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?

The Living Together

The spirit says:

What gorgeous clouds.

The body says: Good,

The crops need rain.

The spirit says:

Look at the lambs frolicking.

The body says:

When’s the feast?...

The spirit says:  Body,

How can we live together?

The body says:  Bricks and mortar

And a back door.

In Maslov’s hierarchy of needs, we see that the fundamental needs of protection, security and nuturturance are below the higher needs of spiritual development. If the people are not fed and safe, it is hard for them to ponder the beauty of the clouds and the inherent worth and dignity of others.  Notice I say hard, not impossible. 

It is a difficult task though to embody spirit in our daily lives. Aren’t we always in some ways, or at least perceiving so, under threat or at risk of not having enough?  So we look to the lambs to slaughter them, our relationships, our communities, and our earth.

May we look to this day, and not sneak out the back door to meet our desires and our fears, but go boldly through the front door, and leave the door to our hearts open as we journey forward together.

Do you have tension between your body and spirit?  What is spirit?

For Example

Okay, the broken gull let me lift it from the sand.

Let me fumble it into a box, with the lid  open.

Okay, I put the box into my car and started up the highway

to the place where sometimes, sometimes not, such things can be mended.

The gull at first was quiet.

How everything turns out one way or another, I won't call it good or bad, just one way or another.

Then the  gull lurched from the box and onto the back of the front seat and punched me.

Okay, a little blood slid down.

But we all know, don't we how sometimes things have to feel anger, so as not to be defeated?

I love this world, even in its hard places.

A bird too must love this world, even in its hard places

So, even if the effort may come to nothing, you have to do something.

It was generally speaking, a perfectly beautiful summer morning.

The gull beat the air with its good wing.

I kept my eyes on the road.

I have put thousands of broken birds into boxes, sometimes they have been mended, often not.

I have always wanted to label this state of bird injury and extinction as bad, my anger sometimes fueling my engagement in the overall broken world, and sometimes not.

There are just too many dying birds out there for anger to suffice.

So I awake this morning determined to love the world, even in its hard places, its impossible places.

What is impossible for you to love?

Climbing Pinnacle

It is only a small mountain

as mountains go,

too stubby for any map.

But still, in my boots,

I climbed and climbed until at last there was nothing

but the blue sky

and a single final pasture

and a few not-very -tall trees-

and from under these came running

a fawn on its tumbly legs,

the sound of its wanting falling

from its pink, pursed mouth.

But I knew the rule:

Don't touch it, or the doe

might never come back!

So what could I do? It almost

reached me

before I slung myself into a tree.

And there I was

higher even than the mountain,

perched for hours

while beauty held me tightly...

I didn't move

until the doe came back,

angry and snorting

and she and the fawn tiptoed away.

And so I was free.

And there was nothing to do,

as there is never anything to do,

after rapture,

but to swing down

bough after bough-

to hurry down, field after field,

through the pale twilight,

to be greeted by the people

who loved me, far below.

I read recently in a book about wildlife that humans evolved to focus on wildlife - either responding in fear or awe. We did so because we needed to run away or to hunt, so it behooves us to be caught up in other life. Perhaps also we evolved to be caught by wildlife so that we might cooperate - paying attention to life helps life. For instance, in this same book, "Who Cares About Wildlife," there are studies that show it is nearly impossible to keep people from feeding the wildlife. The authors suggest that we evolved to care for wildlife.

Mary in the tree is our wild heart - caring, hunting, and fearing. She, like us, is caught by our evolved natures. She, like us, is also freed by our evolved natures and our intention. For we may constantly strive to remember that there is never anything better to do than to be in rapture and to love and to be loved. We can bring ourselves into this possibility by climbing each our own kind of mountain, be it small or looming impossibly high. With the sun squeaking through my back yard pines, oaks, and magnolias I set my sight on climbing this day so that I, by day's end, may greet the sunset with love.

What mountain do you climb?

Acid - March 30, 2010

In Jakarta,

among the venders

of flowers and soft drinks,

I saw a child

with a hideous mouth,

begging,

and I knew the wound was made

for a way to stay alive...

once in a while you can creep out of you own life

and become someone else...

I will never see him

again, I suppose.

but what of this rag,

this shadow

flung like a boy's body

into the walls

of my mind, bleeding

their sour taste-

insult and anger,

the great movers?

I wonder how insult and anger have moved Mary. She comes to no resolution of what to do with the sour taste of reality, and instead asks us. How are we moved by the poverty of this world, of our own heart? Where do we fling wounds upon ourselves and others so that we can stay alive in the only way we know how? Is there another way, or did we evolve so that senseless tragedy would grow the web of cultures and genes beyond mere existence? I seem to be so full of questions this morning, matching the mood of Mary and her poem. Can love and joy not also be great movers?

What motivates you through our days? Is it more anger than joy? Both?

Rage - March 18, 20

10

You are the dark song

of the morning...

But you were also the red song

in the night..

When the child's mother smiles

you see on her cheekbones

a truth you will never confess

and you see how the child grows

timidly, crouching in corners...

In your dreams she's a tree that will never come to leaf..

in your dreams you have sullied and murdered

and dreams do not lie.

This story is so familiar across our ravaged landscapes - such rage our species takes out on one another and our earth. In my childhood home there was rage barely restrained and I have in my home now a young man whose father did not know restraint. In me, the anger simmers. Yes, it's a matter of degree as I have never hit anyone as an adult. The beast is within, she cloys at me to believe that someone else is responsible for my anger. If I can just lash out, all will be well, all will be well. And that to me is how hell is born. And gets born again in each moment we drift from love's bonds and in each child that grows up around our hurt. But there is another dream other than anger. This is the dream upon awaking that refreshes the morning, that is not a dark song born of red anger, but a dream of light, of sons, that go not to war or to fight, but to love the children within us all. Each morning the sun asks again as she peers through our windows, isn't it time to wake up?

Where do you have violence in your life? What are your dreams like?

Tecumseh - March 14, 2010

I went down not long ago

to the Mad River, under the willows

I knelt and drank from that crumpled flow, call it

what madness you will, there's a sickness

worse than the risk of death and that's

forgetting what we should never forget.

Tecumseh lived here.

The wounds of the past

are ignored, but hang on...

Sometimes

I would like to paint my body red and go out into

the glittering snow

to die.

His name meant Shooting Star.

From Mad River country north to the border

he gathered the tribes

and armed them one more time. He vowed

to keep Ohio and it took him

over twenty years to fail...

his body could not be found.

It was never found...

if we ever meet him, we'll know it,

he will still be

so angry.

The Buddhists have a saying, "if you ever meet Buddha on the road, kill him." They mean it to say that growing our hearts and compassion goes beyond Buddhist teachings and writings. The way is instead being open to what is before us on the road, and behind us, what is up river, and from whence flows the rivers, no matter the pollution or blood flowing within them. The thing is, we have already killed Tecumseh. So if we meet him, what shall we do to him? What shall he do to us? Maybe we can grow out of our sickness, and remember what should not be forgotten, who has died and why, and what we have lost and why, so that we can grow our hearts and compassion. So if we come upon one another, it shall not be with anger, but first with a mourning wail that open hearts, minds, and hands, and perhaps after a night of stories beside a fire, laughter to greet the sun.