Mysteries, Yes - February 14, 2011

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of lambs...

How two hands touch and the bonds will

never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads.

Ah, my spiritual practice for the day...

Look

Laugh

Lower my self

What will you practice today so that you may live the questions?

I Don't Want to Live a Small Life

I don’t want to live a small life. Open your eyes,

open your hands. I have just come

from the berry fields, the sun

kissing me with its golden mouth all the way

(open your hands) and the wind-winged clouds

following along thinking perhaps I might

feed them, but no I carry these heart-shapes

only to you. Look how many small

but so sweet and maybe the last gift

I will bring to anyone in this

world of hope and risk, so do

Look at me. Open your life, open your hands.

Who among us wishes to live a small life? Who among us opens our hands to have hope on one side, and risk on the other, willing to walk that knife edge of uncertainty? 

I ask you now to stretch out your arms and open your hands.  Look to the sky or perhaps to some living being in your range - a tree? A friend?  A snoring family member?   Do you like me feel the heart opening as arms stretch out? Do you like me feel your heart and life constricted when your hands and arms refuse to embrace all that is and hang by your side, clutch themselves nervously, or grasp themselves in a false sense of security?

Given the amount of time I spend on a computer, I wonder if the keyboard should not be as long as my desk, guiding my life to be open to what is and what shall come. 

Instead, see my arms open now (well at the end of this sentence) looking at you. What a gift.

How might you open your life today?

Great Moth Comes From His Papery Cage - September 12, 2010

Gone is the worm, that tunnel body. Gone is the mouth

That loved leaves and tomatoes.

Gone are the innumerable feet.

He is beautiful now, and shivers into the air

As if he has always know how,

Who crawled and crawled, all summer,.

He has wide wings, with a flare at the bottom.

The moon excites him. The heat of the night excites him.

But, where did the dance come from?

Surely not out of a simple winter’s sleep.

Surely it’s more than ambition, this new architecture?

What could it be, that does it?

Let me look closer, and a long time, the next time

I see green-blooded worm crawling and curling

Hot day after hot day

Among the leaves and the smooth, proud tomatoes.

We have had a long, hot summer; record breaking in fact. That relentless heat, for which there seems no purpose, has been accompanied with a profusion of garden spiders around our home. Throughout the summer they have grown enormous. I mark my days by observing their webs, each time grown slightly larger in proportion to their bodies, and wonder how it is they “know” to build their webs. Where did this knowledge come from? I also wonder where will the spiders go to when fall finally breaks the wall of heat and humidity? Maybe the from and to location is the same. Spiders and knowledge, moths and tomatoes, humans and mice – in the watching and listening the source and our future unite and we can but dance in wonder.

Where does life come from and where are we going? Our breath unites us, no matter if we know the answer of source and future.

Ribbon Snake in the Sun

I came upon him and he is

Startled; he glides

To the rock’s rim; he wheels, setting in motion

The stripes of his body, yet not going

Anywhere. And, though the books say

It can’t e done, since his eyes are set

Too far apart in the narrow skull, I’m not

Lying when I say that he lifts his face and looks

Into my eyes and I look back until

We are both staring hard

At each other. He wants to know

Just where in this bright, blue-faced world

He might be safe. He wants to go on with the

Flow of his life. Then he straightens

His shining back and drops

From the rocks and rockets through

The tangle of weeds, sliding, as he goes, over

My bare foot. Then it vanishes

Into the shade and the grass, down to

Some slubby stream, having

Startled me in return. But there is a

Small matter. What I would speak of, rather,

Is the weightless string of his actually soft and

Nervous body; the nameless stars of its eyes.

They say it can’t be done. We humans, cannot look into the face of other beings, and see the stars of the universe. We cannot look into own demise and know that we are all descended from the death of stars. We cannot see that each hatching and birth brings an inherent worthy being into this world, a star. We cannot live in peace.

I am of the dissenter church for I say it can be done. We meet in that nailed together Hodge podge of someone else’s garbage that you find on urban littered streets, in oil sludged waterways, in razed forests, and in orphanages and gangs that harbor and harm children. There our witness says that if flowers can bloom amongst the garbage, then we know that the stars look favorably upon us, not from above, but through the eyes of another. What I mean to say that to look at tree, flower, child, or snake is to look in a mirror and see glory. I say we can live in peace.

