Singapore - April 7, 2010

In Singapore, in the airport,

a darkness was ripped from my eyes.

In the women's restroom, one compartment stood open.

A woman knelt there, washing something

in the white bowl.

Disgust argued in my stomach...

A poem should always have birds in it...

Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees...

A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

When the woman turned I could not answer her face.

Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, and

neither could win...

Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

But first we must watch her as shares down at her labor,

which is dull enough...

She does not work slowly , nor quickly, but like a river.

Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird.

I don't doubt for a moment that she loves her life

And I want her to rise up from the crust and the slop

and fly down to the river.

This probably won't happen.

But maybe it will.

If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it?

Of course, it isn't.

Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only

the light that can shine out of a life. I mean

the way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth,

the way her smile was only for my sake: I mean

the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.

Just as I was thinking of how Mary's poems are all saying the same thing and asking the same question (and of course they are, aren't they, just as the sun asks and answers the same thing in startlingly new ways every morning?), here she does something different, answers a different question in my mind, heals another part of my life, leads me to the broader resonance that her poems affirm. My soul breathes, "Finally!" My question is, like her one question, how do we love the world? An important corollary question for me, that has been feeling neglected in this book of poems to date, is how do we love the humans in our world? How do we love all that we are and including our expression in society that leaves beauty scrubbing ashtrays in public toilet bowls? How do we see light in war, in poverty, in gang leaders and in drug lords? This is the work of my life, to love the world of nature, including human nature. This driving passion is no more noble than the sharp tang of cigarettes and urine mixing in polluted rivers, or the refolding of a dirty cloth in the hands of others on any street, either in Singapore or Mexico City. The light that can shine out of our lives is in all our hands.

When have you been surprised by beauty in humans?

Spring - April 6, 2010

Somewhere

a black bear

has just risen from sleep

and is staring

down the mountain.

All night

in the brisk and shallow restlessness

of early spring

I think of her..

There is only one question:

how to love this world.

I think of her

rising

like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against

the silence

of the trees

Whatever else

my life is

with its poems

and its music

and its glass cities,

It is also this dazzling darkness

coming

down the mountain,

breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her-

her white teeth,

her wordlessness,

her perfect love.

Okay, Mary, you've nailed it down to one question, although just a few poems ago, your question was, what is a soul? Perhaps this comes out of the question, "how to love the world." The question is not how to be loved? Why me? Why not me? Or how shall I die and when? How shall I best meet my needs? In the asking, I feel empowerment. In the asking, we give ourselves a choice. Now, this moment, we choose how to love. Shall it be wordlessly like the bear? Watching like in so many of Mary's poems? Reading this poem?

How do you love the world?

The Buddha's last Instruction - April 5, 2010

"Make of yourself a light,"
said the Buddha

before he died...

No doubt he thought of everything

than had happened in his difficult life.

And then I feel the sun itself

as it blazed over the hills,

like a million flowers on fire-

clearly I'm not needed,

yet I feel myself turning

into something of inexplicable value.

Slowly , beneath the branches,

he raised his head.

He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

The face of Buddha is like the sun that moves across the sky. Both help us in our primate minds know our inherent worth and dignity, know that it matters what we do, and known that it is a blessing we were born. You also tell us as you rise above the horizon that we are not needed. How scary is that! Yet, dear, Sun, you turn us into something of inexplicable value, and if we dance as well as we are able with you, we can more greatly reflect the light that is the divine in all existence.

If you were dying and a crowd gathered around, what would you say to them?

Moccasin Flowers - April 4, 2010

All my life,

so far,

I have loved

more than one thing...

In spring

the moccasin flowers

reach for the crackling

lick of the sun

and burn down...

