I AM

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Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?
― Walt Whitman

My hair is marsh grass
my arms tree limbs
stretching, muscular in youth
lowering, frail in old age.

My heartbeat is a frog’s
eyes, a bird’s
lungs, a fish’s
skin, a seal’s
in youth
rough wood bark
in old age.

My veins line a leaf
blood, a river inside the leaf
my breath, is wind, a breeze, a gale
the soles of my feet, a bear’s.

My bones are rocks, elongated minerals, calcifications
they will be the heaviness you will feel in your palm
my ashes
as you scatter me
to seed new life.

Take Bread

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Take bread
and dogs
my dears,
just for a moment
in these hard times.

Take bread
and coffee decorated with a milky heart.
Take a fountain
water sliding over a tall earthen vase.

Leave loud voices
cemented with certainty.

Take this moment
this wide, well-worn wooden table
the fan humming overhead
open door
to sunlit patio
where young people sit
eating croissants and vegan muffins
under a gingko tree.

Take bread
and art on the ceiling
of parrots and sweet round-eyed faces
in pinks and greens and yellows.

Take bread, dear ones,
take heart.

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Tender Work

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Work with what you are

If you are a fawn
at dusk
you will
stand still as wood
in a field of tall green grass
at the edge of a forest
your dark eyes wide open
watching sparrows
flit and fly home
through the twilight.

If you are a fawn
your soft brown ears
upright will catch sounds
of wind through the pines.

If you are a field mouse
you will
scurry, slipping between
wildflowers
fawn hooves.

If you are a human
you will
see the fawn, the pines, the wildflowers
feel you breath as wind,
how your heart beats as
bird mouse, fawn
then and only then

your tender work
is done.

Buddha’s Rhetoric

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words cannot be found
on the table, on a shelf
spoken they disappear
as exhaled breath
and yet
word becomes flesh
it has been said
and so it must follow
word becomes giraffes
and beer bottles

bombs
guns

Mozart
wind chimes
and muddy boots

the word, invisible
birthed
floating behind the eyes
snapping synapses
in the folds on the brain
pulled and pushed
released
as sound
heard but not seen
to become a warrior or peacemaker
solid with its formless chosen meaning
word become solid

as ash, as air.

Because I am in you, and you are in me.~~Thich Nhat Hanh

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This morning
ten ducklings scurried next to their mother
on the grass bank of Tinney Creek.

It’s the time of year for births at the creek
and on the wheel of birth’s
death for all but a few of the ducklings.

Helpless I watched
hoping the crow’s kill was quick
hoping the duckling felt only soft grass and sky

Being human this seems a loss to us
until we arrive at the meal.

This evening in a restaurant a person will order duck
for their dinner.
Talons or forks
the same but

One is choiceless, the other chooses.

For feathers or skin
made of ducks and ducklings
we ought bow in gratitude

or regret.

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Tinney Creek

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Tinney Creek, St. Petersburg, Florida

Tinney Creek runs past
under
and despite
the TJ Max
CVS, Target.

It travels back and forth
from Tampa Bay
rises and falls daily with the tide
feeds Egrets, families of Muscovy ducks and Mallards
who seek tiny prawns, mud crabs, bugs.

Feathery Java fern
rounded Moneywort
grow in it’s rich mud,
abundant
as if this was still The Garden.

Between snaking highways,
Dollar Stores
gas stations
condo buildings
Taco Bells
the creeks and their residents
carry on
as if this was still The Garden.

Down the busy street a ways
atop a pole advertising Beer and Low-Cost Cigarettes,
an osprey has built a roomy nest,
designed in the contemporary open sky plan.

A lone Roseate Spoonbill sometimes visits Tinney Creek
always in company with her Egret.
I watch as
Spoonbill lifts it’s comical Dr. Seuss face
twitches its white and rosy feathers
lowers its wide paddle-like beak into brackish water
sweep, sweep 
side to side
poke, poke.

