Landscape in Winter

Upon the snow that says nothing,

that is endless brilliant,

there is something heaped, dark, and motionless.

then come the many wings, strong and bold.

"Death has happened," shout the carrion crows.

"And this is good for us."

Is it possible that we can know that death is good for us?

How about the death of an old woman whose name no one remembers and who has known nothing but pain in her last years...

When a drug pusher dies of an overdose

When a dictator is hung

When an armadillo chooses the wrong moment to cross the road

When a cow's blood spills on the slaughterhouse floor

When our sisters die of cancer

When our cat dies of kidney failure

When the parrot goes extinct in the wild

When the forest falls and the springs dry up

When humanity disappears from the earth

When our own breath fades?

When is it possible to  say

"Death is good for us?"

Is it possible?

What if it were?

The Poet Always Carries a Notebook

What is he scribbling on the page?

Is there snow in it, or fire?

Is it the beginning of a poem?

Is it a love note?

What is the first yawn of the morning?

The gasp while the scale delivers its news?

The sink full of dishes?

The newspaper full of bad advice trumpeted as truth?

The son calling from jail?

The uncertain purpose of the day's activities?

These words seen in blog form?

Are they all love notes?

Spring

Faith is the instructor. 

We need no other.

Guess what I am, he says in his incomparably lovely

Young-man voice.  Because I love the world I think of grass,

I think of leaves and the bold sun, I think of the rushes

In the black marshes just coming back from under the pure white

And now finally melting stubs of snow.

Whatever we know or don’t know

Leads us to say:

Teacher, what do you mean?

But faith is still there, and silent.

Then he who owns the incomparable voice suddenly flows upward

And out of the room and I follow, obedient and happy.

Of course I am thinking the Lord was once young and will never in fact be old.

And who else could this be, who goes off down the green path,

Carrying his sandals, and singing?

What if the grass were to sprout tall one day, and the seeds as they take to the wind, whisper, “follow me.”

Would you go?

What if instead a mighty wave came to shore and then in gentleness, ever so slowly, flowed in streets and alley ways and even right up to your front porch, and just as the wave turned to return to the sea, commanded “follow me.”

Would you go?

What if a bird came a calling to your window, tapping until you finally opened your life onto the world, and in a voice sweetly luring, sang, “follow me.”

Would you go?

What if a fierce eyed man you usually spy on one street corner or another emerges from the woods, and then walks past you (as you leisurely dine in a local restaurant) on his way to the bus terminal, alternating whistling with a face that pleads, “follow me.”

Would you spring up and step outside, spread your arms, and shout with tears to the bold sun and the sons and daughters of hominids, “Yes!  I will take your hand, wing, surge, and wind filled promises and follow you.”

What if we did this today?

Swans

They appeared
over the dunes,
they skimmed the trees
and hurried on

to the sea
or some lonely pond
or wherever it is
that swans go,

urgent, immaculate,
the heat of their eyes
staring down
and then away,

the thick spans
of their wings
as bright as snow,
their shoulder-power

echoing
inside my own body.
How could I help but adore them?
How could I help but wish

that one of them might drop
a white feather
that I should have
something in my hand

to tell me
that they were real?
Of course
this was foolish.

What we love, shapely and pure,
is not to be held,
but to be believed in.
And then they vanished, into the unreachable distance.

I once had a dream that turned into a music video with the refrain, "love ain't enough, but it ain't dead yet."  In the dream, a couple who had once loved each other passionately could not stay together.  They were so disappointed that love could die so easily.  Yet, they had a beautiful daughter together who was the embodiment of their love. When she grew up she gave her love to millions through the gift of music and song.

What I learned from this dream (or was I teaching myself?) was that love cannot be imprisoned, it must fly free which means that it can, and will, leave you.  But then if we just keep our hearts open, the love surprises us in amazing ways.

So we are to have faith that love exists and can, but not in the exact ways that love manifests.

Oh that I was so strong to have this be enough.  But like Mary, I am foolish. So at home I have a white wing feather from a Snowy Owl that I place before me as I meditate daily.  This feather helps draw me into this practice, which I might otherwise neglect.  Being of flesh and of this world, it helps to hold love now and then, and be likewise held.

