Wind in the Pines

Is it true that the wind

streaming especially in fall

through the pines

is saying nothing, nothing at all,

or is it just that I don't yet know the language?

The trees are our interpreters. They tell us what the world is saying.  From which direction does the wind come, how strong is it, how variable is it, and how long does it last? From this we know if  a storm approaching, a front coming through, or the breeze rising from the changing heat or from the water.

Once I was in Nashville when there had been storm warnings all day.  Towards the end of the storm I turned off the TV and radio, figuring any tornado possibilities were gone.  Suddenly it got very dark and I looked out at the trees, some of which were bending to the point of snapping in two. The tornado passed by just a few blocks away, though I couldn't tell except for the trees..

Another time I was in Northern California and couldn't figure out what a door had shut in the house and why my clothes were swaying in the closet.  I looked out at the trees, and in seeing their rocking, I knew an earthquake had struck.

So I look often to the trees, for they speak in birds, in flowers and seeds, in wind, and in beauty. Such a lovely language.

What different languages are there in your life?

Beans Green and Yellow

In fall it is mushrooms

gathered from dampness

under the pines:

in spring I have known

the taste of the lamb

full of milk and spring grass;

today it is beans green and yellow

 and lettuce and basil from my friends' garden-

how calmly, as though it were an ordinary thing,

we eat the blessed earth.

Just last week Mary spoke of eating a pine cone that had passed through the digestive system of a bear. Is there nothing she won't eat and be grateful for?

I for one have not been very grateful for the kinds of food that come in the form "green leaves."  I have not been able to eat kale, mustard greens, and spinach, even when covered in cheese such as in lasagna.  It took me years to be able to eat artichokes and Brussels spouts without gagging.  Maybe this has something to do with my mother serving canned spinach that was only slightly warmed up for dinner and became increasingly slimy as the meal progressed.  I was not able to leave the table until "...it's all gone! Don't you know children are starving in India?"

Then this winter my spouse and I joined a food coop at an organic farm.  Winter vegetables in this part of the world are nearly synonymous with leafy vegetables.  "Oh my gosh"  I moaned when we picked up the first bag, "How will you eat this before it all goes bad?"   He answered this with a weekly ritual of cooking a pot of beans and vegetables, and adding some of the green leaves.  I love his vegetable stews normally, so I agreed to give it a go.  It looked and smelled terrible, but that first spoonful was doable, as long as I didn't look to closely at what was going in the gullet.  Each week since then he has been slowly adding a greater percentage of the organic vegetables, including turnips, radishes, and various things with big leaves we don't know the name of.  Each week I eat more and more of it and that pot's contents has become my major source of nutrition.  We are almost into spring and I have not tired of it, and am ever so grateful for it. 

Maybe the difference is that these vegetables come straight out of earth that I live upon. They are sturdy, firm, and fierce in my eyes.  For they bring me health and interconnection in ways I never knew was possible. Once a food nonbeliever, now I am saved.  What amazing grace is this world that we eat. Blessings to my spouse and all those others who make this possible.  

Are there foods for which you are not grateful? 

At the Pond

One summer
     I went every morning
        to the edge of a pond where
           a huddle of just-hatched geese

would paddle to me
     and clamber
        up the marshy slope
           and over my body,

peeping and staring—
     such sweetness every day
        which the grown ones watched,
           for whatever reason,

serenely.
     Not there, however, but here
        is where the story begins.
           Nature has many mysteries,

some of them severe.
     Five of the young geese grew
        heavy of chest and
           bold of wing

while the sixth waited and waited
     in its gauze-feathers, its body
        that would not grow.
           And then it was fall.

And this is what I think
     everything is all about:
        the way
           I was glad

for those five and two
     that flew away,
        and the way I hold in my heart the wingless one
           that had to stay.

I weep.  I know not what more there is to life than the gladness and sadness possible before us, and in our hearts if we could just open to the mysterious reality of our days.

Yesterday a woman asked me how I could bare the tragic circumstances of the people and parrots of Central America.  Her question recalls how I can leave the poverty and the violence with my US passport, and others have to stay, not growing, and then dying.  Turning outward, I told her there were years when I could not hold it all, and days still where the ache is great.  Reading this poem reminds me of my true work here at this conference, and in my 53 years of life. I am here not to get more learning, offer more teaching, or to save the world. My calling instead has been to find a way to hold more gladness and more sadness.  Then to be held more myself by the love of this world.

How will you hold or be held today? 

Thinking of the Swirler

One day I went out into a wonderful ongoing afternoon, in was fall,

the pine trees were brushing themselves against the sky as though they were painting it, and Swirler,

who was alive then, was walking slowly through the green bog, his neck

as thick as an ox, his antlers brushing against the trees,

his three good feet tapping

the softness beneath him and the fourth, from an old wound, swirling. I know he saw me

for he gave me a long look which was as precious as a few good words, since his eyes

were without terror  What do the creatures know? What in this world can we be certain about?  How did he know I was nothing

but a harmless mumbler of words, some of which would be about him

and this wind-whipped day?  In a week he would be dead,

arrowed down by a young man I like, though with some difficulty.

In my house there are a hundred half-done poems.  Each of us leaves an unfinished life.

My son recently returned home from a month's visit to his native country, Honduras.  He and his brother had been down at the river swimming, and growing bored, his brother raised his slingshot and killed two birds.  My son showed me pictures of the dead birds, one of which I could see was  a brightly colored "Mountain Trogon."  My son said he and his brother had never seen such a bird near their home before.  I wonder if they ever will again.

At the end of December, 3 Whooping Cranes were shot in Georgia.  These were young birds that had been raised in Wisconsin and this was their first migration south.    I wonder if hunters had gotten bored.

When I was 21 I visited a night club and sitting at a table full of locals, we told each other of our lives.  He asked what I did and I answered that I was a bird veterinarian.  He then said, "Shucks. I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I shoot hawks. Sometimes when I'm waiting for a deer or a duck, I get so bored. I just have to empty my gun into something."  I wonder what ever happened to that man.

What is it that pulls our kind to finish off another before their time?  Boredom?  Anxiety and despair mixed with feelings of being overwhelmed and perhaps mental incoherence?  Why did the shooter fire into the crowd, killing six and severely wounding Representative Gaby Gifford in Arizona a few days ago?

 I have hundreds of unanswered questions swirling around in my head, the fog of this morning echoing the murkiness in so many minds.  I wonder what we shall make of all these unfinished lives.

Is there something you wish to finish, or leave unfinished in your life?       

Song of Autumn

In the deep fall
don't you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don't you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep
inside their bodies? And don't you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

Here in Northern Florida we just had a record number of consecutive days over 90 degrees – 49! In that period I imagine there were many people fantasizing about snow, glaciers, and frigid winds. The holy grail of summer is the promise of fall and winter. In that same period I imagine there were many people bowing down in gratitude for the heat and humidity, and how when you go out at night it is as if you are swimming in or held by the earth. Their air smells and feels in its heaviness that it is similar in composition to your own moisture. It is as if every breath in is full of carbon bits, the organic debris of a world that knows no bounds. I am one of these tropicalphiles. I don’t need my frontal cortex to tell me that I am interconnected to all of life – a being both glorious and insignificant. My body knows these truths. In winter, huddled indoors or under layers of clothes, I struggle a bit more to know that I belong. Perhaps that is the way of the great dying back and death of winter, and of human life. It’s not a path so easily known. But I imagine a flock of birds nesting in my body upon the indifferent snow. That, even for one enamored with life and the tropics, is almost enough to have me long for winter, for death.

What does winter symbolize for you?