The First Time Percy Came Back

The First Time Percy Came Back

The first time Percy came back

he was sailing on a cloud...

"Percy," I cried out, and reached to him-

those white curls-

but he was unreachable. As music

is present yet you can't touch it...

When I first read the poem, my sister had died only a few weeks earlier.  She had come back to us in dreams, first to my niece, and then to me, young, healthy, and thin.  She lived through a long illness, as did both my parents, and my father- and mother-in-law.  They are all gone, yet they keep coming back to me, sometimes more frequently and vividly than they did when they first died. Heck, even more than when they were alive.  My wish to have them with me also grows stronger.

Why couldn't I see their music, their beauty, more when they were alive?  Why does it seem so hard to touch that inescapable wonder in each and every one of us, and in each and every moment?

We live through such depths of pain, misery, and loss, all which hollow us out. But there, in that pit, an orchestra made up of all whom we have known, know, and will know, sounds loudly, "wake up!"

Questions for Reflection

Whom do you wish would come back? What would you say to them? Do?

Do those who have died or gone away ever really leave us?

Who can you find, today, to tell a story of loss, and of a coming back to life?

Percy (2002-2009)

This - I said to Percy when I had left our bed and gone out onto the living room couch where he found me apparently doing nothing – this is called thinking. It’s something people do, not being entirely children of the earth, like a dog or a tree or a flower. His eyes questioned such an activity…Actually I like kissing better.

A Year's Rising with Mary Oliver's Poems 

January 1, 2010 - April 23, 2011

Oh Mary and readers, we are at our last poem together and it is one where I resist her words.  This happens so rarely.  For I feel that people are entirely children of this earth. Our thinking is as the sap rising in the tree and a dog drooling.  Maybe if I had the gift of genius of words that Mary had, I too would feel a separation from life around me.  For how can words capture the kiss of the morning sun upon one’s face and the caress of the wind or a feathered wing?

I suppose they can’t, but they do remind us where the path is.

So I thank you Mary for this time together, for keeping me on the path to see beauty, tragedy, interconnection - reality - in all moments.

And now I think I will lay down my pen, and go and kiss the ground and hug a tree  - my future and always daily nature meditation.

What might you share with others here about your experience of Mary’s poems and our shared reflections?

What is your daily nature meditation?

More Evidence - Part 1

1.

The grosbeak sings with a completely cherishable roughness..

With what words can I convince you of the casualness with which the white swans fly..

Do you give a thought now and again to the essential sparrow, the necessary toad?

Just as truly as the earth is ours, we belong to it. The tissue of our minds is made of it, and the soles of our feet, as fully as the tiger’s claw, the branch of the whitebark pine, the voices of the bird, the dog-tooth violet and the tooth of the dog….

This morning I took a hike with our ectourist group in Guyana up to some caves with bats. Along the way we walked through a forest teaming with thousands of species biting, singing, crawling, hooting, growing, and photosynthesizing.  I love the tropical forest and after days and days in one, I begin to know I belong, as do all beings.  However, I am guessing that for you, like me, there are certain special places in your life that more clearly and strongly say, “You belong.”  For me it is swimming in natural body of water.

After this hike I mentioned I jumped off a bank of a forest river into clear cool water.  With fish swimming all around me, I circled round to see a Pygmy Kingfisher perched on a branch and below him, my species washing their clothes.   Clothes, fur, feathers  no matter how roughly or finely we are clad, we are the skin of the earth emerging from the mixing of mud with water. 

Belonging is the first step, and a hard one to be sure. I believe there is more struggles before us all - knowing we are necessary, and also not.

Where do you gain your greatest sense of belonging?

In Your Hands

The dog, the donkey, surely they know they are alive.

Who would argue otherwise?...

What about the sunflowers?...

Listen, all you have to do is start and there'll be no stopping....

And, speaking of stones, what about the little ones you can

hold in your hands their heartbeats so secret

so hidden it make take years

before, finally you hear them?

In the recent interview with Mary Oliver, she was asked what she had done with her one wild and precious life. She responded, "I used up a lot of pencils...... What I have done is learn to love and learn to be loved. That didn't come easy. And I learned to consider my life an amazing gift. Those are the things."

The subtext of what I believe she has done with her life,  as this poem suggests, is to listen so that she could see, hear, feel, and know love. 