For today, breathe in with me peace, and then breathe out with love. If we can do this in one breathe, we may do it in many.

I looked Up

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?

I Found a Dead Fox

I found a dead fox

beside the gravel road,

curled inside the big

iron wheel

of an old tractor

that has been standing,

for years,

in the vines at the edge of the road.

I don't know

what happened to it-

when it came there

or why it lay down

for good, settling

its narrow chin

on the rusted rim

of the iron wheel

to look out

over the fields,

and that way died

But I know

this: its posture-

of looking,

to the last possible moment,

back into the world-

made me want

to sing something

joyous and tender

about foxes

But what happened is this-

when I began,

when I crawled in

through the honeysuckle

and lay down,

curling my long spine

inside the cold wheel,

and touched the dead fox,

and looked out

into the wide fields,

the fox

vanished.

There was only myself

and the world,

and it was I who was leaving.

And what could I sing

then?

Oh, beautiful world!

I just lay there

and looked at it.

And then it grew dark.

That day was done with...

My stomach flips when I imagine myself crawling like Mary beside a dead fox, for it is as if I too am dying and committing myself intentionally to oblivion. It's almost the same feeling I get with crossing a bridge - the water below calls to me, "Jump! Join life in death!" It is not so different than the stomach flutters of falling in love. I am but a drop and the ocean woos me.

What dead beings have you seen lately? How do you feel in your body when contemplating death?

Owl in the Black Oaks

If a lynx, that plush fellow,

climbed down

tree and left behind

his face, his thick neck

and, most of all, the lamps of his eyes,

there you would have it

the owl,

the very owl

who haunts these trees...

Almost every day

I spy him out

among the knots and the burls

looking down

at his huge feet,

at the path curving through the trees,

at whatever is coming up the hill

toward him,

and, though I'm never ready-

though something unspeakably cold

always drops through my heart-

it is a moment

as lavish as it is fearful...

and sometimes the whole body

tilts forward, and the beak opens,

clean and wonderful

like a cup of gold.

I am looking for our summer owl. She is a Barred Owl that every summer hunts from our backyard clothes line. I miss her and fear that her eyes will not be surveying our grass for meals. Her absence haunts me. I long for her to fill the chalice of my soul, a bright light in the fading light of summer's eve. But perhaps if she doesn't come I will spy another vigil holder - the gopher tortoise's yellow eyes looking out from her cool burrow underneath the clothes line. Her eyes, the owl eyes, mine eyes. Oh yes, I have seen the glory.

Where do you tilt forward to take in the life around you?

In Pobiddy, Georgia

Three women climb from the car

in which they have driven slowly

into the churchyard.

They come toward us, to see

what we are doing.

What we are doing

is reading the strange,

wonderful names

of the dead.

One of the women

speaks to us-

after we speak to her.

She walks with us and shows us,

with downward-thrust finger,

which of the dead where her people.

She tells us

about two brothers, and an argument,

and a gun-she points

to one of the slabs

on which there is a name,

some scripture, a handful of red

plastic flowers. We ask her

about the other brother.

"Chain gang," she says,

as you or I might say

"Des Moines," or "New Haven." And then,

"Look around all you want."

The younger woman stands back, in the stiff weeds,

like a banked fire.

The third one-

the oldest human being we have ever seen in our lives-

suddenly drops to the dirt

and begins to cry. Clearly

she is blind, and clearly

she can't rise, but they lift her, like a child,

and lead her away, across the graves, as though

as old as anything could ever be, she was, finally,

perfectly finished, perfectly heartbroken, perfectly wild.

This is the first poem that I have written in its entirety - for I know of no other way to tell the story that left me crying this morning. Mary, you surprised me. Me, a Georgia born gal who thought I had seen everything.

Are you as blind as I have been? The world invites us to look around all we want in the pull and push of Yes, No, and in the end we are here to be heartbroken. Nothing else but this, which is everything.

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