To this day, some 40-odd years past,
still I can recall that instant of offense:
a negative taken to a shop for enlargement
and some clueless dudes’ snide comment,
“There’s a lots of green in that shot man!”
I probably blushed offering no defense.
The photo; my son hop-splashing across
shallow, cold rock gurgling Holly Creek
in glee, startled water and he, frozen blurs
of joyous motion deemed forever known.
Suspended trees' and banks' radiant greens
swaddling him in infinite hues of caring.
Is there such a thing as too much green;
over-abundant life? Are there cravings for
hard-gray walls, rarefied and songless air,
worlds existing in a mirrored box of self?
Slap! “Little mosquito shit!” I wince as he
takes a sip of me into eternal green time.
When I was a kid, parents could still release their kids upon the world in morning’s sun with a simple, “Be back by suppertime.” We were free to wander the nearby pine thickets, brier patches, train tracks and trickling streams. We wanted to go to spots where our bikes had to be abandon; hastily pushed into the broom sage field to hide them. Yes, bikes were stolen back then but that was our worst fear; we felt safe otherwise. Each day was a pilgrimage and the destination was of little importance. I was searching for something to surprise, to quicken interest, to justify my prowling barefoot and shirtless through terrain replete with sharp stones, briars, thorns and snakes and I, or we, often did.
Once, Charlie and I found a huge, dead frog and decided to dissect him. We, or at least, I learned more about biology (and guilt) that day than I would ever learn in a classroom. I also learned that persimmons sucked and muscadines were divine and that reaching to pick blackberries from a bush and suddenly seeing a king snake stretched along the length of the very cain you were about to touch could make you run faster than any amount of training or blood doping.
Now, in my seventies and putting-off a knee replacement, my walks are limited to walking my dog in our neighborhood. Luckily, it is an old subdivision with many lots, too low to build on, left in woods and undergrowth. A few days ago I saw something I would have hiked days to see if that were possible. I remember lamenting several time over the past few years that I had never seem an owl in the wild despite many years of bird-watching (purely amateurish in execution). That day I saw one, a block away from my house; not just a little screech-owl sitting on a limb but a huge Great Horned Owl sitting atop a dead opossum just off the roadway. There was one of those movie moments when the frame is frozen and nothing moves, not even a breeze. I turned my head for an instant to check my dog’s response. I looked back and the owl was gone; silently he had vanished leaving his opossum and a memory I will always have; well, at least for a long while. Walk with open eyes and heart; amazing things hid in plain sight.
In the beginning…
not really the beginning,
but a beginning almost comprehensible,
a malleable mass twirling on the blowers pipe,
Earth was cast from Heaven, thrown down
spinning from the warmth of all she knew
to cold and darkness thick with the roar
of her passing and smells of her burning.
She flew from birth light
growing dimmer
and colder to a sadness unfathomable.
Could she weep for herself? Surely.
Of all the lights distant but bright
In their congruity, none tuned to watch
Or cast a glance toward her hurling fate.
Did she moan as she was flung
To her perceived oblivion? Surely.
Yes, we could have heard her cries
And her gaseous guts rumbling,
Crying for a savior for herself
And for all that could be…crying
For a hot, brilliant hand to capture her
And roll her around in his golden palm.
This poem comes from 2002 and rings even more true today than ten years ago. This is not about remorse, self-pity or even ageing, but rather the soothing power and joy that the natural world can provide, at least temporarily, if a person is so incline to make an effort to see the wonders that exist.
Belated Words 