In the Darkness

At night the stars throw down their postcards of light.

Who are they that love me so much?...

I am grateful and faithful to this other romance

Though we will not ever know each other’s names, we will not ever

Touch.

.

I am reading John Donahue’s book, “Beauty – The Invisible Embrace.”  In the beginning pages he writes that if we can see beauty, we will feel like we belong on this planet and will be welcomed home with open arms.  He writes in prose as Mary does in poetry.

We are touched by beauty. Perhaps not as lovers in the night, or as friends on a walk, or children at bed time, but our soul is in contact with the All at times when wonder, awe, and splendor enter our days.  We are caressed, we are embraced, we are held.

At such times our faith is affirmed and feelings of gratitude emerge. 

How now can we open our eyes to see beauty more consistently, so that justice and peace may grow from our faith and gratitude?

The Sweetness of Dogs (Fifteen)

What do you say Percy?  I am thinking

of sitting out on the sand to watch the moon rise. Full tonight. 

So we go

as the moon rises, so beautiful...

makes me take measure of myself: one iota pondering heaven....

How grateful I am for the moon's perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich

it is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile,

leans against me and gazes up into

my face. As though I were his perfect moon.

I've got physics on the brain, hard not to given that my spouse the preacher has been doing a series on physics and spirituality.  Just this morning we marveled at how we can change the outcome of an event by watching it.  So I think of Percy watching Mary in his sweet way.  Does Mary change?  Does she become more loving, more beautiful, more open to the beauty of herself, dogs, and the moon?  What if I were to open my heart and see everyone today as perfect just the way they are. Would this change their behavior?  Would it change the world?

It might if we all did it.

Shall we?

Another Summer Begins

Summer begins again.

How many

do I still have?

Not a worthy question,

I imagine.

Hope is one thing,

gratitude another

and sufficient

unto itself.

the white blossoms of the shad

have opened

because it is their time

to open,

the mockingbird

is raving

in the thornbush.

How did it come to be

that I am no longer young

and the world

that keeps time

in its own way

has just been born?

I don't have the answers

and anyway I have become suspicious

of such questions,

and as for hope,

that tender advisement,

even that

I'm going to leave behind.

I'm just going to put on

my jacket, my boots,

I'm just going to go out

to sleep

all this night

in some unnamed, flowered corner

of the pasture.

If Thirst was about loss and seeking wholeness, then Evidence appears to be about aging.  It's not that Mary's poems or any collection of them can be said to be about any one thing, so perhaps it is me who is thinking about aging.  There is only one more Mary Oliver collection left to read after this one, Swan.  Mary is getting older, there may not be another book.  I see her walking, if not actually tottering, in her boots in field and on beach, and then collapsing, and then forever asleep in the night.

I too am getting older.  I wonder how many more field seasons I have where I am immersed in beauty among leaves and feathers.   When will my tottering under the weight of all the gear become too much for me?  There's no hope that I will be as I am for eternity.

Wait, I take that back.  I will always be wings and bark, born again ever anew with each hatching, sprouting, and rising.  And of course, my faint courage, dying again with each explosion of feathers from hawk's talons, with each crashing of tree from wind and rain, and with each setting.

There's no hope to that thought that I am not beautiful for all eternity.

What does aging mean to you?

  

Hannah's Children

They will come in their own time,

probably in the black

funnel of the night,

and probably in secret-

No one will see

their marvelous coming

But the other goats,

and Maple the pony.

Now, on the evening

of the last counted day,

We latch the stable door.

As the white moon rises

She settles to her knees.

Her curious yellow eyes-

Old as the stones

of Greece, of the mountains

That were born with the world-

Look at us in friendship,

and then look away,

Inward, Inward

to the sacred groves

In Jewish stories there are two prominent Hannahs. One is the mother of Samuel, who was the last of the Hebrew Judges, the first of the major prophets, and the anointer of the first  kings of Israel, Saul and David.  He warns the people of how kings should be held to account.

The other has sevens sons who along with her were arrested shortly before the revolt of Judas Maccabees (2 Maccabees 8).  Antiochus IV Epiphanes attempted to force them to eat pork, and when they refused, he executed all 7 sons before the mother's eyes. 

What will happen to Hannah's children?  Will her kids know boredom, captivity, and slaughter?  Through their eyes will we see into other kingdoms, and refuse to eat of their flesh and sacrifice others?  Will they ask us to hold ourselves to account?  Out of the oceans, out of Africa, out of the sacred groves we come - let us not kingdoms rue but friendship rule. 

What prophecy do you hear in this poem?     

The Chance to Love Everything

All summer I made friends

with the creatures nearby ---

they flowed through the fields

and under the tent walls,

or padded through the door,

grinning through their many teeth,

looking for seeds,

suet, sugar; muttering and humming,

opening the breadbox, happiest when

there was milk and music. But once

in the night I heard a sound

outside the door, the canvas

bulged slightly ---something

was pressing inward at eye level.

