Beans Green and Yellow

In fall it is mushrooms

gathered from dampness

under the pines:

in spring I have known

the taste of the lamb

full of milk and spring grass;

today it is beans green and yellow

 and lettuce and basil from my friends' garden-

how calmly, as though it were an ordinary thing,

we eat the blessed earth.

Just last week Mary spoke of eating a pine cone that had passed through the digestive system of a bear. Is there nothing she won't eat and be grateful for?

I for one have not been very grateful for the kinds of food that come in the form "green leaves."  I have not been able to eat kale, mustard greens, and spinach, even when covered in cheese such as in lasagna.  It took me years to be able to eat artichokes and Brussels spouts without gagging.  Maybe this has something to do with my mother serving canned spinach that was only slightly warmed up for dinner and became increasingly slimy as the meal progressed.  I was not able to leave the table until "...it's all gone! Don't you know children are starving in India?"

Then this winter my spouse and I joined a food coop at an organic farm.  Winter vegetables in this part of the world are nearly synonymous with leafy vegetables.  "Oh my gosh"  I moaned when we picked up the first bag, "How will you eat this before it all goes bad?"   He answered this with a weekly ritual of cooking a pot of beans and vegetables, and adding some of the green leaves.  I love his vegetable stews normally, so I agreed to give it a go.  It looked and smelled terrible, but that first spoonful was doable, as long as I didn't look to closely at what was going in the gullet.  Each week since then he has been slowly adding a greater percentage of the organic vegetables, including turnips, radishes, and various things with big leaves we don't know the name of.  Each week I eat more and more of it and that pot's contents has become my major source of nutrition.  We are almost into spring and I have not tired of it, and am ever so grateful for it. 

Maybe the difference is that these vegetables come straight out of earth that I live upon. They are sturdy, firm, and fierce in my eyes.  For they bring me health and interconnection in ways I never knew was possible. Once a food nonbeliever, now I am saved.  What amazing grace is this world that we eat. Blessings to my spouse and all those others who make this possible.  

Are there foods for which you are not grateful? 

Evidence

I.

Where do I live? If I had no address, as many people
do not, I could nevertheless say that I lived in the
same town as the lilies of the field, and the still
waters.

Spring, and all through the neighborhood now there are
strong men tending flowers.

Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue. But
all beautiful things, inherently, have this function -
to excite the viewers toward sublime thought. Glory
to the world, that good teacher.

Among the swans there is none called the least, or
the greatest.

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in
singing, especially when singing is not necessarily
prescribed.

As for the body, it is solid and strong and curious
and full of detail; it wants to polish itself; it
wants to love another body; it is the only vessel in
the world that can hold, in a mix of power and
sweetness: words, song, gesture, passion, ideas,
ingenuity, devotion, merriment, vanity, and virtue.

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

2.

There are many ways to perish, or to flourish.

How old pain, for example, can stall us at the threshold of function….

Still friends, consider stone, that is without the fret of gravity, and water that is without anxiety. 

And the pine trees that never forget their recipe for renewal. 

And the female wood duck who is looking this way and that way for her children. And the snapping turtle who is looking this way and that way also. This is the world. 

And consider, always, every day, the determination of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles. 

3. 

I ask you again: if you have not been enchanted by this adventure--your life--what would do for you? 

And, where are you, with your ears bagged down as if with packets of sand? Listen. We all have much more listening to do. Tear the sand away. And listen. The river is singing. …

For myself, I have walked in these woods for

More than forty years, and I am the only

thing, it seems, that is about to be used up.

Or, to be less extravagant, will, in the

Foreseeable future, be used up.

First, though, I want to step out into some

fresh morning and look around and hear myself

crying out:  "The house of money is falling! The house of money is falling! The weeds are rising! The weeds are rising!"

In this day today, do you imagine there will be much evidence? Evidence for what?

Consider the lilies then and the birds as Mary does.  She's been reading the Christian Scriptures that one! (Matthew 6:25-34)

I read it much like she does.  There is so much contradiction in the passage, which points to the opposed tensions in life, we are left to turn to the infallible, but which can be hidden. So we go through our days as sleuths to discover. What you ask?  More importantly, how,  when we know that we are marching towards the point of being used up?  Or like the ducklings, hunted by pain for the good of the world?

I don't have the answer of how we listen for the evidence all around us.  

I only know that beauty is everywhere. It's my job to find it and praise the world accordingly, and to respond to the glory of every being with in the world, which are also within me.

What evidence do you long for today?

Prince Buzzard - January 9, 2010

Prince Buzzard,

I took you, so high in the air,

For a narrow boat and two black sails.

