It’s not quite a cardinal, but
still this leaf sings. It cannot
cock its head so I do and
hear its hymn sideways.
She lauds the coming cold.
She portends a hard frost
and snow so soft it lulls you
into steep sleep that
awaits a choir of
hunger pangs to sing
you awake.
This leaf-come-cardinal
sneaks into my heart and
starts me thinking about how
fall has blessed me.
She sings of a
harvest of faith, of the
hallowing of love, of
hope in the shape of
votive candles.
This cardinal sings me.
I’ve been tracking trains
and have found that these
iron horses keep to their
courses without fail.
I’ve been birding jets
and I see now that those artful
smoking whisps eclipse that these
plumes portend eco-gloom.
I’ve been divining God, whose
omnipresence is all over the place:
now in robin egg blue cracked against spring green,
now in the sigh of the weary guy whose wife of 52 years just died,
now in the sliver of a smile of a wearied, hijabed mother as I held the door
for her and her child’s stroller.
I’ve been plotting the Holy One who wholly
eclipses me from
within.
I see runes everywhere, those
ancient ones have carved
themselves into my eyes:
every tree a ‘tyr’
each stone an ‘ur’
my yogic bending body a ‘sol.’
When I try to divine what
You are saying to me
in spelling these
into my world, I wonder
whether I’m seeing things.
But I am content to “yes” this.
Yes, I see what You have
put before me. But what
I do not see is a cross,
no “tau” in these Nordic runes.
This is something new, yet something old.
I behold it seeing me – a sacred ruin:
Yours, and mine too.
I was woken the other night by
the wind playing the house
like a musical instrument –
our home made a horn.
As I settled back into sleep I
wondered what it would be like
to be the wind – now
racing at breakneck speed, now
gently caressing a cheek, now
tearing apart forests, now
blowing away the dis-ease of stifled
and stultified atmospheres.
What is it like to
slip between the v’s of trees, to
stroke the curves of awakening valleys, to
cut across the peak of mountains high, and
from there your eye takes in a world until
you bend down and dust up the ground
into a storm.
What is it like to be the wind, ruach, pneuma, spirit?
What is it like now to be in my lungs,
now to be leaving me
changed?
Friends, at a conference on the theme of the home at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, IN, our host Derek Nelson invited us to write a poem about our understanding of home at the start of our time together. I share mine – edited – with you here.
Home for me is near to a tree:
then a poplar I climbed with a friend
now a strong Norwegian maple speaking truth;
then a willow by water, flexible yet strong like a yogi
now a hemlock evergreen, with needles soft to the touch
and smelling like heaven;
then ein Apfelbaum in Omma and Oppa’s backyard
now, in ours, the wizened wood of blue beech, whose canopy preaches
welcome.
Home for me is between now and then.
I stepped into a wood
yesterday under the tutelage
of a son of this land, who
gave me a pinch of tobacco to
lay at the base of a
sentry maple tree; and it
struck me that this
is grace… being given
what we need to give
so that giving itself is
gift.
At the end of the time of
teaching, my wife and I
walked deeper into the wood,
in this time of its wonder: with
trees walking from sleep;
blankets melting away; and
Jefferson salamanders
making their way to
places of procreation.
I felt hope birthed in me,
holy hope tasting of
maple.
I may be awake, deep
in the night, but
Mother sleeps. Now
is not the time of her labour,
nor does she launder, bake, tinker – no
she is soporific and her sabbath
settles me. She slumbers silently
although she shifts as the snow drifts
her blanket here now, there then.
Yet I can feel the
power of her rest. Beneath
this sparkling quilt spring
germinates while the perfect empty
space of each tree allows
my eyes to see that fullness
comes in many forms. I
gasp at the thought that
every flower, blade of grass, perennial
is resting, filling, readying while
my pen scratches at the wonder of
Mother and mothering’s many ways.
He lay splattered across my
wife’s emptied plate – now void
aside from this wasp’s corpse – flailed
by a fly-swatter repurposed:
wasp swapped for fly.
One wing conveniently
remains intact, shooting straight
up, like the arm of a child
anxious with an answer,
or a washroom request.
Of course, I grabbed the
dinnertime demon by the
sleeve and tossed him over
the guard rail into the
garden below.
No words were said over
his body; no proper burial;
no notice on some wasp website;
no memorial for him aside
from this poem.
Yesterday morning my wife and I wound our way down to Hamilton to drop off Santa Maria’s halyard, which needs replacing. We then made our way over to LaSalle Marina, her home on the hard in this year of pandemic. We finished replacing a thru-hull, started a couple of weeks ago, after which we decided for a stroll on the shore. There we found a beautiful swan.
She, or he – I guess – was busy cleaning herself. It was most amazing to watch her. She could bend her head in pretty much any direction, and reach places I didn’t know to exist on a swan. The swan paid no attention to my paying attention to her. I took a video, and then wondered why. I wanted to capture the moment, I guess. But why?
I recall a professor some years ago talking about walking along a via in Rome, at sunset, with a friend who commented on all the tourists snapping photos (in those days with cameras not phones). The friend noted that they were trying to freeze a moment rather than enjoying it. They wanted to “capture” it; to have it ready at hand. I have thought about that comment for some time.
I also remember reading an article more recently about a study concerning memory and photographs. People taking photos of an event, or a monument were later asked about it. Set against those who simply took in the event, the photographers had less-clear memories and far weaker impressions than those who simply observed. But there was an exemption. Photographers who were trying to get artful images had a stronger impression than both groups. So, what does this tell us?
It is hard to know. But it does seem to be the case that those who practice art are practiced in patience. And patience is the sine que non for seeing in the richest sense of the word. Some ancient Greeks believed that when a person saw something, they became one with it. This was the condition for the possibility of knowing something, also evidenced in the Hebrew word for “know.” Yada is used in the broader sense of knowledge, but also with reference to sexual intercourse. Truly knowing comes from truly seeing which means being one with what is known.
I didn’t become one with the swan. But I know that she certainly gave me pause, and as I watched her bend in so many ways, I thought of my recent foray into yoga. The swan needs no guru to guide it. Maybe that’s why I took the video, hoping that she might be my guru, inspiring or in-spiriting me with this vision of flexibility and balance. And maybe too it, I wanted to remind myself that there are no ugly ducklings.
They fall asleep so swiftly,
these animals closer to Genesis
than me and my kind. They
dream of the Lord God
walking their wood,
until then again they
flinch from the pain of
the primal couple stepping
out of the garden and into
their nightmare.
Is there any hope for Your
creatures? To surface from
sleep to discover a sliver
of sanity seeping into this
Homo Sapiens?
These pets sleep –
domesticated by our
regimes, our
treats, our
house training but
every now and then
the wild comes calling
and I sense some
hope for
us all.
stillvoicing 