Devotions, p.4
Devotions, page 4
housed as they are in the same body.
IT WAS EARLY
It was early,
which has always been my hour
to begin looking
at the world
and of course,
even in the darkness,
to begin
listening into it,
especially
under the pines
where the owl lives
and sometimes calls out
as I walk by,
as he did
on this morning.
So many gifts!
What do they mean?
In the marshes
where the pink light
was just arriving
the mink
with his bristle tail
was stalking
the soft-eared mice,
and in the pines
the cones were heavy,
each one
ordained to open.
Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.
Little mink, let me watch you.
Little mice, run and run.
Dear pine cone, let me hold you
as you open.
WITH THANKS TO THE FIELD SPARROW, WHOSE VOICE IS SO DELICATE AND HUMBLE
I do not live happily or comfortably
with the cleverness of our times.
The talk is all about computers,
the news is all about bombs and blood.
This morning, in the fresh field,
I came upon a hidden nest.
It held four warm, speckled eggs.
I touched them.
Then went away softly,
having felt something more wonderful
than all the electricity of New York City.
A LESSON FROM JAMES WRIGHT
If James Wright
could put in his book of poems
a blank page
dedicated to “the Horse David
Who Ate One of My Poems,” I am ready
to follow him along
the sweet path he cut
through the dryness
and suggest that you sit now
very quietly
in some lovely wild place, and listen
to the silence.
And I say that this, too,
is a poem.
ALMOST A CONVERSATION
I have not really, not yet, talked with otter
about his life.
He has so many teeth, he has trouble
with vowels.
Wherefore our understanding
is all body expression—
he swims like the sleekest fish,
he dives and exhales and lifts a trail of bubbles.
Little by little he trusts my eyes
and my curious body sitting on the shore.
Sometimes he comes close.
I admire his whiskers
and his dark fur which I would rather die than wear.
He has no words, still what he tells about his life
is clear.
He does not own a computer.
He imagines the river will last forever.
He does not envy the dry house I live in.
He does not wonder who or what it is that I worship.
He wonders, morning after morning, that the river
is so cold and fresh and alive, and still
I don’t jump in.
TO BEGIN WITH, THE SWEET GRASS
1.
Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat
of the sweet grass?
Will the owl bite off its own wings?
Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or
forget to sing?
Will the rivers run upstream?
Behold, I say—behold
the reliability and the finery and the teachings
of this gritty earth gift.
2.
Eat bread and understand comfort.
Drink water, and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets
are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds
who are drinking the sweetness, who are
thrillingly gluttonous.
For one thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.
And someone’s face, whom you love, will be as a star
both intimate and ultimate,
and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.
And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:
oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two
beautiful bodies of your lungs.
3.
The witchery of living
is my whole conversation
with you, my darlings.
All I can tell you is what I know.
Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.
It’s more than bones.
It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It’s more than the beating of the single heart.
It’s praising.
It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life—just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe
still another.
4.
Someday I am going to ask my friend Paulus,
the dancer, the potter,
to make me a begging bowl
which I believe
my soul needs.
And if I come to you,
to the door of your comfortable house
with unwashed clothes and unclean fingernails,
will you put something into it?
I would like to take this chance.
I would like to give you this chance.
5.
We do one thing or another; we stay the same, or we
change.
Congratulations, if
you have changed.
6.
Let me ask you this.
Do you also think that beauty exists for some
fabulous reason?
And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure—
your life—
what would do for you?
7.
What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.
Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.
That was many years ago.
Since then I have gone out from my confinements,
though with difficulty.
I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile.
They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment
somehow or another).
And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.
And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
EVIDENCE
1.
Where do I live? If I had no address, as many people
do not, I could nevertheless say that I lived in the
same town as the lilies of the field, and the still
waters.
Spring, and all through the neighborhood now there are
strong men tending flowers.
Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue. But
all beautiful things, inherently, have this function—
to excite the viewers toward sublime thought. Glory
to the world, that good teacher.
Among the swans there is none called the least, or
the greatest.
I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in
singing, especially when singing is not necessarily
prescribed.
As for the body, it is solid and strong and curious
and full of detail; it wants to polish itself; it
wants to love another body; it is the only vessel in
the world that can hold, in a mix of power and
sweetness: words, song, gesture, passion, ideas,
ingenuity, devotion, merriment, vanity, and virtue.
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
2.
There are many ways to perish, or to flourish.
How old pain, for example, can stall us at the
threshold of function.
Memory: a golden bowl, or a basement without light.
For which reason the nightmare comes with its
painful story and says: you need to know this.
Some memories I would give anything to forget.
Others I would not give up upon the point of
death, they are the bright hawks of my life.
Still, friends, consider stone, that is without
the fret of gravity, and water that is without
anxiety.
And the pine trees that never forget their
recipe for renewal.