You were drifting

In the depths of the air

Wherever you wanted to go,

And when you came down

With your spoony mouth

And your read head

And your creaking wings

To the lamb

Dead, dead, dead

In the fields of spring

I knew it was hunger

That brought you’

Yet you went about it

So slowly,

Settling with hunched wings

And silent

As the grass itself

Over the lambs’s white body-

It seemed

a ceremony,

A pause

As though something

In the quick of your own body

Had come out

To give thanks

For the dark work

That was yours,

Which wasn’t to be done easily or quickly,

But thoroughly-

And indeed by time summer

Opened its green harbors

The fields was nothing but flower, flowers, flowers,

From shore to shore.

I am out on the edge of water this morning, the sun barely awake.  Over the Calooshatcee River in Ft. Myers the first Turkey Vultures begin to sail by around 9 a.m.  It’s cool, perhaps this is why .They await the heating of the day to form the thermals that bare them aloft. Or maybe, there just isn’t that much death so early in the day.

This is probably just another human delusion.  Beings and dreams have died all through the night, we just can’t see it.  Migrants of all kinds won’t make it to the next morning, whether it is blackbirds and doves falling from the sky or humans  from Mesoamerica, seeking a better life.  I am reminded of them as I went out this morning to buy coffee, finding it in a convenience store where I was the only non-native Spanish speaker.  They are here, and how many thousands are not, or will never know a life that flowers into full possibility? 

If I were brave, I would go out into the darkness with my flashlight and look for death to remind me that it all around, happening constantly though I sit here comfortable and pleasured, sipping coffee, on a deck of a house with a pool, Jacuzzi, multiple couches, and an HDTV.  No wait a minute. If I were truly brave, I would go out in the darkness with no light at all, and give myself over to death, so that there would be even more flowers on the morrow.  If I, if we, did this, then we might return to a world where the spattering of ducks and coots now on this river near me would cover this river from shore to shore?

There you were and it was like spring

There you were, and it was like spring-

Like the first fair water with the light on it,

Hitting the eyes,

Why are we made the way we are made, that to love

Is to want?

Well, you are gone now, and this morning I have walked out

To the back shore,

To the ocean which, even if we think we have measured it,

Has not final measure.

Sometimes you can see the great whales there,

Breaching and playing.

Sometimes the swans linger just long enough

For us to be astonished.

Then they lift their wings, they become again

A part of the untouchable clouds.

We are the ideas of God, we are not, and we are the clouds – so sayeth Mary in the last 3 poems.

What I hear is that we are like the ocean and we have no final measure.

We are not just this, or only that.

I am not woman, mother, veterinarian, minister, middle-aged, nuts for birds, lonely, or in love

I am not

I am

Untouchable

What are you or are you not?

Now Comes the Long Blue Cold

Now comes the long blue cold

And what shall I say but that some

Bird in the tree of my heart

Is singing.

The same heart that only yesterday

Was a room shut tight, without dreams.

Isn't it wonderful the cold wind and

Spring in the heart inexplicable.

Darling girl. Picklock.

There is a saying that is often in my head, “surprised by love.”  I don’t know why love should be a surprise, because the world is so beautiful.   I forget though. One moment thoughts are all dark and gloom, and then, and let me say it, through grace love arises.  Like the sun ever faithful, love will come again.

Sometimes though relief comes not soon enough.  As the pain tortures us cold disconnection seems everlasting. But just when you think you can’t take it anymore, love’s sorrow does its work to open the heart.  In this case it’s not like a picklock, but more like a thief dynamiting a safe. 

Let me today blow up the allusion of safety, exploding my heart so that love and beauty may be enter freely.

When have you been surprised by love?

The Poet Comments on Yet Another Approaching Spring

Don’t flowers put on their

Prettiness each spring and

Go to it with

Everything they’ve got? Who

Would criticize the bed of

Yellow tulips or the blue

Hyacinths?

So put a

Bracelet on your

Ankle with a

Bell on it and make a

Little music for

The earth beneath your foot, or

Wear a hat with hot-colored

Ribbons for the

Pleasure of the

Leaves and the clouds, or at least

A ring with a gleaming

Stone for your finger; yesterday

I watched a mother choose

Exquisite ear-ornaments for someone

Beloved, in the spring

Of her life; they were

For her for sure, but also it seemed

A promise, a love message, a commitment

To all girls, and boys too, so

Beautiful and hopeful in this hard world

And young.

Yesterday Mary spoke of children who look out on a broken world. We the readers, and certainly myself, wondered what to do with that deep sorrow, and perhaps even despair. Here, a day later, Mary speaks to my heart and outlines my strategy. Let us know that there is both tragedy, and beauty in the world, and let us help our children see this. Surely every child born will look out on fragmented and wounded lives. We cannot stop this. This doesn’t keep us from doing all we can to mend that brokenness that seems far too difficult a task to “fix” in one lifetime or even thousands. Knowing that the arc of the moral universe bends so very slowly towards justice, what can we do while we wait for the beloved community to come into being? I think we might also commit our lives to beauty and to joy. For when we do, if even for one fleeting moment, we give others a chance to rejoice in the splendor of our world . May we so do this, giving hope in our hard world.

