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Sun 28 Jun 09

Walking/Breathing

(inhale)
You are no different than the stars, really.
The same atoms that form you are dispersed all throughout
The night sky that brings you such awe.
You seek to unite all your disparate parts
Yet you are the cosmos, walking,
An aspect of an ever changing awareness;
You are a messenger, an observer, a nerve cell.
(exhale)
You took a dare tonight, and flung yourself
Haphazardly into the arms of strangers,
You cupped fire in your hand and danced on red-hot constellations.
To love is such a dare, to trust, to just feel is a risk.
That you chanced it is evidence enough you're alive
Every action is as dangerous as it is beautiful-
Your next breath is just as transformative as any ceremony.
(...)

filed under: from the birdy's beak blogged: 01.08 Sun, 28 Jun '09

Sun 21 Jun 09

To be invincibly curious (for Solstice/Father's Day)

In the vivid days of childhood you felt such a thrill
When you ran out the door for the forest, freeing yourself from time
Skipping into mystery and shadows without fear
Upturning stones in the creek to catch a salamander, to be invincibly curious.
You recall the wonder of the sun, some yellow star in a book,
That brought out your sweat and blazed your trails
Through a wilderness of thickets and souls.
By sunset, your name was called, tugging at you like a yo-yo string
And you brought yourself hesitantly home, perhaps a little late, out of breath,
Perhaps a little wiser.
In the mirror now, in these days,
The memories of youth are plotted in fading freckles
And we are punctual, and we enter the forest
With maps and caution as if we were once defeated by it.
However, there is a message inscribed
On the other side of that mirror where we mourn time;
There is adventure yet, for you are still a child of a Universe made of mysteries
There is exaltation in little things yet,
For you are still a child of senses which awaken further each passing day,
You are still a child even in your frailty,
For there is an eternity of graces yet to know and teach.
As a child, we do the walking for our ancestors,
Our mothers dwelling within our skins, our fathers anchoring to the bones,
And from these names in our blood emerge new children, new names,
New ripples in Creation’s pond.
The word made flesh.
From this newness comes an amazement in responsibility, and I am a father now.
From a child’s name comes a wonder in infinite outcomes,
And you are a mother now.
From the forest comes the child trotting,
And we uplift the goodness of their freedom, even when they’re late.
More than flesh made whole, the child before you and within you
Yearns that we never outgrow adventure.
I will affirm this in my muddiness,
As this father runs with the son into the forest again
Chasing dreams, catching holy glimpses of infinity
As easily as we might catch a salamander and laugh long
On the first day of summer, freed from time, the flesh made whole.

filed under: from the birdy's beak blogged: 12.26 Sun, 21 Jun '09

Sat 13 Jun 09

bridge work ahead

I'm on the bridge
The river is a muddy rage
And the sky, a battlefield of clouds.
There's thunder somewhere, could be in my head.
With a flutter, a white pigeon flies toward the mayhem above.
Lost, it seems, anxious circuits above the bridge, flapping with vigor,
As if its life indeed depends on this upward thrust to chaos,
There is reorientation and calmer winds yet.
Not along ago, a woman jumped from here-
For a moment lost on the air,
For a moment, free.
Life does indeed
Depend on being
Found, and at
Peace with
The sky.
Should she
have seen this
White bird swirling
Amid the impending weather
She might have chosen to be winged
And chase the very airs which troubled her
Finding herself in command of the wind, not merely blown
By it but meant to be upon it, intended to be made ever more alive.
I deeply revere these passing seconds, and the coming
Storm, and to behold this white pigeon flying for
Its freedom, flying for its life, flying perhaps
For these eyes only for they are lost too.
I uplift my vision to the passion of the
Sky, that I may too be reoriented
And clearer of my surroundings
More knowledgeable of my own
Feathers and their ability
To course through the
Very mystery which
Hold me back.
To the sky,
May I again
Be found
In you.

filed under: from the birdy's beak blogged: 20.17 Sat, 13 Jun '09

Sat 23 May 09

something there

We talk about the corner of an eye
When we know it's round
Fooling ourselves into boxes and lines.
We're more fluid than that
Flowing from here to there, streaks of vision
Seldom aware of the limits
So swiftly made just by naming a thing, fixing to now.
The Big Dipper hangs as a
Question mark over the house, paradoxically casting light
Long since old but no less mythic.
I with those stars form the arcs of a riddle
Joined by our mere points in space
Orbiting in nameless absurdity as strangers then, now and yet to be.
Inhaling the sweat of suns, you can exclaim
There's something here or something there
When both and neither are true,
As real as an almost-kiss.
There's something behind the wall, within the grove,
And surely, there's something in your cornerless eyes.
As a tireless mockingbird I exclaim
Multitudes of somethings, perhaps senselessly.
There's no proof of even the stars
Of even the bird's song
Of even your eyes.
I could live without proof, and besides,
I would rather dare a dream of life
Than to deny that there's something there.

filed under: from the birdy's beak blogged: 01.17 Sat, 23 May '09

Thu 07 May 09

Kunstler: The Bottom

Our food production system is approaching crisis. There's no way we can continue the petro-agriculture system of farming and the Cheez Doodle and Pepsi Cola diet that it services. The public is absolutely zombified in the face of this problem -- perhaps a result of the diet itself. President Obama and Ag Secretary Vilsack have not given a hint that they understand the gravity of the situation. It is probably one of those unfortunate events of history that can only impress a society in the form of a crisis. It also happens to be one of the few problems we face that public policy could affect sharply and broadly -- if we underwrote the reactivation of smaller, local farm operations instead of shoveling money to giant "agribusiness" (or Citibank, or Goldman Sachs, or AIG...). I maintain that this may be the year that the crisis gets our attention, because capital is suddenly harder to get than fossil-fuel-based fertilizer.
All these epochal discontinuities present themselves, for the moment, as a season of muted "hope" and general apathy. The days are suddenly mild. We've resumed old and happy habits of grilling meat outdoors and motoring to those remaining places that were not blanketed with franchised food huts and discount malls. We have a new, charming president with an appealing family. Newly-minted dollars are flowing to the "shovel-ready." The new bad news is less bad than the old bad news (or seems to be). And the year just past has been such a bummer that our hard-wired human nature tells us that good things must be just around the corner.

filed under: the state of things blogged: 00.03 Thu, 07 May '09

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Walking/Breathing

To be invincibly curious (for Solstice/Father's Day)

bridge work ahead

something there

Kunstler: The Bottom

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