Four Sonnets - Part 4

4.

This morning what I am thinking of is circles:

The sun, the earth, the moon;

The life of each of us that begins then returns

To our home, the circular world,

Even as in our cleverness we have invented

Invention – the straight line…

This morning what I am thinking about is circles

And the straight lines that rule us

While earth abides in all sorts of splendors,

Knowing its limitations. The light

Of every morning curls forth,

Oh beautifully, then circles toward the dark.

Obama works, prays, then grabs his scrim of sleep.

For five days I have seen every sunrise, and every sunset.  Round each day goes and I don’t know what day of the week it is.  Roundness, wholeness, belonging suffuses the air.  The rivers upon which we travel, the Rupununi and the Rewa, resist the straight and narrow of human culture as they curve around the hidden splendors of the forests, macaws, toucans, orchids, and Amerindian children.  Yet, I cannot keep my mind from work, from thought, from inventing some kind of project to keep this beauty safe.  I write here for this blog, I keep a bird species list, I journal.  What if I were to just breathe?  Would I find the rhythm of these 500 year old trees around me?

What happens if you were to just breathe with those you love and admire?

Four Sonnets - Part 1

1.       There appeared a darkly sparkling thin hardly bigger than a pin, that all afternoon  seemed to want my company,  It did me no hurt but wandered my shirt, my sleeve cuff, my wrist…

Oh, distant relative, we will never speak to each other a single kind word. And yet, in this world, it is no small thing to sparkle.

I am in Guyana and there are millions of things here I know not the name of – insects that bite and hum and chirp and whistle.  Along our walks today I hear a constant toning of a mediation bell, and it is a bee I am told.  Even if it is a large bee, it remains such a small thing to invoke the trees to bend in the wind as eaves in a chapel.  Out there with them I pray that I am aware that all beings sparkle.

What small things are with you in your life?

Torn

I tore the web

of a black and yellow spider

in the brash of weeds

and down she came

on her surplus of legs

each of which

touched me and really

the touch wasn't much

but then the way

if a spider can

she looked at me

clearly somewhere between

outraged and heartbroken

made my say 'I'm sorry

to have wrecked your home...

swung herself off

on the thinnest of strings

back into the world.

This pretty, this perilous world.

The news reports that the Japanese are being courageous after losing their homes due to the earthquake and tsunami.  They keep at their business and line up for supplies.  I heard someone yesterday comparing themselves to the Japanese, saying we Westerners do not know about order and calm in the midst of tragedy.  Maybe it's because we haven't known so much here on our isolated continent the kinds of terrible circumstances that breed steadfastness. 

Instead we look on, outraged and heartbroken, as if our very gaze and will could take away nuclear perils and return these beautiful people to their homes.

We are such a torn people, wishing to have clean energy and pretty homes, and not knowing what level of risk to take to line our nest with the good life.

To the world today, in all I consume, may I say "I'm sorry to have wrecked your home."

Whose home have you or your lifestyle destroyed?  Whose are you rebuilding?

In the Pasture

In the first day of snow, when the white curtain of winter began to stream down,

The house where I lived grew distant and at first it seemed imperative to hurry home.

But later, not much later, I began to see that soft snowbound house as I would always remember it,

And I would linger a long time in the pasture turning  circles, staring

At all the crisp, exciting, snow-filled roads that led away.

Memories are inconclusive. With each recall, our brains change the version of the previous until we cannot know for sure what happened.  We can only know how we interpret events of the past in the present moment.

Given this, it does seem as if we can change the past. For we have today to place a shroud of memory over our regrets, our misgivings, or our loss.  We can let go of the stories of disconnection or hyperindividualism and infuse our stories with the meaning of interdependence.

For instance, perhaps you recall a time when a friend said or did something that resulted in harm to you.  Each time you bring up that pain or discomfort from the past, you augment your judgment about the friend, yourself, or the human species as a whole.  You withdraw from that relationships or close your heart to them and to yourself.  It is like burrowing into a cold house where you wish for life to be different .  Looking out of the frosted windows of our heart, you spin fantasizes of how it should be. 

Today though let go of blame and instead see how you are the other person.  There is no wrongdoing or right doing from the perspective of the pasture, only a field where we see the beauty that is the world, is also each of us.  We each choose strategies to meet the same beautiful needs of love, connection, and community. Some of these strategies are more skillful and produce more benefits than harm. Other strategies are disasters.  Regardless, beauty dwells in each of us and motivates our actions.

With this in mind, we open up new possibilities of choices in our relationships. Perhaps you will choose to call your friend, or to be at peace with what happened.  We are neither victim nor evil perpetrator. We are each other and this beautiful world, and we can choose how to act from this day forward. We may take roads that  lead away from memories that bind us.

When have you seen a memory change over time?

Boundaries

There is a place where the town ends,

And the fields begin.

It’s not marked but the feet know it,

Also the heart that is longing for refreshment

And, equally, for repose.

Someday we’ll live in the sky.

Meanwhile, the house of our lives is this green world.

The fields, the ponds, the birds.

The thick black oaks-surely they are

The invention of something wonderful.

And the tiger lilies.

And the runaway honeysuckle that no one

Will ever trim again.

Where is it? I ask, and then

My feet know it.

One jump, and I’m home.

Hearing this poem I am reminded of the song, “Gentle Arms of Eden” by Tracy Grammer and David Carter. The chorus goes:

This is my home, this is my only home
This is the only sacred ground that I have ever known
And should I stray in the dark night alone
Rock me goddess in the gentle arms of eden.

The green world is our home. Earth, our sacred ground that we know now, not fathoming if we become sky people at some future time as we ascend to the stars, or to heaven. Is there some invisible boundary between this “nature” and the expanse of urban life? Isn’t home all over the planet, even the places we have defiled and desecrated?

