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Beetle, snake, apples. We walk single
file under willows, the dappled light casting shadows. First the beetle, on its back, and one side missing a few hairlike legs. I flip it with the fine point of a pen revealing its pale shell with elegant black stripes. What to read in the moist spot it leaves scuttling into the weeds? Immediately, a slip of snake whips quickly into hedge, slender tail a question mark, disappears. Three small apples in a row far from orchard. Four of us stepping lightly on the concrete walk, stepping lightly into the mystery of being here together in this moment, where everything is contained.
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It is out of love for itself that Consciousness bodies itself forth as a universe.
Christopher Wallis, Tantra Illuminated Last night, in town, a shed exploded and burnt a house to the ground. Everything was lost except the cat and the owners and their faith that things come around right as long as we’re alive and unharmed. Today, I’m outside in the ninety-seven degree heat limbing the pines that cluster on the south side of our land, the break between the ditch, which burned last time, and the driveway, the last fuel-free space before our barn. These trees bear scorch marks from the last fire to climb our hill. They look like reptiles and smell like my deepest memories of nature with their citrusy sap. Wielding my lopper and pine saw—used at Christmas, and now, in fire season-- I slip among them murmuring words of love. They are good at surrender. Bark, and green or dry wood yield easily and the limbs drop around me like so many petals showered from the Mother’s hand above. In this way, we become one. My hand on the smooth bark of their branches, and my hand sawing away what will burn, harm, kill, their scent in my sweat like a lover. Over the usual dry silence,
the million soft footsteps of rain, exotic on this desert summer Sunday. Awakening, my mind reached out to cup the din in the cistern of memory, penetrated by recognition. I unfurled from sleep, from the deep fear of fire, to the smokey grey sky of cloud. Trees offset in limpid green, their leaves bowed by the press of wetness. The earth patters beneath falling water, volume increasing in sound and ground. The generous eave built for snow, where winter’s ice melts into spears, this morning drips with summer’s grateful tears. Runoff returns to river. Reprieve from burn. The boy cellist bows his neck
over the neck of his cello, his cut-velvet hair catching July light as he plays and sings Henrici Noel’s Lamentatio. His teenaged voice hovers over the chords while fingers pound the stings and his bow arm vibrates the shiny blue of his shirt. Such a paradox this combination of youth and grief; it plucks at my heart like pizzicato, pulling out all the love and loss of sixty years. The cello is a serious business, conjuring sounds from the lowest bass to the highest range of the soprano. All the young faces in their folding chairs moving arms and bodies like a dance, an ancient ritual, where sound speaks in the words we’ve lost, all the words we’ve not yet found. Nothing is last, nothing first.
Everything is a wheel. Here and here and here with no room for there. Even infinity is a loop twisting back on itself. While dark, also light. Up, also down. Try to mark what ends from what starts, walk on this spinning ball east to west or north to south and the place you began is also moving, like the horizon out of reach. Stand still and ride through the night sky that holds the morning light. Morning, the crescent moon hangs like a comma in the sentence of your life. Follow it. Thanksgiving's not always the easiest holiday; there's a lot of history to consider, both personal and universal. Here's a short poem that reflects some of that.
Wind is erasing the hills this morning,
blurring their lines with a white mist of lifted snow, the northern sky an imperturbable blue. The turmoil of air is not its business. I kneel before Quan Yin, her four arms hold a lotus, the braided loop of infinity, and two hands touch in the sign of prayer. I contemplate the suffering in this world and ask for relief. It blows like the wind lifting snow. It sweeps around the earth like a silk veil, this exhale. In and out, breath and wind, darkness and light, living and dying. It goes on with us and without. These bones settle on the cushion, in the body, compressing like the rings of trees, rooted in the neutral, ever changing earth. Outside, the snow collapses
on itself, water finding water that way it has of shifting shape and staying the same. The river roars its full-throated runoff, wicking away what falls. The arc of light slants higher across our hills, days longer by seconds. Still, it’s winter. In this quiet expanse of white lit life, we fall into our own slant of time. Bones resting on bones that spark in bright arcs of pain. You paint. I write. Fire pops in the grate its long held breath of rain. Water moving everywhere, compelled to start again. Like us, trees are never alone.
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August 2019
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