Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, life, pests, poem, poetry on June 6, 2017| 4 Comments »
I apologize
as I squish
the green worm
that’s been feasting
on the basil leaf.
It does not change
the fact that the worm
is dead. And the basil
now will live.
Yesterday, my friend Carl
stopped me on the street
and wondered aloud
how we die
to the moment,
then greet the next.
He did not,
of course mean
a literal death.
The basil leaf
has a hole in it now
where the green worm
is not. I pick it
and eat it myself,
not out of spite,
perhaps
to feel how the worm
and I are not
after all
so different.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, change, death, epistle, orioles, poem, poetry on May 22, 2017| 15 Comments »
Yesterday I found a bird on the ground outside the window. Remember how I had told you about the two pairs of Bullock’s Orioles at our feeder? It was one of the females. I was too squeamish to pick her up with my bare hands. Someone at some time told me about the bacteria on birds, and like so many other stories, I let it define my actions even though I don’t know that it’s true.
I did pick it up, however, fashioned a little stretcher out of cottonwood sticks and carried the bird to the deep grass.
Though it was at the feeder the day before, already it was gone enough to have lost its eyes, now two little sunken spaces where the head pulled in on itself. But the small body was not yet rigid, and it hung, limp, over the sticks.
I sang a death song, as I always do, sometimes out loud, sometimes in my head. It was taught to me by Art. “Nothing lives long, nothing lives long, nothing lives long, not even the mountain.”
I remember the day Art changed the lyric. For many years, he had sung the final phrase, “nothing lives long but the earth and the mountain.” Perhaps like all things
that are new, it trembled something me. The old words were so comfortable and familiar in my ears, my mouth. I suspect the real reason they shook me was the truth of them. Nothing lives long. Not even the mountain.
How small we are. Sometimes, like yesterday, I let my sadnesses and worries become so big, much bigger than my body. I can’t contain them and they spill. It was beautiful to watch how, on that flood of my sorrow, you found a boat and sat in it and showed me it was possible.
Why did I think the deep grass was a better place for the body of the bird? I didn’t question the voice that told me to take her there. Perhaps we are all heading into the unkempt field, a place where we are open and hidden at the same time.
I watched the other three birds all day as they flew from feeder to cottonwood. They were a braid of song, seldom staying in one place for long.
Nothing lives long. It’s no revelation, but sometimes an old truth finds wings in us. And so it was when you told me yesterday, just before you drove away, that I needed to stop hoping things would change—that I needed to decide if I could be happy with things just as they are. Only minutes later I found the bird. Though the two events didn’t seem connected at the moment, now they are like two drops that become one water.
And so this morning, I join you in the boat. Although it is just a metaphor, I notice that it changes things not to be swimming in the waters of wishing things were different. I notice how there are no oars in the boat, and how part of me longs for control and part of me has already found the freedom to stare at the sky.
And there they are, the three orioles, their yellow feathers flashing as they rearrange the air. And there she isn’t, the oriole now laying in the field.
Later today I will fill the feeder. There are some things we can do.
Your friend,
Rosemerry
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, grammar, poem, poetry, Strunk and White on December 5, 2016| 2 Comments »
Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless hesitating, noncommittal language. Use the word not as a means of denial or in antithesis, never as a means of evasion.
—Elements of Style, Strunk & White
It would be less preferred
to say of the baby quail
that “It did not survive”
when the falcon
went hunting
along the side of the cliff.
Better, say the experts,
to make definite assertions,
“It died.”
It’s rule twelve:
“Put statements
in positive form.”
But what to say
of the inner fight,
how the soul cheers
for the falcon in flight—
all grace and ferocity,
precision, might.
While the heart
can’t help but cheer
for that bumbling chick
brown-striped, blameless,
chirp and slip.
It’s not that the heart
is trying to evade,
not trying to lie,
it just wants
to build a small hope
for us all with the word survive
something to soften the truth—
all things die.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, do your best, poem, poetry, swan song on November 6, 2016| 1 Comment »
When it dies, the whooper swan sings—
a drawn out trellising of soft running notes—
a glissando as its lungs collapse.
It isn’t that the swan tries
to be beautiful then
after a lifetime of bugling.
No, the effect is strictly mechanical,
they say, an additional tracheal loop
within the swan’s sternum.
Isn’t it like us to want to believe
that the swan gives its greatest effort
at the end? Anything to release us
from the tedium and noise
of the day to day—as if doing it better later
releases us from the moment’s scale.
Sometimes we sing
and fail to recognize our own tune.
Sometimes we try too hard
and our effort comes out less song,
more honk, more strangled cry.
What if, instead of weighting
the finale, we focus on the few notes
we’ve been given and every day
do with them the best we can—
play with their volume, their
timbre, their tempo, their texture—
learn to feel them resonant
in our bodies, learn to find them
beautiful as they join the air,
the tune still warm from our breath
as we scatter our song across the fields,
across the highways, the forests,
letting it touch everything we love
and everything we are still
learning to love.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cemetery, death, poem, poetry, spirit on November 3, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Tell me, I said
to the cemetery stone,
how long before
our names are
prayers only
the lichen
can speak?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, poem, poetry, song on September 26, 2016| 1 Comment »
Not yet dirt,
the outline
of squirrel is still visible
on the hard earth
of the back road—
I step over what remains,
wonder
how many other lives
I’m walking on.
There are infinite ways
to praise,
among them
these words:
I am sorry.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, pet, poem, poetry on September 14, 2016| 1 Comment »
slumped on my chest
the body of the girl
not quite so limp
as the weight of her pet
still almost warm
*
no less permanent
this death of a body
so small
*
the dull weight of sorrow,
wishing it would come soon
to replace this burn
