Sometimes I want to be anywhere but here,
but today, I let myself feel it all.
I go to the river covered in ice,
and move along the bank until
I find the open places where the dark-feathered ouzel
chooses to submerge in the cold, cold water—
It doesn’t hesitate to plunge into frigid depths.
It knows it was made for this.
Posts Tagged ‘bird’
Lesson from the Ouzel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, courage, despair, ouzel, showing up on January 7, 2021| 5 Comments »
Instructions for Perseverance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, chickadee, perseverance on December 19, 2020| 5 Comments »
Think less: Trust your inner animal.
—Holiday Mathis, Horoscopes by Holiday, December 19, 2020
It’s the chickadee
that saves me today.
Though the world
gets cold, the chickadee
stays. Despite snow.
Despite frost. Despite
lack of sun,
it doesn’t leave
the winter land.
Oh tough little bird
who sticks around,
who thrives
in any weather—
who’s cheerful tune
spirals like hope
through the frigid
folds of December
as if to say let it come.
I can sing through
anything.
Let it come.
Getting Ready
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged advent, bird, hawk, joy, kayleen, wonder on November 29, 2020| Leave a Comment »
What might you need to let go of or “clean out” in order to make room for wonder or joy?
—Kayleen Asbo, Advent and the Arts: The Week of Hope
Just today I walked
in the shadows
and noticed how
they scrubbed me
the way silence sometimes
scrubs a room.
Wonder rushed in.
It wasn’t that I was trying
to keep wonder out,
it’s just that with my schedule
and rigor, I hadn’t left it
space to enter.
If only with mop
and broom I could sweep
out anything
that would keep me
from wonder, from joy.
Instead, the world offers
shadow, stillness,
quietude, loss,
and a red-tailed hawk
in the heart,
circling, circling,
wondering what
it might subtract next.
After Reading the Headline About Rising Deaths
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, Corona Virus, courage, garden, resilience, song on May 4, 2020| 3 Comments »
Today I take the courage I don’t feel
and the resilience I doubt and
all my unspent longing to serve,
and I bring them, cupped in my hands,
to the garden. They nestle there in my palms
like three baby birds that have not yet
opened their eyes. I take them to hear
the pungent song of the garlic shoots
and the thriving chives who chant
how to survive the winter.
I bring them to hear the strawberry leaves
who sing how to flourish despite the frost.
and the old song of chicken manure
and composted grass that hum about
how old life begets new life.
And they open their tiny beaks,
as if they could eat the green song.
How vulnerable they are.
So I open to the song, too.
I do what must be done.
I take in the nourishing song,
and feed them with my own mouth.
Here
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged be here now, bird, Corona Virus, listening, presence, song on March 27, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Even as the snow was falling,
the birds in the branches
kept singing into morning,
easing their bright notes
into the thin gray spaces
between snowflakes.
There are days, imagine,
when the birds go unheard.
And it isn’t for lack of song—
the single note chirp
of sparrow, the bass of raven,
the chickadee’s hey swee-tee.
Some gifts come only
when we stay in one place,
come only when we are alone,
come only when we stop praying
to be somewhere else and instead
pray to be here.
Thinking of Sending You a Postcard of the Sunrise Over the Sea
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beach, bird, cormorant, love, sea on February 19, 2020| Leave a Comment »
And while I am at it, I should like to send you
a postcard from the shores of my body,
wish you were here, it is warm and there
are so many places for us to explore
together—but even as I write these words
the letters grow ink dark wings and fly
over the sea, a colony of cormorants,
silent as they soar, and I a beach with no footprints,
the waves lapping, everywhere the scent, the sting of salt.
Chickadee, dee, dee in Three
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, chickadee, cold, importance, priorities, three word lines on February 4, 2020| Leave a Comment »
And so, although
there’s so much
work to do,
I step outside
and let February
have its way
with me—cold,
dusted with snow.
Hard to believe
anything can grow.
But singing high
in cottonwood trees
are the chickadees.
It’s not hard
to think, This
is the most
important thing I
can do today.
I think it
until I forget
to think it,
until I am
simply standing there
in winter air
pledging my ears
to the sound
of the birds—
such a simple
song. Funny no
part of me
longs for other
work. Funny how
soon it becomes
everything.
Instead of Getting Riled
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Alabama, bird, meditation, pelican, poem, poetry, stillness on December 9, 2019| Leave a Comment »
The pelican dives
into the water,
rises again. Hovers.
Dives. Rises.
Each time, the water is quick
to forget the intrusion
loses its ripples,
stills. A thought
is a kind of a pelican.
A woman is a kind
of a bay. The pelicans
will always dive.
The bay will always
return to stillness.
A woman might
learn to live this way.
Yes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, choice, poem, poetry, present moment on September 24, 2019| 2 Comments »
It could happen any time, tornado, earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
— Yes, William Stafford
It’s Saturday and I’m choosing to sit on a broken fence,
the logs all weathered and fallen.
I am choosing to sit in the sun on a broken fence
beside a dirt parking lot in a high desert.
Perhaps I do not really believe
that this is the only moment that matters?
Perhaps I don’t trust that I could be gone,
that all life could be gone in one blink,
in one bomb, in one meteorite.
Or is it that I choose to sit on a broken fence
beside a dirt parking lot with the scent of pine
edging each breath and the sound
of cottonwood leaves rustling then stilling
because this, too, matters, this willingness
to treat each breath as if it were the first,
to treat each place as if it is the last
and give it my full attention. To be like the birds
sitting on the barbed wire knowing now, now
is the moment to sing.