If we listen hard enough I believe that not only will we find beauty everywhere, but also love.  I don't know which comes first or which might be causal, I only know that as I listen in the night, the barred owl asks, "Who loves for you?"

May I answer, "I do."  May we answer, "We do."  Loving is after all in our hands.

How do you listen to love?  

The Sweetness of Dogs (Fifteen)

What do you say Percy?  I am thinking

of sitting out on the sand to watch the moon rise. Full tonight. 

So we go

as the moon rises, so beautiful...

makes me take measure of myself: one iota pondering heaven....

How grateful I am for the moon's perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich

it is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile,

leans against me and gazes up into

my face. As though I were his perfect moon.

I've got physics on the brain, hard not to given that my spouse the preacher has been doing a series on physics and spirituality.  Just this morning we marveled at how we can change the outcome of an event by watching it.  So I think of Percy watching Mary in his sweet way.  Does Mary change?  Does she become more loving, more beautiful, more open to the beauty of herself, dogs, and the moon?  What if I were to open my heart and see everyone today as perfect just the way they are. Would this change their behavior?  Would it change the world?

It might if we all did it.

Shall we?

Dancing in Mexico

Not myself,

but Maria,

who, when her work is done,

tunes in the radio,

goes out into the garden,

picks up the front feet of the little dog Ricky,

and dances. She dances.

A Buddhist reflection on this poem might go like this:

Maria dances, I am dancing.

Dogs dance, I am dancing too.

I dance, I am not dancing.

Yesterday buildings in Japan swayed to the rhythm of the earth's tectonic plates dancing over the surface of the earth.

People scream in Japan, I am screaming.

Dogs and people die in the floods, I am dying

I die,  I am living.

My prayer today is to find a way to dance though the work is never done, to die so that others may live, and to live well to make sense of, and honor others' death and suffering.

How will you dance today? Die today? Live today?

Percy Wakes Me

Percy wakes me and I am not ready...

Now he's eager for action:  a walk, then breakfast....

He is sitting on the kitchen counter where he is not supposed to be.

How wonderful you are, I say. How clever, if you needed me, to wake me.

He thought he would hear a lecture and deeply  his eyes begin to shine.

He tumbles onto the couch for more compliments.

He squirms and squeals; he has done something that he needed and now he hears that it's okay.

I scratch his ears, I turn him over and touch him everywhere.  He is

wild with the okayness of it.  Then we walk, then he gas has breakfast, and he is happy.

This is a poem about Percy.

This is a poem about more than Percy.

Think about it.

In my spiritual practice of nonviolent communication I often struggle with accepting with ease the complaints of others.  When I first hear what they want, often expressed as a demand, or worse, as whining, I don't have much empathy for others or for myself.  It's also hard for me to get in touch with my gratitude that they let me know what was going on for them, for I know that when someone asks something of me, often in a an unskillful way, they are just letting me know what would make their life wonderful.  This is such a great gift, but so frequently I am reluctant to open the gift to appreciate how life flows through them.  Instead I have "shoulds" going on in my story telling brain, "Why can't they think of anyone else but themselves?" 

Reading this poem today, I sense a break through, a vision.  People around me are like bounding Percies, inviting me to make their life wonderful.  How lovely for them, and for me, if I could reply in word, thought, and action so that they could know how wonderful they are and the okayness of their needs.

Oh how our lives might shine. Though we may not be ready, may we awake to this possibility today.

To whom would you like to communicate "okayness?"

Just Around the House, Early in the Morning - February 27, 2011

Though I have been scorned for it

let me never be afraid to use the world beautiful.

For with is the shining leaf

and the blossoms of the geranium at the window.

And the eyes of the happy puppy as he wakes.

The colors of the old and beloved afghan lying

by itself, on the couch, in the morning sun.

The hummingbirds' nest perched now in a

corner of the bookshelf, in front of so many

books of so many colors.

the two poached eggs.  The buttered toast.

The ream of brand-new paper just opened,

white as a block of snow.

The typewriter humming, ready to go.

Having read this poem, I just walked around the house this morning, taking inventory of the beauty I see. It was like a walking meditation, a prayer.

Into the kitchen I see the refrigerator, whose freezer is full of locally grown leafy foods converted into the soup that nourishes me through the winter, made by the hands of my beloved spouse.

