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? 

Love Sorrow

Okay, I promise. This is the last blog for a while about my mother. I left her this morning, coming to her bedside to kiss her goodbye.  I touched her forehead, as this poem suggests, and smiled all that I could so that she would feel less alone.  But I wonder about my own loneliness, now 600 miles from her?  In the dance of daughters and mothers, who abandoned whom first, and ever again and again?

My mother in her dementa is strange, mute, difficult and sometimes unmanageble, but in this sleepless night I see her as a beautiful child of this world.  I recall her good years before she began to slip away how we went for walks, upon walks.  I would help her put on her coat, wishing her to feel the warmth in my heart.  In those days I never, ever considered that I would lose her in this way.

I suppose she isn't lost really, for she is my own dear love sorrow.  Ever with me, achingly so. 

I think I'll go for a walk with her as soon as the morning light lessens this current darkness.  Who knows then what amazing things may happen - a growth in love sorrow for tomorrow and for all beings.

Who or what is your love sorrow?

Sometimes

1.

Something came up

out of the dark.

It wasn't anything I had ever seen before.

It wasn't an animal

or a flower,

unless it was both.

Something came up out of the water,

a head the size of a cat

but muddy and without ears.

I don't know what God is.

I don't know what death is.

But I believe they have between them

some fervent and necessary arrangement.

2.

Sometime

melancholy leaves me breathless...

3.

Water from the heavens! Electricity from the source!

Both of them mad to create something!

The lighting brighter than any flower.

The thunder without a drowsy bone in its body.

4.

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

5.

Two or three times in my life I discovered love.

Each time it seemed to solve everything.

Each time it solved a great many things

but not everything.

Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and

thoroughly, solved everything.

6.

God, rest in  my heart

and fortify me,

take away my hunger for answers,

let the hours play upon my body

like the hands of my beloved.

Let the cathead appear again-

the smallest of your mysteries,

some wild cousin of my own blood probably-

some cousin of my own wild blood probably,

in the black dinner-bowl of the pond.

7.

Death waits for me, I know it, around

one corner or another.

This doesn't amuse me.

Neither does it frighten me.

After the rain, I went back into the field of sunflowers.

It was cool, and I was anything but drowsy.

I walked slowly, and listened

to the crazy roots, in the drenched earth, laughing and growing.

Step One: Question

What is it that comes out of the dark?

Is it God?

Is it death?

What is the necessary arrangement between the two?

Step Two: Answer

Love

Step Three: Action

Pay attention, be astonished, tell about it.

Listen

Be crazy

Laugh

Grow

Step Four:  Repeat steps 1-3 as necessary

I summarized Mary's poem with these 4 steps. How would you? What are your "4 steps" to life?

 

The Bleeding Heart

I know a bleeding-heart plant that has thrived for sixty years if not more, and has never missed a spring without rising and spreading itself into a glossy bush, with many small red hearts dangling. Don't you think that deserves a little thought? The woman who planted it has been gone for a long time, and everyone who saw it in that time has also died or moved away and so, like so many stories, this one can't get finished properly. Most things that are important, have you noticed, lack a certain neatness. More delicious, anyway, is to remember my grandmother's pleasure when the dissolve of winter was over and the green knobs appeared and began to rise, and to create their many hearts. One would say she was a simple woman, made happy by simple things. I think this was true. And more than once, in my long life, I have wished to be her.

Once upon a time there were a humanoid people whose heart's cycled with the seasons. In the winter, their hearts shrunk to the size of a raison. The cold snows echoed their cool souls and empty faces. Come the spring their hearts began to grow and by summer would be so big that you could see them beating through their skin, emitting a pink glow around their chests. All summer long they would forget their work and their worries, and spend their days laughing in the rivers and ponds, embraced by life, love, and one another. Their favorite past time was to press their chests against one another and see how long their hearts could beat in perfect synchronization. Come fall they held on to each other's hands as if it was the last time ever. And of course it would be, at least until the following spring. Why do I wish I were they?

How does your heart wax and wane?

William

Now there’s William. He comes

Pecking like a bird, at my

Heart. His eyebrows are like the

Feathers of a wren. His ears are

Little seashells.

I would keep him always in my

Mind’s eye…

Whatever he does, he’ll want

The world to do it in. Maybe,

Who knows, he’ll want this very

Room which, only for convenience,

I realize, I’ve been

Calling mine.

I feel myself begin to wilt, like

An old flower, weak in the stem.

But he is irresistible! Whatever

He wants of mine-my room,

My ideas, my glass of milk, my

Socks and shirts, my place in

Line, my portion, my world – he

May have it.

Just yesterday I thought about choice – that if I could I would choose for a being to not die, for environmental destruction to not come upon the world. Would I choose to keep living and taking up space and using resources if another being asked me for what is mine? Do I get out of the way, through death or through choices to give what is mine to give, so that those younger, still growing may flower into this world? What if the younger or the voiceless don’t know how to ask, or don’t have the power to ask – such as my Honduran son, the oiled pelicans in the gulf, the people and parrot communities in Central America. Am I ready to let them have my life? I am fiercely protective of life, of gifts that exist in every individual, and so, the greatest gift we can give, that is so irresistible, is our life and our gifts. But alas, that request will take everything we’ve got. Life takes unto death. When do we choose? How do we choose?

Who or what is so irresistible to you that you would give any and everything?