Blossom - March 6, 2010

In April

the ponds

open

like black blossoms..

frogs shouting

their desire,

their satisfaction...

...What

we long for: joy

before death...

...What

we know: we are more

than blood-we are more

than our hunger and yet

we belong

to the moon and when the ponds

open, when the burning

begins the most

thoughtful among us dreams

of hurrying down

into the black petals,

into the fire,

into the night where time lies shattered,

into the body of another.

Sufi wisdom calls us to not forget the joy of union with another -w ith the moon, the sun, god, bird, lover, frog, pond. We yearn for this in the spring of our lives, roaming out in the night to forget the ache of our separation. Perhaps as we age when our bodies mellow as hormones free us from the maddening drive, we let slip into the background what we long for, and instead absorb ourselves into the daily grind. Rumi writes today in "The Milk of Millennia,"

I walk into a huge pasture.

I nurse the milk of millennia.

Everyone does this in different ways.

Knowing that conscious decisions

and personal memory

are much too small a place to live,

every human being streams at night

into the loving nowhere, or during the day,

in some absorbing work.

I awake this morning which falls just short of spring, seeing the thrown dirt of awakening tortoises in my backyard, and if I let myself crawl down their tunnels and wrap my soul around their hard shells, so that my own will crack.

What or with whom do you wish union?

Ice - January 31, 2010

My father spent his last winter

Making ice-grips for shoes...

...My father should not have been doing

All that close work

In the drafty workshop, but as though

he sensed travel at the edge of his mind,

He would not be stopped...

...Plainly the giving was an asking,

A petition to be welcomed and useful-

Or maybe, who knows, the seed of a desire

Not to be sent alone out over the black ice...

...Mother writes tome: I am cleaning the workshop

And I have found

so many pairs of the ice-grips....

...What shall I do?..

And I write back: Mother, please

Save everything.

My father, in his last year, went out one fall day and raked up leaves. He'd had a heart transplant with many complications, in and out of danger in the 5 years after that surgery. A few days later he got a fungal pneumonia, perhaps born out of the decaying, wet leaves. Into the hospital he went, again, and this last time, he did not get out. .

He should not have been doing that work. But he wanted to be of use, to take part in the annual family ritual of raking leaves, and avoiding raking leaves. One year while I was away in college he sent me an envelope in which brown leaves from our yard were enclosed, with a note saying "Wish you were here."

Now in every leaf I see, my heart says, "Wish you were here" to my father. I too share the desires of fathers, to not be alone and to be of use. Any giving I do is really an asking, please, save me and save everything.

How does working or giving bring you connection to others? What will you do in the last year of your life?