Life can be hard, can be cold and hard. I have friends in the north country where it gets cold and hard and dark for long stretches. The warm season is short and intense. I rarely hear them complain of mosquitoes and I think they could. Life abounds there when it can. Summer is over for them already while on this day this year we here on the 45th parallel in Oregon State (half way from the Equator to the North Pole) have a summer heat thing going on. This winter it will get dark quite early even for us.
It might be good to remember what winter is on a ninety plus degree day.
I moved to Oregon from California in 1973, moved some six hundred miles further north. I have not yet in 2011 gotten used to how dark it gets here in the winter, and how light it remains in the summer. I have gotten old here but I still have the California seasons of my youth in my bones. Oregon seasons still surprise me.
Looking for the cracks. I think God appears in the cracks. I think all the forms of self determination and choices fill up the world but nothing is perfect. God slips into the world in the cracks between our intentions, from virus on up to the world soul. It cannot be otherwise or else free will is at least potentially a joke. I think God has made a pact with creation to refrain from f*cking with free will. AA taught me you could say God and f*ck in the same sentence. Blogger and Facebook have taught me that it is kinder to refrain from overt swearing most times. I could have used other words. Shame. But I do refrain from swearing most times. I guess not this time.
Walking
The Ice
The water birds walk
the ice, looking for the cracks
and the flow beneath
the cracks, three of them
out there keeping track, watching
the bank for vixen
as they search as well
for something to eat, something
more than cold dry air.
The water birds walk
the ice, looking for the cracks
and the flow beneath
the cracks, three of them
out there keeping track, watching
the bank for vixen
as they search as well
for something to eat, something
more than cold dry air.
December
16, 2009 8:06 AM
not that you need me to quote leonard cohen, but in anthem cohen does have that great line: there is a crack in everything.... it's how the light gets in.
ReplyDeletethis poem is like that.... cracks that are like diviners.... so much beneath.
thanks for this tribute to the cold...and those who dwell there with dignity... and more.
I claim no unique vision. Yes it is how the light gets in. Crack...someone claimed to like hole better, and I am comfortable saying there are gaps rather than cracks. Holes are another thing, I think. Joseph Chilton Pearce wrote a book ages ago now called "The Crack in the Cosmic Egg". I got my vision from my own experience which showed me there is a gap in every human experience, or crack if you want, dead center in it, that the world is created in every instant right there in that infinite crack.
ReplyDeleteinvite you to share a Haiku or a poem of your choice to poets rally week 51 today.
ReplyDeletea free verse or a haiku is welcome.
keep up the excellence!
xoxox
Thanks for inviting me but you guys have too many rules and require too much social. I literally don't have the time for it. It's my loss and my regret.
ReplyDelete