“Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances.”

03 September 2008


Day Fifteen: Listen.
"Scatterghost,/it can't float away./And the rain, everybody's brother,/won't help. And the wind all these days/flying like ten crazy sisters everywhere/can't seem to do a thing. No one but me,/and my hands like fire,/to lift him to a last burrow. I wait/days, while the body opens and begins/to boil. I remember/the leaping in the moonlight, and can't touch it,/wanting it miraculously to heal/and spring up/joyful. But finally/I do. And the day after I've shoveled/the earth over, in a field nearby/I find a small bird's nest lined pale/and silvery and the chicks--/are you listening, death?/--warm in the rabbit's fur." Up and away #3 and #4 the dark half of the year the day stretches open before me a walk with B2 and Z. house chores and phone calls tomato sandwich and good coffee she howls when the phone rings in the middle of the linoleum little nose up it plays ode to joy. met the hamlet ceo talked defiants and dogs, the goldenrod is blinding the acorns are falling the shadows are deep and broad the sunlight burnished and slanting. cold mornings full of stars fog on the pond quickly burnt off and there are snakes in the road, the cows keep to the trees, all creatures busy with the turning of the wheel. season of drunk hornets, ardent stags, brave turkeys. season of ripe corn, fragrant tomatoes, golden swollen moons. more cleaning and organizing, making ready for the enclosure of snow. i made cookies for the boys to come home to and lovely afternoon coffee for me. let us make music, paint and dance. let us hold hands, laugh and cook together. let us walk, plant and love the world that lets us live alongside her.
"And if the question were asked: What is more real, the mundane or the sublime? most would hesitate before they gave an answer. On the one side, details: say, the aftermath of a breakfast, dirty chipped plates in the sink, their rims encrusted with egg yolk. Against this, the unnameable: small aching heart with boasts, what can you know? Outside the cage of everything we ever heard or saw, beyond, outside, above, there lies the real, hiding as long as we shall live, there stretch and trail the millions of names of God burning across the eons. When all through this our end will come before we even know the names of us.

For many the egg yolk prevails." -L.M.

"Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well." -V.V.G.

"The perfection of the Absolute where all Becoming stops and pure Being, immutable, timeless, unchanging, hangs forever like a ripe peach upon the bough." -E.A.

"...and the whole incident was incredibly frazzling and angst-rod and filled almost a whole mead notebook and is here recounted in only its barest psycho-skeletal outline." -D.F.W.

"At the top of the mountain, we are all snow leopards." -H.S.T.

"Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live." -D.T.
"Cometh a voice: My children, hear; From the crowded street and the close-packed mart I call you back with my message clear, back to my lap and my loving heart. Long have ye left me, journeying on by range and river and grassy plain, to the teeming towns where the rest have gone - come back, come back to my arms again. So shall ye lose the foolish needs that gnaw your souls; and my touch shall serve to heal the fretted nerve. Treading the turf that ye once loved well, instead of the stones of the city's street, ye shall hear nor din nor drunken yell, but the wind that croons in the ripening wheat. I that am old have seen long since ruin of palaces made with hands for the soldier-king and the priest and prince whose cities crumble in desert sands. But still the furrow in many a clime yields softly under the ploughman's feet; still there is seeding and harvest time, and the wind still croons in the ripening wheat. The works of man are but little worth; for a time they stand, for a space endure; but turn once more to your mother - Earth, my gifts are gracious, my works are sure. Instead of the strife and pain I give you peace, with its blessing sweet. Come back, come back to my arms again, for the wind still croons in the ripening wheat."
-John Sandes, The Earth-Mother (excerpt, 1918)