The ducks, Ibis, Egret, crows and I claim
this creek and the remaining
Royal Palms, oak trees, iridescent sunsets
as ours.

“I used to see many Roseate Spoonbills here once,”
a neighbor tells me.
My heart aches 
as regularly
as it beats
these days
at these all too familiar words:

There were many here
once. 

At night, arriving home,
my headlights sweep over the banks of the creek 
lighting up a line of ducks, like fat-buddhas
heads curled into their downy breasts
asleep despite ambulance sirens,
the roar of traffic.

At dawn they will wake 
waddle like drunks
raise their chicks,
the Osprey will hunt,
the Spoonbill and Egret will visit
I will marvel at how they float and splash
and the creek
feeds us all
as if this is still the Garden.

Dogs Are Almost Perfect, But…

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Dogs, like people, can be difficult to love sometimes. Every dog family has its dysfunction. It’s not nearly as bad as it can be in families that are all human, but, it can still be a trial.

I love all the dogs I dog-sit, but they are not without their quirks. One has a bark that, inside, is painful to the ears and I worry a little about damage to my hearing. There are too many FedEx trucks in the world! And why don’t mail delivery people just toss the mail from their vehicles as they pass the house. Why in the world do they need to storm the house like invading armies, the dog wonders.

All of them tend to scratch my arms because it seems I do not notice that it is time for someone to get an ear scratch. My skin is thin and  the blood blisters on my arms are not so attractive!  Usually a long sleeve sweater helps, but not always.

Another dog has terrible separation anxiety, maybe because his parents travel a lot and leave him or maybe he was born with that trait. Either way it can be heartbreaking to leave him even to go to the store for a little while. The panic in his eyes is painful to see. It’s worse when he freaks out and jumps like a whirling dervish—he is a big, strong boy and his nails on my back hurt.

Sometimes I can’t tell what my pups want. This must be what it is like with an infant who cries no matter how the parent tries to soothe them.

I take out the leash and say “Out?” He lies down and looks at me. Okay, not out. “

“Chew thing?” Another blank look; it’s not that he doesn’t like chew things, he seems to be saying, but not this chew thing. He looks at me like I should know this by now. And actually I do, so why do I keep trying with that chew thing. Some of us never learn.

“Cookie?” That always get a positive reaction and all is right with the world. For about an hour. Then it’s time for ball tossing. This guy is very smart and has me trained. He looks up at the drawer in the bureau where the balls are kept and gives a slight bark. I get the ball. He is a talented ball player. I especially admire how when I throw the ball and he hits it back to me with his nose.

So I am trained by my dogs to be patient, to pay attention, to go out, to sit, and that’s just the truth!

Poem for Hard Times

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Look for the peacemakers,

a wise man once said.

Look, he said

in the midst of horror

for the kindness

the gentle eyes

Look

how they always

appear to hold your hand

like

Buddhas

or Great Spirits

Look to the soft eyes of a dog

Head on your lap

creating, sharing your stillness.

Turn away from

the dead-eyed

killed by

their fear

leave them pitied

pitied eave them.

Listen to

the songs and singers

never silenced

by the water hoses

or bombs

only sung louder, sweeter

Watch for

the dancers

who bend but never break

who fly free as birds

free at last

Listen to

the storytellers

who sit around the fire

among the ruins

telling tales

of treasures, most sought

and freely shared

at no cost, no cost

to anyone

See the beloved with open arms

opening their doors

stretched beyond their own kin

to embrace us all

like family

They are here, there, everywhere

They are never far

They are

They are.

They have always been.

They will always be

the peacemakers

hope-givers

truth tellers.

Look up

just look up

there and there and there

they are carrying

you and me.

Breakfast with Meeko

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This morning I made a big mistake. Much smaller than anything that matters, fortunately, but it ended up with Meeko winning.

I made two slices of toast covered with peanut butter and jelly. I was hungry and out of my cereal. I was looking forward to that toast. I set it down at the kitchen table and went to look for my cell phone. There is a chair at the table—you may are already know where this is heading. I’ve seen Meeko jump up on that chair several times.