Where are you foolish in love?

Percy at His Bath, or, Ambivalence (Eleven)

Today Jill is cutting my snags and my curls.

My legs grow longer.

My tail gets brushed.

Then, the bath.

Mary has been reading a book about

a woman who made a secret journey

to Lhasa. She reads aloud to me the parts

about the village dogs, who are big and

fearless and full of bark. And, all

their lives, dirty. I am filled

with envy.

then it's over and I am in my bed

as white as snow and soft and all

the sea salt gone. And over every part of me

an absurd but lovely fragrance.

This morning I heard of a book, "My Princess Boy."  A mother wrote about her journey dealing with her young son who wanted to dress up in pink and frilly clothes.  She and her husband came to terms to not judge their son on what a "male" should and should not do, but to accept the beauty of the boy as he choose to live his life. 

As I listened to this mother and her child on national TV this morning being interviewed, I thought of my own childhood.  I fought stubbornly with my parents when they wished that I would not dress "like a boy" and who would say, "For gosh shakes, can you wash your face now and then?" My  mother even one time told me, "If I had a dog, I would shave its rear end and make it walk backwards, and it would still look better than you!"  (oh Percy, are you more handsome than me?)

That was an "ouch" at the time, though I can now understand  her frustration as I look back and ponder what her life must have been like with 4 teen agers in the house.  I have changed a bit, and will done dresses now and then, and indeed, have my share of frilly things.  I also still love the dirt, the rough and tumble, and the freedom from gender constraints. 

I will be going on a 12 day trip to the rain forests of Guyana in 3 months and we are only allowed 25 pounds baggage.  With about 17 pounds of camera/video gear, this doesn't leave much room for clothes and personal items. I'm so looking forward to competing with the others on the trip - how few clothes can I get by with, how dirty can I get, and who by the end of the trip will be mas macho?  At the same time, it will be delicious to get home and in a clean bed with fresh clothes.

Ambiguity, my liberator!  Our liberator! The liberator of future generations of children.  May they not be bullied for difference, diversity, and choice.

Where does ambiguity liberate you?

Mink

A mink, jointless as heat, was

tip-toeing along the edge of the creek,

which was still in its coat of snow, yet singing-I could hear it!-

the old song of brightness....

the mink had a hunger in him

bigger than his shadow, which was gathered

like a sheet of darkness under his

neat feet which were busy

making dents in the snow. 

He sniffed slowly and thoroughly in all

four directions, as though

it was a payer to the whole world...

For me, it was a the gift of the winter

 to see him.  Once, like a hot, dark-brown pillar,

he stood up-and then he ran forward, and was gone. 

I stood awhile and then walked on

over the white snow:  the terrible, gleaming

loneliness.  I took me, I suppose,

something like six more weeks to reach

finally a patch of green, I paused so often

to be glad, and grateful, and even then carefully across

 the vast, deep woods I kept looking back.

In the winter of our lives, are there patches of experience for which we can be grateful? And the ultimate test, can we see beauty in the harshness and the dying back?  My sister recently was diagnosed with bone cancer, probably metastasized from a previous bout of breast cancer.  For me, this is devastating news.  There are some hard years for her coming up, and I'm guessing, not too many of them either.  Yet, in our phone calls she has times of laughing, nearly giggling.  Yesterday her retort to the mess her affairs are in, was, "At least I got to see a hawk."  She had seen a Sharp-shinned hawk foraging around in her snow covered bushes for sparrows, and fly away talons empty. 

She is like a beautiful sleek mink, and now is the time for me to look at how her life is a prayer to the whole world.

Who or what is your mink in the winter time?

The Other Kingdoms

Consider the other kingdoms.  The
trees, for example, with their mellow-sounding
titles: oak, aspen, willow.
Or the snow, for which the peoples of the north
have dozens of words to describe its
different arrivals.  Or the creatures, with their
thick fur, their shy and wordless gaze.  Their
infallible sense of what their lives
are meant to be.  Thus the world
grows rich, grows wild, and you too,
grow rich, grow sweetly wild, as you too
were born to be.