I watched, trembling, sure I had heard

the click of claws, the smack of lips

outside my gauzy house ---

I imagined the red eyes,

the broad tongue, the enormous lap.

Would it be friendly too?

Fear defeated me. And yet,

not in faith and not in madness

but with the courage I thought

my dream deserved,

I stepped outside. It was gone.

Then I whirled at the sound of some

shambling tonnage.

Did I see a black haunch slipping

back through the trees? Did I see

the moonlight shining on it?

Did I actually reach out my arms

toward it, toward paradise falling, like

the fading of the dearest, wildest hope ---

the dark heart of the story that is all

the reason for its telling?

Once, a thrice of decades ago, I was in a tent on a New Mexico plateau.  In the night there came a sniffing and prodding at the tent, much as Mary describes in her poem.  The animal(s) circled many times and I held my breath trying to not be noticed in the silence, and to also listen. Were those the feet of bear, coyote, wolf?  And depending on which, what was the best strategy?  To charge, to run, to cower? I had no weapon in the tent.  Fear defeated me and I had no courage to step outside to see who was stalking my body and my house for possible food.

Since that time whenever I go camping, I take something to bludgeon life with me in the tent - a bat, a golf club, my camping knives. I've heard too many bear stories to have my life story end with, "The bear ran with her off into the wilds and she was never seen again."

Yet, what better ending might there be?  To be taken into the wilds, to become one with teeth, earth, the spring's cubs, and droppings?   

In fact, is any other ending possible?

How would you have your life end?

If the Philosopher is Right

If the philosopher is right,

that all we are

and all the earth around us

is only a dream,

even if a bright, long dream-

that everything is nothing

but what sits in the mind,

that the trees, that the red bird

are all in the mind,

and the river, and the sea in storm,

are all in the mind,

that nothing exists fierce or soft or apt to be

truly shaken-

nothing tense, wild, sleepy-nothing

like Yeats' girl with the yellow hair-

then you too are a dream

which last night and the night before that

and the years before that

you were not.

My partner is a philosopher, and over the years I have learned how right he has been.  It's a bit appalling to admit, but heck, I already admit to being lost and mad with love, so why not also be "wrong?" 

For instance, we've had this discussion dozens of time where we ask, "What exists outside of the mind?"  At one time I would have said,"How silly, everything exists and is real."  What I believe he has always said, although he can't speak for himself as he is off on a Zen Buddhist retreat, is that the question no longer matters to him.  Whether dream or not, the important question is "How do you treat those with whom we share this planet?" 

I might ask it this way...

"How can you be shaken to your core every day so that the dream of beloved community comes into being - not just in our mind, but in all minds?" 

If we as a group of people can envision this way of living, with our hearts broken letting in the whole world, love and compassion is real. Isn't it?    

It might be if this day, you and I, admit we are all wild fools.  We are not ourselves. We are the world.

Where are you not?

Meadowlark Sings and I Greet Him In Return

Meadowlark, when you sing it’s as if

You lay your yellow breast upon mine and say

Hello, hello, and are we not

Of one family, in our delight of life?

You sing, I listen.

Both are necessary

If the world is to continue going around

Night-heavy then light –laden, though not

Everyone knows this or at least

Not yet,

Or, perhaps, has forgotten it

In the torn fields,

In the terrible debris of progress

I am at my mother’s where because of her cognition level and inability to walk has care takers who come into the home 15 hours a day.  The caretaker is late so I take the “baby monitor” into my room so I can detect if my mother awakes and needs help.  I hear her breathe through the monitor as I do my daily meditation.  It is hard to concentrate on my breathe as her breathe is so close to my ear, as are her occasional snores.  After a while we breathe together, one family in our respiratory cycle if barely in waking hours.  Her slipping away into a world of silence I suppose I must admit is part and parcel of the cycle of life. I am not enlightened enough to be at peace with this. It seems terrible debris of the circumstances of living that brings her to this.  My heart is torn, yet in that opening I find that the bird held close to my breast and the unheard song is every more dear.

What do you struggle to accept as part of the way of life, of reality?

Summer Morning

Heart, I implore you,

it's time to come back from the dark,

it's morning, the hill are pink

and the roses whatever they felt

in the valley of night

are opening now

their soft dresses, their leaves

are shining. Why are you laggard?

Sure you have seen this a thousand times,

which isn't half enough. Let the world

have its way with you, luminous as it is

with mystery and pain-

graced as it is with the ordinary.

It is quite dark now. Election day has passed and soon I'll pick up the paper and wonder if we can ever have the kind of discourse that will bring peace and flourishing to our communities of mixed species. Compounding this I am reading a novel about the Columbine High School shootings. I wonder how we can move from blame and darkness when there is so much pain? My prayer in the graying dawn is for my heart to not give up and to stay engaged instead of painting the world with a brush laden with opaque and dull thoughts. I know of no way to guarantee the course of the heart in a day - except to give into the day where there will always be shadows and always be something illuminated, with a smile shining through it.

