe I was close

To discovering something-

For the ear bone

2.

Is the portion that lasts longest

In any of us, man or whale…

And I thought: the soul

Might be like this-

So hard, so necessary-

3.

Yet almost nothing

Beside me

The gray sea

Was opening and shutting its wave-doors..

I looked but couldn’t see anything

Through its dark-knit glare;

Yet don’t we all know, the golden sand

Is there at the bottom,

Though our eyes have never seen it,

Nor can our hands ever catch it.

4.

Lest we would sift it down

Into fractions, and facts-

Certainties-

And what the soul is, also

I believe I will never quite know.

Though I play at the edges of knowing,

Truly I know

Our part is not knowing,

But looking, and touching, and loving,

Which is the way I walked on,

Softly,

Through the pale-pink morning light.

Today I have a talk at the International Congress of Conservation Biology for a workshop on Religion and Conservation. I spoke of how avian conservation is a living religion, and others spoke of Christianity, Tibetan Indigenous faiths, and Islam as mechanisms to conserve nature. Here was this room of people, trying to figure out how to harness the soul for the good life. There was some tension about the various ways we look at “soul” and “god” and “spirit,” in the room, or perhaps better said, I just know there was suspicion in the air. How can there not be when for thousands of years our kind has tried to tell another what is a soul and how to save it. What if it is really just this simple. We cannot know much, but we can love. It reminds of a line in the Forest Gump movie. He says, “I may not be a smart man, but I know what love is.” Maybe all we professionals in conservation and religion can just let go of all the complexity of theology and figuring out the best way to save the world, and embrace the simplicity of loving. I should like to follow my own advice.

Could you live your life based on just love?

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches? June 22, 2010

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches
of other lives --
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,
hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning,
feel like?

Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!


Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?


Well, there is time left --
fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!


To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!

To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened

in the night

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,

and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.


Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe

I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!

A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.

That was then, which hasn't ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes; I follow the ocean's edge.

I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.

I am in the north of this continent, not so very far, but far enough that the sun rises much earlier and sets much later than usual. I awoke with a vision of amazement – thinking of the Scarlet Macaw of Mesoamerica. I cannot think of that bird without thinking of death, and of loss. Reading yesterday in the book, “Seven Names for the Bellbird,” which is a book about how people value birds in Honduras, I came across a section on the Scarlet Macaw, the Guara Roja. The author found that the Hondurans speak of the Guara in terms of how much loss of the natural world they have seen. So the Guara came to me today, a bird of life and a bird of death and a bird of amazement. I so strongly feel that to be on a journey of amazement I must also set one foot in the door of death. For this is presence of what is, which stuns me with the finality and infinity of my shared being. So here I am at the annual gathering of Unitarian Universalist ministers in Minneapolis, hearing the call not to shared ministry, but to shared being.

Where do you journey for amazement, and is death a part of this path?

Some Questions You Might Ask - April 3, 2010

Is the soul solid, like iron?

Or is it tender and breakable, like

the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?

who has it, and who doesn't?

I keep looking around me.

the face of the moose is as sad

as the face of Jesus...

One question leads to another.

Does it have a shape?..

Why should I have it, and not the anteater

who loves her children?

Why should I have it, and not the camel?

Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?

...What about the grass?

As a child I would pray, not at my bedside as instructed by my parents, but out the window looking at the Hickory tree that protected my bedroom from loneliness. There I would say to God that I wished that all animals could go to heaven. If any could not, I would trade places with them. For if heaven was a place without animals, I didn't want to be there anyway. I feel much the same way about souls. I don't want one if all beings don't have one. What then is a soul? Does it fall into relativistic mush if a virus and bacteria have one as well? What is it that connects us all, that gives pause in wonder when we sense it, and stillness in grief when we don't? Oh my soul, who are you that knows the wonder and grief of life and that connects me to life in invisible strands of a web that holds us all? My soul then is all around me and is that gift that awakens me to the reality that I am a mirror of the world's soul. So much do I "know this" that when I read this poem this morning, my mind saw "I keep looking around for me," even though I know this poem fairly well. The sun is nearly up, and I'm about to for my morning walk, looking around for me, for you...