And the female wood duck who is looking this way
and that way for her children. And the snapping
turtle who is looking this way and that way also.
This is the world.
And consider, always, every day, the determination
of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles.
3.
I ask you again: if you have not been enchanted by
this adventure—your life—what would do for
you?
And, where are you, with your ears bagged down
as if with packets of sand? Listen. We all
have much more listening to do. Tear the sand
away. And listen. The river is singing.
What blackboard could ever be invented that
could hold all the zeros of eternity?
Let me put it this way—if you disdain the
cobbler may I assume you walk barefoot?
Last week I met the so-called deranged man
who lives in the woods. He was walking with
great care, so as not to step on any small,
living thing.
For myself, I have walked in these woods for
more than forty years, and I am the only
thing, it seems, that is about to be used up.
Or, to be less extravagant, will, in the
foreseeable future, be used up.
First, though, I want to step out into some
fresh morning and look around and hear myself
crying out: “The house of money is falling!
The house of money is falling! The weeds are
rising! The weeds are rising!”
PRAYER
May I never not be frisky,
May I never not be risqué.
May my ashes, when you have them, friend,
and give them to the ocean,
leap in the froth of the waves,
still loving movement,
still ready, beyond all else,
to dance for the world.
MYSTERIES, YES
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.
AT THE RIVER CLARION
1.
I don’t know who God is exactly.
But I’ll tell you this.
I was sitting in the river named Clarion, on a
water splashed stone
and all afternoon I listened to the voices
of the river talking.
Whenever the water struck the stone it had
something to say,
and the water itself, and even the mosses trailing
under the water.
And slowly, very slowly, it became clear to me
what they were saying.
Said the river: I am part of holiness.
And I too, said the stone. And I too, whispered
the moss beneath the water.
I’d been to the river before, a few times.
Don’t blame the river that nothing happened quickly.
You don’t hear such voices in an hour or a day.
You don’t hear them at all if selfhood has stuffed your ears.
And it’s difficult to hear anything anyway, through
all the traffic, and ambition.
2.
If God exists he isn’t just butter and good luck.
He’s also the tick that killed my wonderful dog Luke.
Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then
keep on going.
Imagine how the lily (who may also be a part of God)
would sing to you if it could sing, if
you would pause to hear it.
And how are you so certain anyway that it doesn’t sing?
If God exists he isn’t just churches and mathematics.
He’s the forest, He’s the desert.
He’s the ice caps, that are dying.
He’s the ghetto and the Museum of Fine Arts.
He’s van Gogh and Allen Ginsberg and Robert
Motherwell.
He’s the many desperate hands, cleaning and preparing
their weapons.
He’s every one of us, potentially.
The leaf of grass, the genius, the politician,
the poet.
And if this is true, isn’t it something very important?
Yes, it could be that I am a tiny piece of God, and
each of you too, or at least
of his intention and his hope.
Which is a delight beyond measure.
I don’t know how you get to suspect such an idea.
I only know that the river kept singing.
It wasn’t a persuasion, it was all the river’s own
constant joy
which was better by far than a lecture, which was
comfortable, exciting, unforgettable.
3.
Of course for each of us, there is the daily life.
Let us live it, gesture by gesture.
When we cut the ripe melon, should we not give it thanks?
And should we not thank the knife also?
We do not live in a simple world.
4.
There was someone I loved who grew old and ill.
One by one I watched the fires go out.
There was nothing I could do
except to remember
that we receive
then we give back.
5.
My dog Luke lies in a grave in the forest,
she is given back.
But the river Clarion still flows
from wherever it comes from
to where it has been told to go.
I pray for the desperate earth.
I pray for the desperate world.
I do the little each person can do, it isn’t much.
Sometimes the river murmurs, sometimes it raves.
6.
Along its shores were, may I say, very intense
cardinal flowers.
And trees, and birds that have wings to uphold them,
for heaven’s sakes—
the lucky ones: they have such deep natures,
they are so happily obedient.
While I sit here in a house filled with books,
ideas, doubts, hesitations.
7.
And still, pressed deep into my mind, the river
keeps coming, touching me, passing by on its
long journey, its pale, infallible voice
singing.
FROM
The Truro Bear and Other Adventures
2008
THE OTHER KINGDOMS
Consider the other kingdoms. The
trees, for example, with their mellow-sounding
titles: oak, aspen, willow.
Or the snow, for which the peoples of the north
have dozens of words to describe its
different arrivals. Or the creatures, with their
thick fur, their shy and wordless gaze. Their
infallible sense of what their lives
are meant to be. Thus the world
grows rich, grows wild, and you too,
grow rich, grow sweetly wild, as you too
were born to be.
THE GIFT
After the wind-bruised sea
furrowed itself back
into folds of blue, I found
in the black wrack
a shell called the Neptune—
tawny and white,
spherical,
with a tail
and a tower
and a dark door,