How has the ordinary graced your life?

Night Herons

Some herons were fishing in the robes of the night

At a low hour of the water’s body,

And the fish I suppose, were full

Of fish happiness in those transparent inches

Even as, over and over, the beaks jacked down

And the narrow bodies were lifted

With every quick sally,

And that was the end of them as far as we know-

Though, what do we know except that death

Is so everywhere and so entire-

Pummeling and felling,

Or sometimes,

Like this, appearing

Through such a thing door-

One stab and you’re through!

And what then?

Why, then it was almost morning,

And one by one the birds opened their wings and flew.

This morning it is brisk, colder than I have been in months. The reddish/pink sky patch of horizon in the east is crisscrossed by utility lines strung across dead trees now serving as telephone poles. You may think there is not much beauty in an urban landscape. Wait, perhaps I speak for myself. Then a marvel strikes through to your heart. Yesterday in this place of cars and noise, a bald-eagle flew over the road, hunting in the early hours. Someone will die today to feed this bird, and countless beings have died so that we are here today. I pray that I might know this death, let it stab me deeply, so that I use every molecule of nourishment that comes my way to fly, to liberate as I myself am liberated.

Where will you fly today?

The Orchard

I have dreamed

Of accomplishment.

I have fed

Ambition.

I have traded

Nights of sleep

For a length of work.

Lo, and I have discovered

How soft bloom

Turns to green fruit

Which turns to sweet fruit

Lo, and I have discovered

All winds blow cold

At last,

And the leaves,

So pretty, so many,

Vanish,

In the great, black

Packet of time,

In the great, black

Packet of ambition,

And the ripeness

Of the apple

Is its downfall.

This morning I awake to blackness in the town of Tucker, outside of Atlanta, Georgia. I’m here for a workshop on Restorative Circles. As I awoke, I had a clear image of the good work of my mother. In her middle years she was a quilter. These later years though she mostly sleeps, and when awake, challenges those who care for her and wish for her a better life. She has dementia. The gravity of the years is upon her and she is an apple on the way down. As her Power of Attorney and her Medical Power of Attorney it often falls to me to be the enforcer and persuader for her to make decisions that benefit her, and do not harm her. Many days my discomfort, pain, and loneliness of having her slip away so slowly leaves me judging the worth of myself, her, and the world at large – for surely such sweet blooms should never turn to moldy apples littering the ground.

But her quilts endure. She worked on one quilt a good part of my adolescent, a patchwork of embroidered birds. Later she gave me an appliqué penguin quilt. I have both still and they are used every winter, a little worse for wear. My mother’s brain may be fragmenting into pieces, as will my precious quilts she made for me, and frankly, my body is a little worse for wear. Somehow though as I think of the beauty and warmth of love and care sewn into these quilts I seem at peace. For the pieces of her life will endure in quilt, in me, and in those that come after. There is no way to restore her to her youth, and there will come a time when her quilts are beyond restoring, but life will have come full circle. Thank you mother for your loving work. Thank you all for the work you do.

What is your work and how does it bear fruition?

The Blackest of Inks

At night,

The panther,

Who is lean and quick,

Is only

A pair of eyes

And, with a yawn,

Momentarily,

A long, pink tongue.

Mostly

He listens

As he walks

On the puffs

Of his feet

As if

On a carpet

From Persia,

Or leaps

Into the branches

Of a tree,

Or swims

Across the river,

Or simply

Stands in the grass

And waits.

Because, Sir,

You have given him,

For your own reasons,

Everything that he needs:

Leaves, food, shelter;

A conscience that never blinks.

Mary, are you the panther who walks in the night with the blackest of inks? Has God/existence given you everything you need? With your ink do you have what you need to assuage your conscience with these poems so fine? If you don’t think you have what you need, do you imagine the panther does?

I don’t know what Mary is thinking here. Also, I don’t know what a panther is thinking. Perhaps they too feel regret over actions; a cub lost when she ranged too far from the den to hunt, a mate given over to a younger, strong competitor, a forest deer that screaming in the day’s dreaming.

I come out on the side those nothing fundamental separates humans from other animals. For the most part if we say “humans only do this” we find out through science and observation that this isn’t true. The difference is often only matter of scale and interpretation.

So what then of conscience and morality? Studies have shown that a sense of moral code does appear in social animals. What do they do to lessen their shame? Can they write poems in the dark of night? Can they arise like I do before the sun, scribble my thoughts here for you to read, hoping that with this virtual black ink, I may better able see the sun’s light in every being and every moment?

May I hunt without blinking, totally focus on the love that has yet to be born and the ego that has yet to die. Together, with the jaguar of the tropical forest, we kill to nourish ourselves and our world.

What does your conscience tell you?