But all my life-so far-

I have loved best

how the flowers rise

and open, how

the pink lungs of their bodies

enter the fire of the world

and stand there shining

and willing-the one

thing they can do before

they shuffle forward

into the floor of darkness, they

become the trees

I rejoice in this poem, for today is Easter, Ostara, and our annual Flower Communion. The streets and woods around Gainesville are bursting with light green leaves and flowers poking out through the undergrowth, or exploding atop trees and bushes. Was there ever such a spring? I think every year I ask this - is it me, or is this spring more marvelous than the last? Rilke, in his Ninth Elegy, says, "Earth, my love, I will! My faith yields to you not needing one more of your springs, ach, already one spring is too much for my blood!" My blood stirs with the surprise of what was once barren, I swear, only a few days ago, is now polyphonic splendor. Oh that I was consciously and consistently willing to flower in beauty as intimate death keeps me company under the suns arcing dance. It seems in spring that I am more willing to accept the invitation of death and resurrection and that there is more joy than usual in change. It's as if I feel I am turning into the trees myself, one un noticed in a forest. In watching them with my unknown neighbors who share the same azalea bush, together we turn our hearts to awareness, acceptance, and peace.

What does spring mean to you?

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...

The Sunflowers - April 2, 2010

Come with me

into the field of sunflowers

their faces are burnished disks...

Come with me

to visit the sunflowers,

they are shy

but want to be friends;

they have wonderful stories..

Don't be afraid

to ask them questions!

Their bright faces...

will listen, and all

those rows of seeds-

each one a new life!-

hope for a deeper acquaintance;

each f them, though it stands

in a crowd of many

like a separate universe,

is lonely, the long work

of turning their lives

into a celebration

is not easy. Come

and let us talk with those modest faces..

My tour guide Mary now turns her modest face to me the reader and makes a direct invitation to visit her world. Though she is talking of sunflowers, (is she?) I am seeing fields of people, so many that their shoulders touch. They turn their grateful faces up to the sun and each thought of theirs is a seed for new life in the future. Though they are grateful and with so many others, they, we, are lonely. So there is nothing better than to have one come among us and ask us questions and let us tell them the stories of our lives. Each question asked is a seed for future life. Though our stories may not be the epics that get burned into famous literature that lasts through the generations, they are the universal story - of how each day the questions, answers, and stories are small step to turn our lives into celebration.

What question would you ask a field of sunflowers? A field of humans?

1945-1985: Poem for the Anniversary - April 1, 2010

Sometimes,

walking for hours through the woods,

I don't know what I'm looking for,

maybe for something

shy and beautiful to come

frisking out of the undergrowth.

Once a fawn did just that.

My dog didn't know

what dogs usually do.

And the fawn didn't know.

As for the doe...

dreaming that everything was fine...

The way I'd like to go on living in this world

wouldn't hurt anything, I'd just go on

walking uphill and downhill, looking around,

and so what if half the time I don't know

what for-

so what if it doesn't' come

to a hill of beans...

In the films of Dachau and Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen

the dead rise from the earth...

while the rest of the world

did nothing...

My dog and the fawn

did a little dance...

Oh, you never saw such a garden...

A many sits there...

He is finishing lunch...

A bottle of wine...

He fills a glass...

He lifts it to his mouth and drinks peacefully.

It is the face of Mengele.

Late the doe came wandering back into he twilight.

She stepped through the leaves. She hesitated,

sniffing the air.

Then she knew everything.

The forest grew dark.

She nuzzled her child wildly.

I am the gentle dog, fawn, doe, and Mary waiting in innocence for beauty to come before us, never dreaming that horror waits for me and mine. Is in me and mine. For just as easily that Mary's dog doesn't know what to do, other dogs do. I myself do not keep dogs in the home. I have heard too many stories of gentle dogs going hunting, singly or even more dangerous as a pack, and killing cats and birds they share homes with, or going in search in neighbors yards. Life is like a stroll in a garden, be it woods or the ordered loveliness of a German country estate. Who doesn't yearn for beauty, and in that searching forget the violence within and without, which invites the dogs of war not to dance, but to scrape away the shy hope of our kin and kind. In response to who we are, primates on the verge of anticipated genocide, may we look for beauty and sniff the air for the whole story, and wildly embrace who we are and the love we are capable of giving, and the lives we are capable of taking.

If you could, what would you wildly embrace today?