Boat Across the River
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Flowers at Night
White flowers
on the pear tree –
even more
lovely at night.
The petals
and the darkness both
are softer
still
beside each other.
Daughter’s Third Birthday
down, constantly,
always the same
speed, always
the same number
of leaves seemingly
always falling
such that I think
of a screen saver
called “Autumn”.
They have coordinated
their falling — in fact
it is a simple letting go:
first these, then the next
group. It seems it will always
be the same, but it won’t
really and this exact
scene won’t last for long.
These are my thoughts
as we walk together,
and you have just
turned three, and you collect
your beautiful leaves
for your bouquet, so excited –
each one is a miracle.
The Two Owls
I took food over to my grandfather’s house on Memorial Day. My mother takes care of him now that my grandmother has passed on, and Mom is in California visiting my brother. I thought Grandpa might be especially lonely on the holiday and remembering my grandmother. After dinner I was washing dishes at the sink, looking out the window at the wooded land in front of their house. Suddenly, I saw a giant set of wings unfold, so huge was the wingspan that I thought of a prehistoric bird. Startled, I made an exclamation, and my grandfather hurried over excitedly to see. He said he had been seeing the owl around his property lately — most likely a Great Horned Owl.
I could see his human-like face up in a tree, so I went outside, traveling over the sidewalk that passes through the garden still lush from my grandmother’s hand which last touched these plants nearly a year ago. My little daughter followed right on my heels. We wove our way around trees until we were under his tree, looked up at him, and he looked down at us. Our eyes met. My soul trembled. As the great Mary Oliver writes in her poem At Round Pond:
“owl
make your little appearance now
owl dark bird bird of gloom
messenger reminder
of death
that can’t be stopped…
…look down with your
golden eyes how everything
trembles
then settles
from mere incidence into
the lush of meaning.”
Though many argue that animals are merely living their lives without any messages or symbols for us, it was hard for me not to catch my breath, hard for me not to feel that the moment was more meaningful than perhaps it really was. My grandfather had just finished torturing me at dinner, telling me that the reason he will never leave that house for a community of some sort is because then he will not have access to a garage, in which he can turn on his two cars, sit in the red Honda Pilot, and kill himself with the carbon monoxide. He tells me often that he wants to be buried in the Pilot, and he passes it off as a joke, but I have a sneaking suspicion that he says it because his plans for death revolve around the Pilot.
He says he will not leave the house because the house gives him access to his death. But I think the truth is that the house, after all these years, has become his map, and especially as an older person who almost never leaves its doors, it has become his entire landscape. It holds all his stories. To leave it would be to leave himself behind, and that would mean his death. I think it was something like that for my grandmother, too, back when I was in high school, and it seems a common phenomenon for older people who are forced to leave their longtime homes. It reminds me on a much much smaller, much much less tragic scale of the American Indians being forced to leave their sacred homelands. Those lands contained all their stories, so much so that being forced to leave them meant being forced to leave their religion, their entire way of existing, to leave their hearts behind. These things passed through my head as the giant bird’s eyes met mine. And then he flew away.
We walked back into the house until it was time to leave, and when we returned back outside, I could see a smaller owl, still very large. I presumed it was the female, and she did not start away when she saw me approach. She stood her ground confidently up in the tree and made a strange and eery high-pitched whistle. The enormous male was out of sight at this point, but I could hear him whistling back to her. I listened for a few minutes as they called to each other, and again I felt my grandmother’s spirit pass by me. Strangely, I sensed that she was calling to my grandfather. When I got home, I Googled “symbolism of the owl,” and almost immediately read these words: “The Cree Indians believed that the high-pitched whistle of the owl was a summons from the spirit world.” Interesting stuff. And who knows? Maybe true.
Seeing the Truth
It would probably be impossible to have had a life more stable than the one I have thus far lived. I have lived in the same city since birth except for a year and a half “abroad”. I have never experienced a move as my parents, who have been happily married for forty years, bought the house they currently live in when I was an infant. My grandparents have lived in their house since before I was born, and they were married for sixty four years. I attended the same high school as my mom. My dad grew up down the street from where I am now and lived there from the time he was born until he got married. That’s the house in which his father died, and where his mother lived for over fifty years — until she moved into a nursing home. He has never lived anywhere but here either. There is no divorce in my family. I feel like, in the midst of a big city, I have had a stereotypically small town experience. And that I have been lucky to have had every important privilege.
