Mornings at Blackwater

For years, every morning, I drank

from Blackwater Pond.

it was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,

 feet of ducks.

And always it assuaged me

from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is

 the past is the past,

and the present is what your life is,

and you are capable

of choosing what that will be,

darling citizen.

So come to the pond

or the river of your imagination

or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.

Synchronicity once again comes to me through this couplet of poems.  I wrote yesterday that though anxiety comes to we mortal beings naturally enough, we are capable of choosing another way.  But to do this we must be willing to go where ducks go, into the mud, slime, and goo of our pasts so that the we might see the flower blooming out of the pond's murkiness. 

This pond lily is the Buddhist lotus flower.  Though it grows in muddy water, it rises above the surface to bloom with remarkable beauty.  At night it closes and sinks into the murk below. This pattern of growth signifies the progress of the soul from the primeval mud of materialism, through the waters of experience, and into the bright sunshine of enlightenment, ever repeated and never perfected.

The pond water is the Sufi's wine.  The metaphor of drinking wine for a Sufi means to become intoxicated with spiritual love as we let go of the ego.  While swimming in the Ichetucknee, I am at nose level with the wood ducks along the way, and also with the gar, bass, mullet, and turtle.  Though by accident, I take in the spring water, sprinkled with traces of fish, bird, and the swimmer ahead of me. 

May I rise up today beyond the mud of my ego and intentionally drink deeply of the world around me.  I will never get this perfect.  But by the grace of wild things, may I know that now is the time to breathe in the fluid of mother earth's womb.

What do you wish to drink in today?

The Snow Cricket

Just beyond the leaves and the white faces

Of the lilies,

I saw the wings

Of the green snow cricket

As it went flying

From vine to vine,

Searching, then finding a shadowed place in which

To sing and sing…

One repeated

Rippling phrase

Built of loneliness

And its consequences: longing

And hope…

It was trembling

With the force of its crying out,

And in truth I couldn’t wait to see if another would come to it

For fear that it wouldn’t,

And I wouldn’t be able to bear it

I wished it good luck, with all my heart,

And went back over the lawn, to where the lilies were standing

On their calm, cob feet,

Each in the ease

Of a single, waxy body

Breathing contentedly in the chill night air;

And I swear I pitied them, as I looked down

into the theater of their perfect faces-

That frozen, bottomless glare.

Have you ever cried out in the night from lonliness? I don’t think I am alone if I were to answer, yes. There have been plenty of long, hard nights – of illness, of risk, of foolishness, and just plain ole human despair. Do you have nights where you wish someone would come join you, almost anyone, just as long as they embraced you for all of who you are and would be your silent companion? And they don’t come. Some time then in the long hours as you cry alone and come through the depths of pain you look up and see the stars or perhaps the sun’s light peaks into your soul or maybe you fall into a dreamscape. Either way some relief comes, for you have seen the essence of living, and of dying. What seems remarkable to me that in the next day, if anyone was to see those who have had these nights of longing, we couldn’t tell. For we return to the waking world asleep, with a frozen face signaling as well as we might that we are okay, we are perfect, and no need to worry about me. What if we carried that longing, that song, that trembling, that hope throughout the day? What if I did? What if you did?

Spring in the Classroom - January 14, 2010

..So spring surrounded the classroom, and we suffered to be kept indoors..

Angry to be held so, without pity, and beyond reason,

By Miss Willow Bangs, her eyes two stones behind glass,..

-till it grew easy to hate,

To plot mutiny, even murder: oh, we had her in chains,

We had her hanged and cold, in our longing to be gone!

..And then one day, Miss Willow Bands, we saw you

As we ran wild in our three o'clock escape..

All furry and blooming against the old brick wall

In the Art Teacher's arms.

Love blooms in us all, but getting love, not getting love, not melding with the abundance of our lives, so does hate too easily sprout. We think in our child centered minds that surely it must be someone's fault that we cannot run wild with our natures. The cloying prison of our culture's ways keep us chained to desks, to computer screens, to bean and corn fields, and to clearing rubble from one more disaster zone (heart's healing to Haiti this morning!). I think of how easily hate arises in me this morning before the sun speakers bright love and light to me, and I wonder, how might I run wild and gather flowers over the graves of my desires?

What keeps your love from blooming, and whom do you blame for this?