I have seen the great feet
leaping into the river
and I have seen moonlight
milky along the long muzzle
and I have seen the body
of something scaled and wonderful
slumped in the sudden fire of it mouth,
and I could not tell which fit me
more comfortably, the power,
or the powerlessness:
neither would have me
entirely; I was divided,
consumed, by sympathy,
pity, admiration.
After a while it was done,
the fish had vanished, the bear
lumped away
to the green shore
and into the trees. And then there was only
this story.
It followed me home
and entered my house-
a difficult guest
with a single tune
which it hums all day and through the night-
slowly, or briskly,
it doesn't matter,
it sounds like a river leaping and falling; it sounds like a body
falling apart
Being a prey item myself, you would think that I would root for the fish in this story, or the small dove loosing feathers in a explosion as the falcon hits. I am also a predator and have, and I admit it only a few times, been hungry in my life. Mostly I know how hard it is to be a predator, being a wildlife veterinarian who has treated the young raptors who have not learned the difficult task of hunting or fishing. So I root for the predator.
In short, I am torn. Seeing an Eagle scoop down over the river I whisper "careful" to the Pintail ducks on the water. Then my breath stills and when the Eagle's talons are full of meaty feathers, I should, "Wow! Well done!" Then I think of the eggs to grow cold on the nest and what will not come to be for the sake of dinner. I ache.
What a mess this life is. I awake this morning so pleased that I have the resources to contribute to life through writing, speaking, and consulting. As a predator I have hunted well in my life, accruing resources so that I may rest in my nest lined with feathers. But they are feathers of others. Just yesterday I awoke, weepy, thinking of the masses whose children will die of dysentery before the day is over, one who might have an older brother here in the U.S., perhaps even the one who cooked a burrito for me over the weekend. I am for the prey, and I am for the predator. I am for power, I am for sharing power so that it does not accumulate in the upper echelons of the food chain.
Being on the team of life, also means cheering for death.
I wonder if the only sane response is the crazy one - to go through this day with a broken heart, open to what is and letting in everything, so that my heart grows bigger and stronger.
Who do you root for, prey, predator, both, neither?
There is something
about the snow-laden sky
in winter
in the late afternoon
that brings to the heart elation
and the lovely meaninglessness
of time.
Whenever I get home - whenever -
somebody loves me there.
Meanwhile
I stand in the same dark peace
as any pine tree,
or wander on slowly
like the still unhurried wind,
waiting,
as for a gift,
for the snow to begin
which it does
at first casually,
then, irrepressibly.
Wherever else I live -
in music, in words,
in the fires of the heart,
I abide just as deeply
in this nameless, indivisible place,
this world,
which is falling apart now,
which is white and wild,
which is faithful beyond all our expressions of faith,
our deepest prayers.
Don't worry, sooner or later I'll be home.
Red-cheeked from the roused wind,
I'll stand in the doorway
stamping my boots and slapping my hands,
my shoulders
covered with stars.
keywords: snow, sky, winter, time love, dark, peace, tree, wind, gift, music, word, fire, heart, world, star
I have been told that in this book we see a shift of Mary, perhaps towards religion or God. I'm not quite clear what discontent exactly some of my acquaintances portend when they say "Mary changes" in her later books. It's hard for me to imagine that she could be much more religious, much more of the suffering seeker, or more the one totally committed to growing her faith in the world than she has been. I certainly know that she brings out the hunger in me for faith in earth and her beings. Just beyond her words and often beyond my reach is the nameless, the indivisible, to which she temporarily gives the names of tree or bird. Maybe later she'll take the risk and call this God. It's all the same to me, for my struggle will not change. With this world falling apart now, how might I still see the light and grow a faith that is ultimately beyond me. For me, part of this answer is becoming, read a poem from Mary.
You who read Mary regularly, what is happening with your faith and in your prayers?
Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even,
while it calls the earth its home, the soul.