Where do you adorn your life for the sake of beauty and hope?

Reckless Poem - August 23, 2010

Today again I am hardly myself.

It happens over and over.

It is heaven-sent.

It flows through me

Like the blue wave.

Green leaves-you may believe this or not-

Have once or twice

Burst from the tips of my fingers

Somewhere

Deep in the woods,

In the reckless seizure of spring.

Though, of course, I also know that other song,

The sweet passion of one-ness.

Just yesterday I watched an ant crossing a path, through the tumbled pine seeds she toiled. And I thought: she will never live another life but this one. And I thought: if she lives her life with all her strength is she not wonderful and wise? And I continued this up the miraculous pyramid of everything until I came to myself.

And still, even in those northern woods, on these hills of sand I have flown from the window of myself to become white heron, gray whale, fox, hedgehog, camel. Oh sometimes already my body has felt like he body of a flower~ Sometimes already my heart is a red parrot, perched among strange, dark trees, flapping and screaming.

Just last night I was telling my spouse how these days I go to bed thinking of parrots, and get up in the morning thinking of parrots.. It is like an old friend has come to keep me company once again. For many years I had not had much to do with parrots directly, turning my spirit hope to seeing the wisdom and strength of my own species. This took a while, for returning from years working in Central America, my image of myself amongst humans was that of John the Baptist, screaming mad and spitting locusts. This role came to be I suppose because of the harm I had seen done to the earth and her feathered beings, and the subsequent alternating rage and depression. I found it hard to see anything miraculous about humans who consider themselves atop the pyramid, but eventually I did. That accomplished, more or less and as much as anyone can be fully accepting of our kind, I spend more and more of my days and thoughts back in the avian world. Parrots are not just a flapping and screaming species, nor are humans. Though alas dear heart, some days I long to exchange wisdom for recklessness, and squawk out pure defiance, and yes joy. Perhaps I do as these words sprout from my fingers.

Who are you when you are not yourself?

Children, It's Spring

And this is the lady
Whom everyone loves,
Ms. Violet
in her purple gown

Or, on special occasions,
A dress the color
Of sunlight. She sits
In the mossy weeds and waits

To be noticed.
She loves dampness.
She loves attention.
She loves especially

To be picked by careful fingers,
Young fingers, entranced
By what has happened
To the world.

We, the older ones,
Call in Spring,
And we have been through it
Many times.

But there is still nothing
Like the children bringing home
Such happiness
In their small hands.


I am seeing how Mary speaks more and more of age in her poems, as she herself ages. I wonder if she is losing the entrancement she felt at an earlier age and if we are seeing this in her work? Is she concentrating more on work and contributing to the world, so that there can be more happiness in small hands? Perhaps I project here. Turning 50 a few years back and watching my mother slide into dementia and infirmity, there is the temptation to give into a hurriedness in my days - to get it done now before winter’s dying comes upon me. The risk of course when concentrating on what is happening to our own bodies or those whom we love, is to lose sight of the miracle happening in the world around us. But then spring comes, the flowers renew our visions, and we children go running to our older ones with happiness in our hands.

Maybe, just maybe, they can come to us.

My mother and I have had difficulty connecting in the last decade. Her reality and memory challenges any firm basis for a relationship. Then for my birthday this month she sent a bouquet of flowers. She remembered my birthday! She was able to wade through her mental fog and physical impairments to reach out to the world. And she did it with flowers, the first time she’s ever done that. Together we held happiness in our hands, sharing the gift of spring and flowers, even in the winter. She told me "Child, it's spring!"

What happiness do you hold in your hands – receiving or giving?

North Country

In the north country now it is spring and there

Is a certain celebration. The thrush has come home…

It is okay to know only

One song if it is this one. Hear it

Rise and fall; the very elements of your soul

Shiver nicely. What would spring be

Without it? Mostly frogs. But don’t worry, he

Arrives, year after year, humble and obedient

And gorgeous. You listen and you know

You could live a better life than you do, be

Softer, kinder. And maybe this year you will

Be able to do it. Here how his voice rises and falls. There is no way to be

Sufficiently grateful for the gifts we are given, no way to speak the Lord’s name

Often enough, though we do try, and

Especially now, as the dappled breast

Breathes in the pines and heaven’s windows in the north country, now spring has come,

Are opened wide.

