About Angels and About Trees - February 11, 2011

Where do angels
        fly in the firmament,
and how many can dance
        on the head of a pin?

Well, I don't care
        about that pin dance,
what I know is that
        they rest, sometimes,
in the tops of the trees

  and you can see them,
        or almost see them,
or, anyway, think: what a
        wonderful idea.

I have lost as you and
        others have possibly lost a
beloved one,
        and wonder, where are they now?

The trees, anyway, are
        miraculous, full of
angels (ideas);even
        empty they are a
good place to look, to put
        the heart at rest--all those
leaves breathing the air, so


peaceful and diligent, and certainly
        ready to be
the resting place of
        strange, winged creatures
that we, in this world, have loved

I have never lived on the ocean, but when I visit the eternal vista holds me in blissful transcendence.  So too have come to me the vistas of western mountains where you can see forever.  It was with some trepidation then when we moved to central Florida – no body of water, no mountains, no suns or moons rising on the horizon – just trees filling the view wherever you turn.

Florida has taught me to look up. Now I stare up into the branches as I might onto the ocean or from a mountain.  I strain to see who lives there, for surely there are some passing spring warblers daring me to behold their beauty.  Even if I don’t see any movement, I can hear the earth’s pulse through the miracle of the trees, and it echoes in my heart to last me through the day.

Today I am up in the level of the trees at a hotel at the University of Georgia, Athens. The trees are sprinkled with snow – natural angel dust to drug the soul with joy.

What do you see in a tree?

Heart Poem

My heart, that used to pump along so pleasantly, has come now to a different sort of music.

There is someone inside those red walls, irritated and even, occasionally, irrational.

Years ago I was part of an orchestra: our conductor was a wild man. He was forever rapping the music stand for silence. Then he would call out some correction and we would begin again.

Now again it is the wild man.

I remember the music shattering, and our desperate attentiveness.

Once he flung the baton over our heads and into the midst of the players....What silence!  Then someone picked it up and it was passed forward back to him. He rapped the stand and raised his arms. Then we all breathed again, and the music restarted. 

Oh Mary, is your heart faltering?  Does it in the middle of the night awaken you with it's crazy out of synch rhythm, sharply drawing your attention to your body, and to what your life may be?  Perhaps you lie awake for hours, wondering if the coming rising will be your last.  Then the day lightens, and you restart your day like you have thousands of times, ever more grateful for the music of the spheres?

Have you had nights like this, and mornings as well?

Swimming with Otter

I am watching otter, how he

Plays in the water, how he

Displays brae underside to the

Wave-washings, how he

Breathes in descent trailing sudden

Strings of pears that tell

Almost, but never quite, where he is

Apt to rise-how he is

Gone, gone, so long I despair of him, then he

Trims, wetly, up the far shore and if he

Looks back he is surely

Laughing. I too have taken

Myself into this

Summer lake, where the leaves of the trees

Almost touch, where peace comes

In the generosity of water, and I have

Reached out into the loveliness and I have

Floated on my flat back to think out

A poem or two, not by any means fluid but,

Dear God, as you have made me, my only quickness.

Have I spoken of the Ichetucknee River here? If I repeat myself, then I do so, for I suspect that swimming in water is my only quickness. Or perhaps that is where my quickness, my talent, my gifts, my reason for living floats up out of my subconscious with any clarity. So I am drawn to speak of this river so that on land I may know that healing flow.

Every summer I go to the Ichetucknee. I pray that its waters will be clear of pollutant fed algae so that I may see beauty not just above the water, but below where fish flash, invertebrates sparkle, and river grass undulates like caressing healing hands as I swim over the top of this field of green. Such clarity has not been the river’s gift for the last couple of years, so murky have human desires changed this river. But in early September, I took a swim along the entire length – a 2 hour swim that when finished I knew what I was about.

In the middle of the swim we came upon a family of otters. Meredith, my spouse, held up behind me, in love. He’d never seen river otters before and here he was with his nose at their level, and only a few yards away. Well, I don’t know if he was in love, I never asked. But I was. How can one not be when I see otters snacking away on mussels, a husband grinning, and a river of wonder flowing in me, around me, through me, and between me and others, and otters.

What is your quickness?