Yellow

There is the heaven we enter

through institutional grace

and there are the yellow finches bathing and singing

in the lowly puddle.

The evidence of grace is all around us.  Like me though, do you forget?  Perhaps then this is what I have most distilled from a year with Mary Oliver; My constant reading and reflecting of her poems has opened my heart a bit more to the beauty before me, even in the previously most mundane circumstances.

I smile to think of goldfinches, their sharply painted wings a blur with frenzied enjoyment.  This day, and all days, may I so also learn to smile at the fussiness of humans who blur their egos defending "the right way" with the grace of interdependence.  Through our smiles, may there then be singing as we bathe in the light of love in the institutions so designed to bring heaven to earth and her beings. 

Where might you smile today where before you judged?

Percy Speaks While I am Doing Taxes

First of all, I do not want to be doing this.

Second of all, Percy does not want me

  to be doing this.

hanging over my desk like a besieged person

  with a dull pencil and innumerable lists

    of numbers.

Outside the water is blue, the sky is clear,

  the tide rising.

Percy, I say, this has to be done. This is

  essential. I'll be finished eventually.

Keep me in your thoughts, he replies. Just because

  I can't count to ten doesn't mean

I don't remember yesterday, or anticipate today.

  I give you one more hour, then we step out

into the beautiful, money-deaf gift of the world

and run.

Just this last month I read about language research with a dog who knew 1000 words.  They do understand a lot.

Currently I am reading the book, "Parrot Behavior" and just yesterday read about parrots that know not just hundreds of words, but can combine words into meaningful sentences.  They do understand a lot.

All of this reminds me of the movie, "Forest Gump" where Forest says, "I may not be smart, but I know what love is."

No matter how we see the intelligence of another being, whether it is comparable to humans or to other species or not, I do believe that we share with the other social vertebrates a common neural structure of emotional responses that evolved out of this beautiful earth.

Baby, we were born to run, to love, and feel deep gratitude for the gifts around us.

What were you born to do?

Percy at Breakfast (Twelve)

Percy says, I've eaten, and I'm still hungry.

So I say, what about toast?  and offer him

a dry corner.

Percy says, I like butter better.

Eggs then?  I say. And we share a couple scrambled.

Good! says Percy. And then because he's polite sometimes,

Thank you.

He turns to leave the room, then looks back

philosophically. I guess people just don't understand,

he says, how it is never to be not hungry.

Where to find humans who are never not hungry:

People in the midst of famine, drought, devastation, and political turmoil

Dictators

Political leaders of all stripes

American consumers

CEOs

Alcoholics

Advertising companies of substances that can be abused

A child suffering  abuse

A parent wielding this abuse

Prisoners

Guards

The tortured

The torturers

Me on a stressful day

Those who interact with me on a stressful day

Where do you know hunger and what do you hunger for?

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?

365 Mary Oliver Poems

I have now been writing this blog for a year - this is my 366th posting today!  Though my plans were to end today, I shall carry on because there are still two more books of poems I have not covered. I could have left out some poems and coordinated the finishing in a year's time, but honestly, this year's rising with Mary is too precious to stop any time before I have too.  My guess is that I shall be blogging for about 100 more days.  Will you take my hand and heart, and stay with me a while longer?  I'd like that.

 How has this year's reading been for you?

How Turtles Come to Spend the Winter in the Aquarium, Then Are Flown South and Released Back Into the Sea

Somewhere down beach, in the morning, at water's edge, I found a sea turtle,

its huge head a smoldering apricot, its shell streaming with seaweed,

its eyes closed, its flipper motionless.

When I bent down, it moved a little.

When I picked it up, it signed.

Was it forty pounds, or fifty pounds, or a hundred?

Was it two miles back to the car?

We walked a little while, and then we rested, and then we walked on

I walked with my mouth open, my heart roared.

The eyes opened, I don't know what they thought.

Sometimes the flippers swam at the air.

Sometimes the eyes closed.

I couldn't walk anymore, and then I walked some more

while it turned into granite, or cement, but with that apricot-colored head,

that stillness, that Buddha-like patience, that cold-shocked but slowly beating heart.

Finally we reached the car.

The afternoon is the other part of this story.

Have you ever found something beautiful, and maybe just in time?

How such a challenge can fill you!

Jesus could walk over the water.

I had to walk ankle-deep in the sand, and I did it.

My bones didn't quite snap.

 Come on in, and see me smile.

I probably won't stop for hours.

Already, in the warmth, the turtle has raised its head, is looking around.

Today, who could deny it, I am an important person.

They say there are 9 Whooping Cranes at Payne's Prairie today - I am itching to be done with this blog so that I can run there to find something beautiful.  I think for the rest of this year I shall run towards beauty wherever I might find it so that I can be filled with challenge. 

Perhaps the real challenge is to see beauty everywhere, and let that love and awe fill us with bone snapping, urgent purpose.

Shall we all be important people this year?

How do you plan to be important this year?