Hurricane

It didn't behave

like anything you had

ever imagined. The wind

tore at the trees, the rain

fell for days slant and hard.

The back of the hand

to everything. I watched 

the trees bow and their leaves fall

and crawl back into the earth.

As though, that was that.

This was one hurricane

I lived through, the other one

was of a different sort, and

lasted longer. Then 

I felt my own leaves giving up and 

falling. The back of the hand to 

everything. But listen now to what happened

to the actual trees;

toward the end of that summer they

pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.

It was the wrong season, yes,

but they couldn't stop. They 

looked like telephone poles and didn't

care. And after the leaves came

blossoms. For some things

there are no wrong seasons.

which is what I dream of for me.

Today there is a nor'easter bearing down on where I live in New York. The wind will blow and the few leaves that still cling to our trees and bushes I imagine will be slapped down by the back hand of a winter storm.  To stay safe, the region's residents will take shelter for the next 24 hours, staying out of harm's way. 

 I remember once when I was 15 by father backhanded me, bloodying my nose, and I wonder how this and other assaults, perceived and otherwise, cause me to hunker down still, withdrawing so as to keep safe.   Each of us has cause to blame human kind for being wrong and inflicting so much pain upon one another and this world.  We have reason to despair. We also have choice to invite in love and life's crazy and erratic possibilities. Alas we cannot stay out of harm's way, but we put ourselves in beauty's way.

As leaves uncurl in thanks to the sun's gift of light, we too can shift.  There are no wrong seasons for life, love, joy, and peace.  Just when you thought the world before you was painted with one heart killing color, a splash comes or a drop, the canvass of your conceptions now ruined. 

Why do our minds seek unilateral thinking?  I am sure it is for some evolved survival reasons this judging we do when we call one thing good and another bad. Our subconscious minds evolved so we can react quickly to threats without. This survival orientation though paints over the interdependent reality where beauty brushes up against the cruelest act.  We imagine ourselves too busy avoiding tigers, angry fathers, and murderous tribes to see the whole - no separation between this one snow storm and leaves that die, and new ones to surprise and surpass us all.

*******

Questions to journal by:

Where have you felt slapped down in life?

Has healing come to you?  How?

What have you learned from the storms in your life? 

Is it possible to see beauty in tragedy?

Of Goodness

How good

That the clouds travel, as they do,

Like the long dresses of the angels

Of our imagination,

Or gather in storm masses, then break

With their gifts of replenishment,

And how good

That the trees shelter the patient birds

In their thick leaves,

And how good that that in the field

The next morning

Red bird frolics again, his throat full of song,

 And how good

That the dark ponds, refreshed,

Are holding the white cups of the lilies

So that each is an eye that can look upward,

And how good that the little blue-winged teal

Comes paddling among them, as cheerful as ever

And so on, and so on.

How good it is that we travel from one side of the family to the other

On this Thanksgiving weekend

Disappearing fathers on one wing and diminishing mothers on the other

We soar down Interstate 20 and 95

Like an eagle, seeing, and taking in all

Cheer, yes, there is some to replenish the spirit

But what I would give to see a teal to deal

With the heartache and the loss

And so on and so on.

What would you see today to replenish your life?

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?

Three Prose Poems

1

Oh, yesterday, that one, we all cry out. Oh, that one! How rich and possible everything was! How ripe, ready, lavish, and filled with excitement-how hopeful we were on those summer days, under the clean, white racing clouds. Oh yesterday!

2

I was in the hold burn dump-no longer used…Here a pair of hummingbirds lived every summer, as if the only ones of their kind…I strolled, and was almost always sure to see the male hummingbird on his favorite high perch near the top of a wild cherry tree, looking out across his kingdom with bright eye, and even brighter throat…a plane, a black triangle, flew screaming from the horizon, heavy talons clenched and lumpy on its undersides. And, lo, the hummingbird cringed, it hugged itself to the limb, it hunkered, it quivered. It was God’s gorgeous, flashing jewel: afraid. All narrative is metaphor.