So the merciful, noisy machine
stands in our house working away in its
lung-like voice. I hear it as I kneel
before the fire, stirring with a
stick of iron, letting the logs
lie more loosely. You, in the upstairs room,
are in your usual position, leaning on your
right shoulder which aches
all day. You are breathing
patiently; it is a
beautiful sound. It is
your life, which is so close
to my own that I would not know
where to drop the knife of
separation. And what does this have to do
with love, except
everything? Now the fire rises
and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red
roses of flame. Then it settles
to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds
as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:
our purest, sweet necessity: the air.
Oh my gosh, my last posting was about responding to a desperate need for union, or perhaps better said a plea for awareness of the already existing beloved union. My solution was to breathe, to share our lives with this next breath, the only gift we truly have to give and to receive. Then Mary writes this to my heart. Taking in one poem every day I am struck by the story I am retelling of our lives here on this planet. Mary's poems speak to me like a book of Rumi poems, like a book of Koans, like the Bible, like the Talmud, like the Quran, like an African chant, like a Hopi dance., and like a woodpecker's tapping on a tree. All these scriptures knock on the soul's door so that we may open to awareness, and if we just focus with intent, we can retell the stories of our lives based on love, and not on domination and power over others. It doesn't really matter what we choose to help guide us, especially since it seems that guides choose us. And Mary, you have chosen me so that I may with joy greet the sun's rising knowing that the air I take in and that becomes part of my body's molecules comes from the same air you have taken in, that the dinosaurs snorted out, and that Jesus cried. To breathe is to love our neighbors as ourselves.
What does breathing mean to you?
What is there beyond knowing that keeps calling to me? I can’t
Turn in any direction
But it’s there. I don’t mean
The leaves grip and shine or even the thrush’s
Silk song, but the far-off
Fires, for example,
Of the stars, heaven’s slowly turning
Theater of light, or the wind
Playful with its breath;
Or time that’s always rushing forward,
Or standing still
In the same-what shall I say-
Moment.
What I know
I could put into a pack
As if it were bread and cheese, and carry it
On one shoulder,
Important and honorable, but so small!
While everything else continues, unexplained
And unexplainable. How wonderful it is
In Mary we see such consistent homage to pantheism – the mystery and sacred interconnection is here in the life before us. In this poem I see emerging a thread of panentheism – god is all around us and beyond us as well – in time, in the sky and wind, and in the mystery. Perhaps it is a relief to be able to turn away from the face of god as she comes to us in insect and bird song and towering tree. We just need a break from all the glory so that we may be empty and therefore be vessels ready to fill up with what is. For if we try to know what is, we have sealed our soul’s containers. I myself am like a Starbucks coffee cup – I do place a lid on my spirit by wanting to know and to control, but then an accident comes my way, I tip, I leak, and I spill myself out. It’s a terrible mess, believe me, and often the catastrophe happens in public. But what could be more pleasurable than to be holding an empty cup, headed towards the coffee urn to be filled up with the stimulating unexplainable? - The natural stimulant of not knowing – and accepting our lot, eh?
What do you accept or resist not knowing, or knowing?
They’re not like peaces or squash. Plumpness isn’t for them. They like being lean, as if for the narrow path. The beans themselves sit quietly inside their green pods. Instinctively one picks with care, never tearing down he fine vine, never not noticing their rips bodies, or feeling their willingness for the pot, for the fire.
I have thought sometimes that something-I can’t name it- - watches as I walk the rows, accepting the gift of their lives to assist mine.
I know what you think: this is foolishness. They’re only vegetables. Even the blossoms with which they begin are small and pale, hardly significant. Our hands, or minds, our feet hold more intelligence. With this I have no quarrel.
But, what about virtue?
I am working with a group of philosophers who are developing the understanding of animals as having virtue, for nonhumans can be compassionate, kind, nurturing, and empathetic. By looking through a lens of virtue ethics at other beings we may break down our preconceived notions that humans are separate from nonhumans and that we are alone on the evolutionary tree. Now Mary here goes a step farther. What about the virtue of beans? What about the virtue of the earth, the sun, the universe, the “watcher” of our lives? Virtue, it may be argued, is something we intentionally create within our characters over a life time. What then of a young toddler who gives her toy to her friend? I do not see much preconceived intention in that act, or a lifetime of refinement. I am not saying that we can’t change who we are as we strive towards the future, in fact, I’d say the blessing of life is that each of us, where we are, can change and move towards the virtue we wish in the world. Yet at the same time there is virtue with which we are born. So why cannot virtue be born in plant and pig? Which virtues might that be? The one that comes to mind is the virtue of interconnection. Interconnecting is not a classic virtue, yet it seems to be the one I hold in common with bean and beaver. We are born interconnected, the gift we give to one another, the silent embrace that watches over us all.