Out the window I appraise the growing sand pile, the leavings for the recently refreshed gopher tortoise burrow.  Maybe I will see her today, maybe not. But I know she's there and I guess in her turtle way, she knows of us.

The living room carpet has a few kernels of popcorn, the leavings of our family  night last night - cards and movies with spouse and son.

Down the hall I quietly lurk, peeking into the reading/meditation room where my spouse sits in healing silence and where the sun shines through the sycamore leaf  in the window. This room, now mostly empty after adopted son #2 took his leaving of us, likely permanently.

Then into the last room, darkened as to son #1's preferences, piles of clothes on the floor and dishes on his desk, showing the signs of late night study sessions interspersed with his constant chatter on phone and computer.  He has left for the day, though he leaves behind in me a gratitude for his sprawling, unique presence.

And now back to my computer, it humming until I feed it the words of the song within me.

What does your list of beauty and gratitude look like as you go around your house?

At the River Clarion

1.

I don't know who God is exactly.

But I'll tell you this.

I was sitting in the river named Clarion, on a

water splashed stone

and all afternoon I listened to the voices

of the river talking....

And slowly, very slowly, it became clear to me

what they were saying.

Said the river I am part of holiness.

And I too, said the stone. And I too, whispered

the moss beneath the water.

I'd been to the river before, a few times.

Don't blame the river that nothing happened quickly.

You don't hear such voices in an hour or a day.

You don't hear them at all if selfhood has stuffed your ears.

And it's difficult to hear anything anyway, through

all the traffic, the ambition.

2.

If God exists he isn't just butter and good luck. 
He's also the tick that killed my wonderful dog Luke… 

If God exists he isn't just churches and mathematics. 
He's the forest, He's the desert. 
He's the ice caps, that are dying. 

He's the ghetto and the Museum of Fine Arts. 
He's van Gogh and Allen Ginsberg and Robert Motherwell. 
He's the many desperate hands, cleaning and preparing their weapons. 
He's every one of us, potentially. 
The leaf of grass, the genius, the politician, the poet. 
And if this is true, isn't it something very important?

Yes, it could be that I am a tiny piece of God, and

each of you too, or at least

of his intention and his hope....

3.

Of course for each of us, there is the daily life.

Let us live it, gesture by gesture.

When we cut the ripe melon, should we not give it thanks?

And should we not thank the knife also?

We do not live in a simple world.

4.

There was someone I loved who grew old and ill

One by one I watched the fires go out.

There was nothing I could do

except to remember

that we receive

then we give back...

5.

I pray for the desperate earth.

I pray for the desperate world.

I do the little each person can do, it isn't much.

Sometimes the river murmurs, sometimes it raves....

6.

And trees, and birds that have wings to uphold them,

for heaven's sakes-

the lucky ones: they have such deep natures,

they are so happily obedient.

While I sit here in a house filled with books,

ideas, doubts, hesitations.

7.

And still, pressed deep into  my mind, the river

keeps coming, touching me, passing by on its

long journey, its pale, infallible voice

singing.

A quick review on the internet shows this to be one of Mary's more popular later poems.  For me, I enjoy it so very much because it speaks of an answer to old age, death, loss, and suffering.  What can we do but to remember that we receive, and that our response is to give back? For God is in my arthritic knees, my mother's dementia, my sister's cancer, and in the extinction of the parrots and the people.  I'm going to have to listen very, very hard to hear the singing in such times as these.

Is your house full of ideas? Doubts?  Hesitations? Prayer? Singing?

Percy Speaks While I am Doing Taxes

First of all, I do not want to be doing this.

Second of all, Percy does not want me

  to be doing this.

hanging over my desk like a besieged person

  with a dull pencil and innumerable lists

    of numbers.

Outside the water is blue, the sky is clear,

  the tide rising.

Percy, I say, this has to be done. This is

  essential. I'll be finished eventually.

Keep me in your thoughts, he replies. Just because

  I can't count to ten doesn't mean

I don't remember yesterday, or anticipate today.

  I give you one more hour, then we step out

into the beautiful, money-deaf gift of the world

and run.

Just this last month I read about language research with a dog who knew 1000 words.  They do understand a lot.

Currently I am reading the book, "Parrot Behavior" and just yesterday read about parrots that know not just hundreds of words, but can combine words into meaningful sentences.  They do understand a lot.