Ten months ago Mary had a poem, "The Other Kingdoms" where crows rebuke her for entering their kingdom.  I replied that "the crows in their calls test our resolve - do we or do we not belong to the family of things?  We do.  Love does not lie."

Not only do we belong to the family of things, we belong to our own human family.  We were born to fuss and to scrape, to murder and to grieve, to grow addicted and complacent, and to weep at a child's birth and a spouse's death.  This we were born to do,, and yet, so much more.

Each day we have the chance to grow richer and wilder. 

How shall you grow rich and wild today?

Red Bird Explains Himself

Yes, I was the brilliance floating over the snow
and I was the song in the summer leaves, but this was
only the first trick
I had hold of among my other mythologies,
for I also knew obedience: bring sticks to the nest,
food to the young, kisses to my bride.

But don’t stop there, stay with me: listen.

If I was the song that entered your heart
then I was the music of your heart, that you wanted and needed,
and thus wilderness bloomed that, with all its
followers: gardeners, lovers, people who weep
for the death of rivers.

And this was my true task, to be the
music of the body.  Do you understand? for truly the body needs
a song, a spirit, a soul.  And no less, to make this work,
the soul has need of a body,
and I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable
beauty of heaven
where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes,
and this is why I have been sent, to teach this to your heart..

Mary, you are the brilliance and the song.  You bag of tricks includes obedience to work, to paper and pen, to breaking the heart open like an egg - but what delicious sweetness you cook up with your words!

I will stay with you and listen.

For the song of my heart I hear more clearly in your song - you help me grow, love, and weep.

You are both of this earth and of the ethereal vision that beauty resides here with me, down in the mud, and over and around me, bathing me in light and feathers with each rising sun. 

You were sent to this life to teach us our hearts.

I bow in gratitude to you - your feathered soul now flying with mine.

What does redbird, Mary, and this day teach you?

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?

Winter and the Nuthatch

 

Once or twice and maybe again, who knows,

the timid nuthatch will come to me

if I stand still, with something good to eat in my hand.

The first time he did it

he landed smack on his belly, as though

the legs wouldn't cooperate. The next time

he was bolder. Then he became absolutely

wild about those walnuts.

But there was a morning I came late and, guess what,

the nuthatch was flying into a stranger's hand.

To speak plainly, I felt betrayed.

I wanted to say: Mister,

that nuthatch and I have a relationship.

It took hours of standing in the snow

before he would drop from the tree and trust my fingers.

But I didn't say anything.

Nobody owns the sky or the trees.

Nobody owns the hearts of birds. 

Still, being human and partial therefore to my own 

successes—

though not resentful of others fashioning theirs—

I'll come tomorrow, I believe, quite early. 

I had a dream early this morning as I over slept.  It was one of those keepers. In it, I regretted that I had not spoken much to my companion parrot. I had excluded him in what was going on for me, and in our shared household.  It's not that I thought the bird would understand if I spoke;  my sense was more of an internal state.  I had not been approaching the bird as a holy other.  Given what I know about parrot intelligence and how they can understand emotions and words, I mourned that I had not communicated more. 

In the dream then I started to talk to the bird, and he sang with human words, "Let it Be."   I was ecstatic. I immediately shared the good news with my friends and family, and said, "Listen to him."  At this point the bird flew to the top of a bookcase, and started singing show tunes and talking a mile a minute in between songs.  He was focused on sharing who he was, not just with me, but with anyone who would listen.  I was so happy for him, and for what this meant to me and the world. 

Was there resentment on my part and a resistance to share him with others? Perhaps so.  I recall a bit of fear that he would not wish to share his time with his beautiful soft feathers cuddled into my heart, but would instead be flying from house to house with all his beauty and gifts while I toiled to clean up his cage and care for him.

This is so much like we humans. We are torn between holding beauty close in both our hands,  instead of nourishing beauty with one hand while reaching with the other to grasp a human hand in invitation so sharing and creative possibility.

I believe tomorrow I'll get up quite early. Although I may miss another dream of this caliber, I can meditate and open my heart to all holy others, successful I pray in becoming ever more aware of not just the dream, but the reality of interdependence.

Where do you hold back from sharing, in fear, instead of letting beauty fly free?