There has yet to be a day when I read one of Mary’s poems that I don’t feel as if I have witnessed a miracle. Some days the miracle brings a tightening to the chest that proceeds an “oh yes, this is what love is.” Today is one of those days and poems. I have been lately thinking how what I have to give and receive is the next breath. It is all that I have control over – to breath in peace and to breath out love. To breathe, dedicating absolute love and union with the beloved world is the one song I have and it is sung in the rise and the fall of my chest. I do not know if I can live a better life next year or be kinder even to those I love most, but I do know that now, for at least this next breath, I can pray with my breath and so speak the Lord’s name. In this way, perhaps I can lessen a bit hell on earth and give heaven’s hope to others, one breath, one song, and one bird at a time.

What song do you sing in gratitude?

The Bleeding Heart

I know a bleeding-heart plant that has thrived for sixty years if not more, and has never missed a spring without rising and spreading itself into a glossy bush, with many small red hearts dangling. Don't you think that deserves a little thought? The woman who planted it has been gone for a long time, and everyone who saw it in that time has also died or moved away and so, like so many stories, this one can't get finished properly. Most things that are important, have you noticed, lack a certain neatness. More delicious, anyway, is to remember my grandmother's pleasure when the dissolve of winter was over and the green knobs appeared and began to rise, and to create their many hearts. One would say she was a simple woman, made happy by simple things. I think this was true. And more than once, in my long life, I have wished to be her.

Once upon a time there were a humanoid people whose heart's cycled with the seasons. In the winter, their hearts shrunk to the size of a raison. The cold snows echoed their cool souls and empty faces. Come the spring their hearts began to grow and by summer would be so big that you could see them beating through their skin, emitting a pink glow around their chests. All summer long they would forget their work and their worries, and spend their days laughing in the rivers and ponds, embraced by life, love, and one another. Their favorite past time was to press their chests against one another and see how long their hearts could beat in perfect synchronization. Come fall they held on to each other's hands as if it was the last time ever. And of course it would be, at least until the following spring. Why do I wish I were they?

How does your heart wax and wane?

Such Singing in the Wild Branches

It was spring

and finally I heard him

among the first leaves -

then I saw him clutching the limb

in an island of shade

with his red-brown feathers

all trim and neat for the new year.

First, I stood still

and thought of nothing.

Then I began to listen.

Then I was filled with gladness -

and that's when it happened,

when I seemed to float,

to be, myself, a wing or a tree -

and I began to understand

what the bird was saying,

and the sands in the glass

stopped

for a pure white moment

while gravity sprinkled upward

like rain, rising,

and in fact

it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing -

it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed

not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,

and also the trees around them,

as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds

in the perfectly blue sky - all, all of them

were singing.

And, of course, yes, so it seemed,

so was I.

Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn't last

for more than a few moments.

It's one of those magical places wise people

like to talk about.

One of the things they say about it, that is true,

is that, once you've been there,

you're there forever.

Listen, everyone has a chance.

Is it spring, is it morning?

Are there trees near you,

and does your own soul need comforting?

Quick, then - open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song

may already be drifting away.

The Wood Thrush of North America has a song some describe as hauntingly beautiful. As a child I walked frequently alone in the woods and though this bird sang just for me. Whenever family confusion got stirred up on our home and my soul needed comforting, to the woods I went to hear a reprieve. I'd enter the doorway of trees with heavy feet and after a walk singing I'd leave the woods flying. The song of a bird tells us all that we all have a chance for liberation, even the most tortured, even the torturers. Within the deepest recesses of the fractured human dilemma of competition versus collaboration, and care versus harm, we are hauntingly beautiful. May you hear such a song of freedom today.

If you could give yourself a new chance today, what would it be?

Two Kinds of Deliverance – March 28, 2010

Last night the geese came back. Every year the geese, returning,

Do this, I don’t

Know how.

The curtains opened and there was

An old man in a headdress of feathers,

Leather leggings and a vest made

From the kin of some animal. He danced

In a kind of surly rapture…

I don’t know

Lots of things but I know this: next year

When spring

Flows over the starting point I’ll think I’m going to

Drown in the shimmering miles of it and then

One or two birds will fly me over

The threshold.

As for the pain of others, of course it tried to be

Abstract, but then

There flares up out of a vanished wilderness, like fire,

Still blistering: the wrinkled face

Of an old Chippewa

Smiling, hating us,

Dancing for his life.

Two kinds of salvation – birds returning to spring and the surly dance in the pain of a vanished wilderness. Where is the deliverance in this? Perhaps that it is the presence of life, the story that must be told, that cannot be stopped from being sung, told, and danced. It is your/my story of pain and it is the flight overhead of the sun's arc towards darkness. Would you tell me your despair and I will tell you mine? Then perhaps the false smile will slip away, as will the hate.

Where in your life do you tell the story of our vanished wilderness and peoples?