All of this reminds me of the movie, "Forest Gump" where Forest says, "I may not be smart, but I know what love is."

No matter how we see the intelligence of another being, whether it is comparable to humans or to other species or not, I do believe that we share with the other social vertebrates a common neural structure of emotional responses that evolved out of this beautiful earth.

Baby, we were born to run, to love, and feel deep gratitude for the gifts around us.

What were you born to do?

Percy at Breakfast (Twelve)

Percy says, I've eaten, and I'm still hungry.

So I say, what about toast?  and offer him

a dry corner.

Percy says, I like butter better.

Eggs then?  I say. And we share a couple scrambled.

Good! says Percy. And then because he's polite sometimes,

Thank you.

He turns to leave the room, then looks back

philosophically. I guess people just don't understand,

he says, how it is never to be not hungry.

Where to find humans who are never not hungry:

People in the midst of famine, drought, devastation, and political turmoil

Dictators

Political leaders of all stripes

American consumers

CEOs

Alcoholics

Advertising companies of substances that can be abused

A child suffering  abuse

A parent wielding this abuse

Prisoners

Guards

The tortured

The torturers

Me on a stressful day

Those who interact with me on a stressful day

Where do you know hunger and what do you hunger for?

Percy at His Bath, or, Ambivalence (Eleven)

Today Jill is cutting my snags and my curls.

My legs grow longer.

My tail gets brushed.

Then, the bath.

Mary has been reading a book about

a woman who made a secret journey

to Lhasa. She reads aloud to me the parts

about the village dogs, who are big and

fearless and full of bark. And, all

their lives, dirty. I am filled

with envy.

then it's over and I am in my bed

as white as snow and soft and all

the sea salt gone. And over every part of me

an absurd but lovely fragrance.

This morning I heard of a book, "My Princess Boy."  A mother wrote about her journey dealing with her young son who wanted to dress up in pink and frilly clothes.  She and her husband came to terms to not judge their son on what a "male" should and should not do, but to accept the beauty of the boy as he choose to live his life. 

As I listened to this mother and her child on national TV this morning being interviewed, I thought of my own childhood.  I fought stubbornly with my parents when they wished that I would not dress "like a boy" and who would say, "For gosh shakes, can you wash your face now and then?" My  mother even one time told me, "If I had a dog, I would shave its rear end and make it walk backwards, and it would still look better than you!"  (oh Percy, are you more handsome than me?)

That was an "ouch" at the time, though I can now understand  her frustration as I look back and ponder what her life must have been like with 4 teen agers in the house.  I have changed a bit, and will done dresses now and then, and indeed, have my share of frilly things.  I also still love the dirt, the rough and tumble, and the freedom from gender constraints. 

I will be going on a 12 day trip to the rain forests of Guyana in 3 months and we are only allowed 25 pounds baggage.  With about 17 pounds of camera/video gear, this doesn't leave much room for clothes and personal items. I'm so looking forward to competing with the others on the trip - how few clothes can I get by with, how dirty can I get, and who by the end of the trip will be mas macho?  At the same time, it will be delicious to get home and in a clean bed with fresh clothes.

Ambiguity, my liberator!  Our liberator! The liberator of future generations of children.  May they not be bullied for difference, diversity, and choice.

Where does ambiguity liberate you?

This Too

There was the body of the fawn, in the leaves,

under the tall oaks.

There was the face, the succulent mouth,

the pink, extruded tongue.

There were the eyes.

There was its dark dress, half pulled off.

There were its little hooves.

There was the smell of change, which was

stink.

There was my dog's nose, reading the silence

like a book.

No one spoke, not the Creator, not the Preserver, not the Destroyer.

There was the sound of wind in the leaves,

in the tall oaks.

There was the terrible excitement

of the flies.

Two nights ago I saw the movie, "All the Little Animals" that is about, in part, a man who dedicates his life to burying dead animals he finds along the side of the road. He considers this his lifelong work and takes on an apprentice to carry on after he too lies in the ground.  At one point in the movie the apprentice, Bobby, silently digs what might be his own grave. As he ponders his own death, he suddenly feels lighter and more whole than he ever has.  He notices everything, and in this clarity he grows excited as his life and death give him meaning.   

Death, this too, must we not only notice in every detail, but love?

Whose death do you remember in detail, and how does this add to your life today?