Sometimes I feel so attached to this place and this life that I don’t even see it anymore. It’s like looking at my own face in the mirror. I’ve been looking at the same things for so long that they’ve almost become invisible to me. Driving to a restaurant downtown, I suddenly saw the city, the hazy sunset over the fluffy trees, the little houses snuggled close together. I saw the city as if for the first time and managed to grab hold of that image. In Buddhism, there is talk of trying to maintain a Beginner’s Mind — to keep that freshness, that quality of really seeing something for what it is. I have that when I am traveling; I see every little detail of a new place as if it’s charmed. I notice everything from apartment balconies, to little pink flowers streetside, to Spanish moss in the trees, to the little boy holding his father’s hand. I want to try to reclaim that freshness of Beginner’s Mind when I look at my own city, so that I am actually seeing where I am — so that I actually perceive the life I am living.
(And for those us who are longtime adherents to a specific faith tradition, it’s important to also see things as they really are — to not be so attached to our beliefs that we can’t see the truth anymore).
Heavenly Day
(That is a great song by Patti Griffin, by the way).
When I stepped out my front door at 6:45 this morning, it was raining. But it was so gorgeously warm and balmy. It was one of just a few times where I’ve stepped into darkness and felt totally comfortable. Usually, the dark scares me — that fear of the unseen. This morning, though, felt like the time I was in the Caribbean.
We stepped into the ocean and it was clear and blue and warm and the French couple we met — the guy — described it as the only time he’d been swimming in the ocean when he felt “no hesitation.” That’s how I felt this morning. I stepped into the warm wet darkness like I had stepped into the ocean: with no hesitation.
The tall tree in front of me opened thousands of its white flowers in my face and all the birds were singing and singing. Was it a bright and sunny afternoon? No. Was it beautiful? Yes.
My Bad Mood
Two things: don’t break in this storm you poor little trees!!! Ice is accumulating as we speak, and worst case predictions are that some people could be without power for weeks! OMG!
And speaking of stupid texting language: Sarah Palin. I don’t care if she was trying to make some kind of pun, to respond to the President’s speech with “WTF” successfully brings her down a few more notches on the respectability ladder, if that is even possible. I don’t know if she is trying to appeal to fifteen year olds, the most crass of all Americans, or who exactly her target audience is…or if she doesn’t even know that the F stands for “fuck,” but I am so, so, so over her fifteen minutes in the spotlight and wish she would just go back to Alaska and polish her guns.
Seriously Mrs. Palin, get off the National stage.
Birds at the Lake: Dusk
Balmy Autumn evening:
water’s in the air.
Owls speaking at the lake:
there are three of them
somewhere in the darkening trees,
echoes of each other
and of my dreams…
Their crisp voices still my thoughts:
now just one thought
which is a question:
When will she speak again?
They’re in my head…
I’m in their conversation,
though they are unaware
of me. On the lake, a duck flies
so close that I believe
I hear two wings gently touching
water: kiss, kiss, kiss:
two ducks so near each other
I don’t know anymore
what’s (gray) water, what’s (gray) sky.
It is What It Is
The Quaker meeting we attend had the service outside Sunday, in the meditational woods. The weather has been perfect in the afternoons, and very cool in the mornings and evenings, though we are in need of rain. As is typical here, the season has changed overnight: from air conditioning, to nearly needing the heat. The temperature was just right for the service, and the sky was so blue I felt like I was in New Mexico. The dry air contributed to the effect. We sat on folding chairs in a half circle facing the stone patio. Twenty year old trees surrounded us and separated us from the street, though not from its car noise. Having lived in this city since birth, I remember when this “woods” was planted, when I was a long ways off from ever attending this meeting. There are sacrifices that you make when you commit to one place for life, but there are also benefits you would otherwise miss out on. Such as seeing a tree grow up.
During the period of silent meditation, I was admiring the shapeliness of a nearby tulip leaf when the incessant car noise began to irritate me. Before I let it ruin my experience, I caught myself. There is absolutely nothing I can do about the fact that there are busy streets in this city, or the fact that there are lots of cars. The birds did not seem to be fixating on the noise; they went about their business of swooping and singing. The car noise did not appear to be affecting their lives in any way…
It is what it is.
I looked at all the people and trees, the flowering plants, the birds and the butterflies. The warm sunshine filtered down and seemed to make everything glow. In my mind’s eye, I saw each of these things as a ball of energy. As we drift and orbit around each other, currents pass back and forth between us, like lightning between clouds. I imagined this to be like a child’s toy that I’ve seen my nephew play with; there are little balls and sticks, which are all magnetic. You can build these geometric shapes with them. I imagined all the beings around me to be connected like this, like an invisible web of connected energy.