What virtues do you see in nonhuman life? In your own life?
for forty years
the sheets of white paper have
passed under my hands and I have tried
to improve their peaceful
emptiness putting down
little curls little shafts
of letters words
little flames leaping..
forty years
and again this morning as always
I am stopped as the world comes back
wet and beautiful I am thinking
that language
is not even a river
is not a tree is not a green field
is not even a black ant traveling
briskly modestly
from day to day from one
golden page to another.
Yesterday Mary spoke of her 40 years of listening and how a few words of prose and poetry come to her as gifts. Yet the words seem to stand in the way of her total melding with life. She listens and flows with all that is, and then when she writes, she becomes human, separate. In the very act of sharing her heart's entwinement with animals, plants, and the earth, she must unravel what it means to be human, and become alone. Is her experience so different than my experience in writing this morning? In you reading these words? What are we doing not out in the beautiful wet morning?
I am just back from the wet morning - a thunderstorms evidence sparkling about and my shirt soaked through with summer's humidity. Along my path I encountered a still living armadillo on the side of the road. She suffered a crushing blow, but was still somewhat conscious. I must write, I must share, I must witness, this next typed letter no more precious than the ants swarming around her. I use words to feed my human colony to know of my heart ache over her suffering, and of my appreciation that Alachua County Animal Services will send someone out to help her. Words serve us, though the calling to serve means we step back and let our heart and mind focus on tasks and know the pain of separation from the beloved earth.
How do words serve you? How do you use words to serve?
owl
make your little appearance now
owl dark bird bird of gloom
messenger reminder
of death
that can't be stopped
argued with leashed put out
like a red fire but
burns as it will
owl
I have not seen you now for
too long a time don't
hide away but come flowing and clacking
the slap of your wings
your death's head oh rise
out of the thick and shaggy pines when you
look down with your
golden eyes how everything
trembles
then settles
from mere incidence into
the lush of meaning.
My father-in-law, Jerry, is visiting us now these weeks of late spring. He brought his binoculars and his presence in the moment, for he has lost most of his short term memory ability because of Alzheimer's. He won't remember what birds he has seen, but that hasn't stopped us from looking. He asked what were the "good birds" to see and I told him of the Barred Owl who comes to our clothesline every year to hunt, and of the Swallow-tailed Kites, one who just flew over our yard a few days back. The Owl though has not returned and I wonder if he has died, for surely he would not forget us or the great hunting in our mostly uncut lawn.
Yesterday I took Jerry to our congregation that has a Sunday morning bird walk. I asked our most impressive bird leader, Caleb Gordon, if the Barred Owl had been seen lately on the grounds and he said, not so much. But that didn't keep us from looking. Towards the end of the walk the owl came in silently to the oak trees above us. The owl looked down on us and I wondered what meaning there is in the gaze the owl exchanged with us if the memory is to be immediately erased as in the case of Alzheimer's or in the case of too busy schedules that move from one incident to the next. Maybe we can't hold onto memories, but that doesn't mean that we don't look for meaning and interconnection in our days and offer what we experience to those who accompany us on our walk through life. So every day I tell Jerry about the owl, and the Swallow-tailed Kite he saw later that same day, show him pictures of them, and we find satisfaction in these moments of interconnection with one another. So maybe my owl won't come back this year and Jerry won't remember him even if he did, but for this moment, I can hold onto the grace of having family with us, now, if not always into the future. Owl of life, owl of death, our whole lives.
What do owls mean to you?
I looked up and there it was
among the green branches of the pitchpines-
thick bird,
a ruffle of fire trailing over the shoulders and down the back-
color of copper, iron, bronze-
lighting up the dark branches of the pine.
What misery to be afraid of death.
What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven.
When I made a little sound
it looked at me, then it looked past me.