  

In the Storm

Some black ducks

were shrugged up

on the shore.

It was snowing

hard, from the east,

and the sea

was in disorder.

Then some sanderlings,

five inches long

with beaks like wire,

flew in,

snowflakes on their backs,

and settled

in a row

behind the ducks --

whose backs were also

covered with snow --

so close

they were all but touching,

they were all but under

the roof of the duck's tails,

so the wind, pretty much,

blew over them.

They stayed that way, motionless,

for maybe an hour,

then the sanderlings,

each a handful of feathers,

shifted, and were blown away

out over the water

which was still raging.

But, somehow,

they came back

and again the ducks,

like a feathered hedge,

let them

crouch there, and live.

If someone you didn't know

told you this,

as I am telling you this,

would you believe it?

Belief isn't always easy.

But this much I have learned --

if not enough else --

to live with my eyes open.

I know what everyone wants

is a miracle.

This wasn't a miracle.

Unless, of course, kindness --

as now and again

some rare person has suggested --

is a miracle.

As surely it is.

We live so much in a world where we are quick to blame our human species for all its shortcomings. The more we know about the harm we do, which is so easily seen on the internet as disasters and the killing of cultures and ecosystem, the more dsipiratied we become about our kind.

I am reminded of a quote from the Movie, Contact, where the advanced species says during first contact between our species and another:

You're an interesting species, an interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.

We are an interesting mix. We evolved for such judgment, competition, and violence. We also evolved for compassion, collaboration, and kindness. If we keep our eyes open we can see that tragedy is never far from beauty, nor violence from kindness. I write this as if it this concession is easily given. It is difficult to accept all of who we are. Perhaps the miracle then isn't that we can be kind and forgiving, but that we can be grateful for it when the storms of life might as easily sweep us into oblivion, and might in the very next moment. So there is no time to waste.

Kindness first! For ducks, sanderlings, humans, and all beings.

Because for me, living is not about belief in God or miracles. I'm with the Dali Lama who said: My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

Where have you seen or known kindness recently? Is it "enough?"

Logan International

In the city called Wait,
also known as the airport,
you might think about your life --
there is not much else to do.
For one thing,
there is too much luggage,
and you're truly lugging it --
you and, it seems, everyone.

What is it, that you need so badly?
Think about this.

Earlier, in another city,
you're on the tarmac, a lost hour.
You're going to miss your connection, and you know it,
and you do.
You're headed for five hours of nothing.
And how long can you think about your own life?

What I did, to save myself,
was to look for children, the very young ones
who couldn't even know where they were going, or why.
Some of them were fussing, of course.
Many of them were beautifully Hispanic.

The storm was still busy outside, and snow falling
anywhere, any time, is a wonder.
But even more wonderful, and maybe the only thing
to put your own life in proportion,
were the babies, the little ones, hot and tired,
but still
gurgling, chuckling, as they looked --
wherever they were going, or not yet going,
in their weary parents' arms (no!
their lucky parents' arms) --
upon this broken world.

Mary asks what is it that we need so badly. I desire that children would not be looking upon a broken world. Yet, if the world is such a bad place how is that that gurgling, wondrous babies came into being? Airports are such places where we look at the baggage of our lives, open it up, and perhaps leave some of it behind. Or take home more to ponder at some later date.

A few years ago I was in a busy airport when I saw a bat flying at people level on the walkway between gates. People were ducking and darting. I set down my baggage, took of my jacket to use as a net, and set off to catch the bat. I was not having much success when one man took a swipe at the bat to harm it. I told him that I would catch the bat and let it go outside. I almost had the bat when the same man took off his shoe, threw it, and the bat fell to the floor. I just stared at the man. Why would he kill an innocent being when he knew that I would take care of her? I scooped up the bat, still alive, and went to the airline attendant at the gate and asked if she could let me outside so I could let the bat die in peace, or perhaps recover. She just started at me and asked, "What are you, a veterinarian?" She did let me out side and I placed the bat on the connector walkway on the tarmac.

Returning inside, many eyes were on me. I wanted to shout, "What are we, humans?" In that moment the world indeed seemed so very broken.

When have you experienced "brokenness" and what reminded you of wholeness?