I came back with my phone and found him grabbing a piece of toast from the plate. No way could I get him to drop it, although in my fruitless chasing, jelly splattered on the floor. He ran from me in a most jaunty manner, then jumped on the futon in the TV room and ate the toast happily. while I wiped the floor clean.

The futon is his choice to go with a treat, I think, because sometimes I eat there while watching TV. I guess it is our recreation space and he was recreating. The living room is for a different purpose. He perches on the top cushions alongside the big window. You never know when enemies like UPS trucks might dare arrive.

By the way, he got the best piece too. Did he know which one was the best?   I was stuck with the heel of the bread..Mind you, he had already had his own breakfast. Oh, foolish human, as if that makes any difference!

I slipped up on my knowledge of dogs and tables and food on the tables. When I lived with my own dogs I knew to follow the commandment Thou Shalt Not Leave Food Where the Dog Can Reach It. However,  I have to admit that it’s always very cute when they get away with their thievery–at long as the food is not bad for them. Perhaps I am anthropomorphizing too much, but they sure do seem proud at winning the forbidden prize.  At those times I know I am not so agile and clever. I forget that, like with a child, you are being watched. A lot. Nearly all the time unless a squirrel or mail carrier comes by. Otherwise its all eyes on the giver-of  meals, thrower-of -squeaky-toys and petter-on-call.

 

 

Reading Thoreau in Meeko’s Yard

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Henry David Thoreau and Meeko are good companions. I curl up with each of them at different times. Last night when I had turned off the lights in the bedroom, called Meeko to bed and turned on my side to sleep, I felt Meeko put his rubber squeak toy at the nape of my neck and then lie down. I felt honored.

Today,  in the yard, under the Live Oak on a lovely Spring day,  I read a compilation of HDT’s essays.  His style is more verbose than we modern folks are used to.  I do not  understand some of his archaic terms, and I admit to skipping over some page long paragraphs, yet he startles me with thoughts that are so contemporary that he could be writing in 2017. Reading his essays is like mining for gold—which he thought was a dishonorable activity, by the way— but you are sure the nuggets are there and they are and there are many.  Like this.

(I’ll be right back. Meek is nosing his bowl telling me he wants his dinner). Okay, I’m back. Here are some his thoughts that startle me in how familiar they seem. This passage describes so closely what Buddhism teaches me.

“If we have I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending  to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality. Our very intellect shall be macadamized, as it were,–its foundations broken into fragments…If we have thus desecrated ourselves—as who has no?t–the remedy will be by wariness and devotion to reconsecrate ourselves…We should treat our minds, that is , ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians were are, and be careful what objects and what subjects be thrust on their attention.”

HDT would like that I was sitting under a tree while reading this.  He would applaud my urge to always be outdoors. I think he and I share a lot in common—like his hermit tendencies that are mine also.  Today I feel close to old Henry. I think he would understand me. Both of us pretty much loners who have a difficult time in polite company. It comforts me that he writes about the emptiness of much of what we consider “success” and he called “industry”—how the industrious man was praised all for making money, and yet a philosopher, a writer like HDT, is seen as lazy, a failure even. I think even Ralph Waldo Emerson, his friend, criticized him for lack of ambition.

Like Thoreau, I could never make myself work for money. My work needed to be meaningful and helpful to others. As a result, I am not rich. Neither was Thoreau, and I , like him, can sometimes feel like an outcast in my society  when it comes to owning a house and a new car. And I have to watch my mind, as he suggested, to keep it from thinking of myself as a failure because I don’t have “fame” and fortune.

It wasn’t easy being Thoreau. And maybe he was no fun to be in a bar with, but I sense him in the room with me as he says, “I shall be a benefactor…if I can show men that there is some beauty awake while they are asleep.” He was speaking of taking walks in the moonlight, but I understand it to mean what Buddha meant. You are my benefactor HDT, even if you had a lousy personality. Smiley face.

 

 

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