3

After the storm the ocean returned..so there was the world: sky, water, the pale sand and, where the tide had reached the day’s destination, the snow. And this detail: the body of a duck, a golden-eye; and beside it one black-backed gull. In the body of the duck, among the breast feathers, a hole perhaps an inch across: the color within the hole a shouting red. And bend it as you might, nothing was to blame: storms must toss, and the great black-backed gawker must eat, and so on. It was merely a moment. The sun, angling out from the bunched clouds, cast one could easily imagine tenderly over the landscape its extraordinary light.

Is life just a moment, balanced between fear and tenderness? Does the tide come in and yesterday was lush and we feel expansive and open, and then the tide goes out and we constrict with fear and scarcity? It seems to be so. We are God’s precious jewels sparkling in the sand, eater and eaten, afraid. Okay, maybe I can accept this. What brings me angst and a hollow thumping of the heart though, is that I will seek to blame God, the world, the gull, the plane, you, me. And as the tide goes out and the sun sets, I will think that I am lonely, alone worthy of praise or blame, of praising of blaming. Oh be still my cognitive self and let the story rest for a while in the calm of an intertidal zone, for all stories are metaphor as Mary says. Beneath it all lies shared being – no life, no death, just sparkling amazement lying amongst the ever present grains of fear.

Who or what do you blame? Praise?

Lightening - February 26, 2010

...the lights went out fast...except

for the lightening-the landscape

bulging forth like a quick

lesson in creation...

...it was hard to tell

fear from excitement:

...As always the body

wants to hide,

wants to flow toward it-strives

to balance while

fear shouts,

excitement shouts, back

and forth-each

bolt a burning river

tearing like escape through the dark

field of the other.

Okay, I admit it, I love "weather movies." Throughout the opening scenes my body is torn between fear and excitement, and when the storm seems suddenly upon us, them, me, all of us, there is a release of tension. There, in the dark of the storm, is perfection, a flowing, an escape from the cognitive brain wondering how we shall live. It is even more so in person. To view through the day the gathering clouds and to hear the rumble amidst the pecking of the key board as I tune into the latest storm tracker reports, there is a shameful joy - how can looming disaster be so much fun? Yet is not disaster upon us every day in one form or another, offering us a brilliant flash of joy if we could just live the beauty? Gods and goddesses throw bolts from upon high so that we might see the glory within and without.

What truths do you see in storms, in disasters, and in your fear?

The Black Walnut Tree - February 21, 2010

My mother and I debate:

we could sell

the black walnut tree

to the lumberman,

and pay off the mortgage...

...That night I dream

of my father's out of Bohemia

filling the blue fields

of tress and generous Ohio...

What my mother and I both know

is that we'd crawl with shame

in the emptiness we'd made

in our own and our father's backyard.

So the black walnut tree

swings through another year...

...and, month after month, the whip-

crack of the mortgage.

The America Black Walnut is a native tree and is being hunted out of its range. Looking through the internet I see that a 200 year old tree could be worth tens of thousands of dollars. Those people out of Europe in many ways did empty out Ohio of its native species, bringing with them their cultivated plants and trees. The Walnut is both native, and a tree of cultivation. So when Mary speaks of shame about taking the tree down, is it the shame that her lineage, her species took from Ohio? Or is it shame from not honoring the toils of her forebears? Both? Oh how our species delights in work and cultivating products. We yearn for abundance while killing it.

When you look in your backyard, what do you see? What trees, plants, and wildlife come from other lands, supplanting the native species? (In Florida, about 25% of plant and animal wildlife is non native).

Beyond the Snow Belt - January 3, 2010

Over the local stations, one by one,

Announcers list disasters like dark poems

That always happen in the skull of winter.

But once again the storm has passed us by:

...Peacefully from our frozen yards we watch

Our children running on the mild white hills....

How shall examples move us from our calm?

I do not say that it is not a fault.

I only say, except as we have loved,

All news arrives as from a distant land

I imagine a Buddhist monk wrapped in bright orange robes with a weather map behind him showing swirling snow fronts moving across the continent. He is the weatherman for the local news. Though the scene is what we might expect, his gestures are not. He bows with clasped hands, seeing the divine love in each of us, hoping that we will see the suffering in the world as if it was our own or in our very own backyard. Our beloveds are stranded in the cold, frightened, the world over. The human heart may yet thaw our frozen isolation, this the only news worth hearing, worth knowing.