Later in this same song we hear:

Now there's smoke across the harbor, and there's factories on the shore
And the world is ill with greed and will and enterprise of war
But I will lay my burden in the cradle of your grace
And the shining beaches of your love and the sea of your embrace

I was speaking with my spouse about the future of the earth and how humans have changed the planet so. The topic came up as I explained how difficult it was for me to read historical novels of my home area. I had recently finished reading Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier and have begun reading Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen. The span of history told of how the Southeast was once full of abundant oaks, fish, and birds, and now to my eye it appears devastated.. I don’t know if I can finish this second novel, so painful is my response to what we have lost.

I mourned that we had lost paradise. To which my spouse replied, “The parrots you love are not so different or any more or less innocent than we. Perhaps the only difference is that they know they have not left paradise.”

Ah, my beloved homeland. Earth, my only home. We humans and what we build is nature and are the fruits of eden. Paradise never left us. Only in some artificial construct of human knowing and culture, we set up an artificial boundary of whether who we are and what we do belongs.

May today in my actions and thoughts, welcome and be welcomed.

Where do you feel the most at home? The least?

Night and the River

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?

The Whistler

All of a sudden she began to whistle. By all of a sudden I mean t hat for more than thirty years she had not whistled. It was so thrilling. At first I wondered, who was in the house, what stranger? I was upstairs reading, and she was downstairs. As from the throat of a wild cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, the sounds warbled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared.

Finally I said, Is that you? Is that you whistling? Yes, she said. I used to whistle, a long time ago. Now I see I can still whistle. And cadence after cadence she strolled through the house, whistling.

I know her so well, I think. I thought. Elbow and ankle.. Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too. And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin to know each other? Who is this I’ve been living with for thirty years?

This clear, dark, lovely whistler?

I just watched a Jim Carery movie last night, “Yes Man.” The story line had Jim saying “yes” to everything as a way to happiness. He had to say yes when people asked him to do something. This led him to experiment with new experiences and opened up his life to relationships and learning he might not have already had. The paradox was that by learning to say yes so often and so whole heartedly, he learned to say no. He came to lead a more authentic life based on his values of love and connection. So I am wondering where in my own life I am constricted and want to offer up an automatic yes or no, instead of stepping out unto this new day with an open heart that might respond with the choice of either yes I will or no I won’t. No matter the answer, my choices come from the heart. Who knows, that might even mean I return to the whistling of my child hood, or some other adventure that might just startle me and others around me into joyous harmony.

What might you say yes to today that you normally say no to?

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches? June 22, 2010

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches
of other lives --
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,
hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning,
feel like?

Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!


Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?


Well, there is time left --
fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!


To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!

To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened

in the night

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,

and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.


Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe

I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!

A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.

That was then, which hasn't ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes; I follow the ocean's edge.

I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.

I am in the north of this continent, not so very far, but far enough that the sun rises much earlier and sets much later than usual. I awoke with a vision of amazement – thinking of the Scarlet Macaw of Mesoamerica. I cannot think of that bird without thinking of death, and of loss. Reading yesterday in the book, “Seven Names for the Bellbird,” which is a book about how people value birds in Honduras, I came across a section on the Scarlet Macaw, the Guara Roja. The author found that the Hondurans speak of the Guara in terms of how much loss of the natural world they have seen. So the Guara came to me today, a bird of life and a bird of death and a bird of amazement. I so strongly feel that to be on a journey of amazement I must also set one foot in the door of death. For this is presence of what is, which stuns me with the finality and infinity of my shared being. So here I am at the annual gathering of Unitarian Universalist ministers in Minneapolis, hearing the call not to shared ministry, but to shared being.

Where do you journey for amazement, and is death a part of this path?

Clam Man - February 1, 2010

...Some say he's crazy.

He sells clams

Door to door through town...

"Want to buy some clams?" he shouted....

...."No," I said, ashamed

But frightened, and wished him away.

And he disappeared,

Banging the pail as he went

To scare the little breathers in their shells.

Where does shame come from? I've read that it is hard wired in us, that shameful feelings arise on their own from deep within, and the our various cultural constructs add layers on top of this for particular shameful stimuli. So when the frightful, crazy world comes knocking on the doors of our lives and we don't answer, but hide behind masks, shells of ego defenses, or literally in our isolated homes typing away on Facebook, is there anyone's inner soul that does not says "Now wait just a doggone minute, isn't the good life to be open to all that the world is, come hell or high water?" If we hide or clam up, we might miss something wondrous, or something that might teach us who we are and who we are becoming.

Do you experience shame in your life? What unmet needs might be behind these feelings? What might you do to respond to these feeling with actions that open you to the world?

Magellan - January 22, 2010

Like Magellan, let us find our islands

to die in, far from home, from anywhere

Familiar. Let us risk the wildest places,

Lest we go down in comfort, and despair.

...For what is life but reaching for an answer?

And what is death but a refusal to grow?...

..."Sail on, sail on!" he cried.

And so they did, carried the frail dream homeward.

And thus Magellan lives, although he died.

Oh Mary, you are giving answers today on how to live, which adds to the themes I see running in you that I summarized in the poem, "Answers" on January 19. To live, we take risks, seek the dream, and look for answers. To live, we die. There is nothing about comfort anywhere in the agenda. Yet here I sit in warm layers and a freshly brewed cup of coffee with dashes of chocolate, and to live I am to dash off from this domestic scene and step out into the dark that crowds my windows? I get what this poem suggests, but how exactly to do I leave home that smells of my identity, cooking through the long years? Ah, I see, in this asking I might lose myself and find those paradise islands.

Where in your life would you trade comfort in to risk living a wild, authentic life?