Then it rose, the wings enormous and opulent,
and, as I said, wreathed in fire.
We look at death and it returns our gaze. Then it moves on and looks past us, for death is not an individual pursuit but an interconnecting light that burns in us all. I like Mary am tired of the wretched days where the bright beauty of birds cages us, instead of setting us free. Maybe we choose to bypass wonder because the ache of love and loss burns us so deeply that we do not want to rise from the ashes of our limitations day in and day out. The red-winged blackbird rises always in fire full flamboyance, why not us?
What sounds do you make so that beauty might reflect your inner divinity?
Who doesn’t love roses and who doesn’t love the lilies of the black ponds.
Look, so wide-eyed our orbits are like black ponds, eternity’s sunrise brings a smile reflecting through the heavens.
All my life,
so far,
I have loved
more than one thing...
In spring
the moccasin flowers
reach for the crackling
lick of the sun
and burn down...
But all my life-so far-
I have loved best
how the flowers rise
and open, how
the pink lungs of their bodies
enter the fire of the world
and stand there shining
and willing-the one
thing they can do before
they shuffle forward
into the floor of darkness, they
become the trees
I rejoice in this poem, for today is Easter, Ostara, and our annual Flower Communion. The streets and woods around Gainesville are bursting with light green leaves and flowers poking out through the undergrowth, or exploding atop trees and bushes. Was there ever such a spring? I think every year I ask this - is it me, or is this spring more marvelous than the last? Rilke, in his Ninth Elegy, says, "Earth, my love, I will! My faith yields to you not needing one more of your springs, ach, already one spring is too much for my blood!" My blood stirs with the surprise of what was once barren, I swear, only a few days ago, is now polyphonic splendor. Oh that I was consciously and consistently willing to flower in beauty as intimate death keeps me company under the suns arcing dance. It seems in spring that I am more willing to accept the invitation of death and resurrection and that there is more joy than usual in change. It's as if I feel I am turning into the trees myself, one un noticed in a forest. In watching them with my unknown neighbors who share the same azalea bush, together we turn our hearts to awareness, acceptance, and peace.
What does spring mean to you?
Last night the geese came back. Every year the geese, returning,
Do this, I don’t
Know how.
The curtains opened and there was
An old man in a headdress of feathers,
Leather leggings and a vest made
From the kin of some animal. He danced
In a kind of surly rapture…
I don’t know
Lots of things but I know this: next year
When spring
Flows over the starting point I’ll think I’m going to
Drown in the shimmering miles of it and then
One or two birds will fly me over
The threshold.
As for the pain of others, of course it tried to be
Abstract, but then
There flares up out of a vanished wilderness, like fire,
Still blistering: the wrinkled face
Of an old Chippewa
Smiling, hating us,
Dancing for his life.
Two kinds of salvation – birds returning to spring and the surly dance in the pain of a vanished wilderness. Where is the deliverance in this? Perhaps that it is the presence of life, the story that must be told, that cannot be stopped from being sung, told, and danced. It is your/my story of pain and it is the flight overhead of the sun's arc towards darkness. Would you tell me your despair and I will tell you mine? Then perhaps the false smile will slip away, as will the hate.
Where in your life do you tell the story of our vanished wilderness and peoples?
You can
Die for it –
An idea,
Or the world. People
Have done so, brilliantly,
Letting
Their small bodies be bound
To the stake,
Creating
An unforgettable
Fury of light…
I thought
How the sun
Blazes
For everyone just
So joyfully
As it rises
Under the lashes
Of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?
What is the name
Of the deep breath I would take
Over and over
For all of us? Call it
Whatever you want, it is
Happiness, it is another one
Of the ways to enter fire.
By being present to this moment, this breath, we give ourselves over to a better thing. We can die for the sake of an idea, be martyrs for a cause, but what if there is no cause? Or perhaps only the sun. Or only all of us together on this blue boat home? William Blake writes:
They who bind to themselves a joy
Do the winged life destroy
But they who kiss the joy as it flies
Live in eternity’s sunrise.
With this next moment, your next breath, will you give yourself over to our shared cause, in this pause, we kiss the joy together.
