Month: August 2016

Ode to Omran

This year the pokeweed seems an impossible purple, maybe in honor of Prince, and the night skies feel incredibly clear — I can see every star that falls from space while I hum David Bowie in the dark. All summer long, when the pines have been still, all the owls called for Snape, and last night I looked for Willy Wonka in my chocolate bar.

One night last week the sun set a singular orange, and I saw Omran with his bloody bangs and his tiny feet on the tangerine chair across the sea. And some day when the lightning comes, it will shock me with an image of 300 struck reindeer, all on a hilltop side by side.

All that is gone, remains. All that happens, goes on. I think you can choose what you carry, but not always what you find. Maybe the world chooses for us – putting Winehouse in your heart when you are fading back to black, or moonlight in your path when you are longing for love?

Either way, all that is here tells a story. And all that is left, is for us.

Crickets

Saturday in August there’s a high pitched wheek of crickets and the lawn is patched with brown and I have the feeling everyone’s at brunch. I could head out for a bloody mary myself, or phone a friend. Something, though, is trying to be known. Even though it all feels familiar like I already know how the sun will set, and I already know the way the crow calls. I already know this day so I’d like a new one, please.

Sometimes it’s like this. Days hiccup drunkenly, skipping back in time. This one I’ve seen before. It happens near the end of things, and before the next; and it could go either way. Barefooted and unfettered, or silent and unmoored – it’s unwritten, unscripted, undone, and unimaginable. And in that unimagined way, it returns to a state that’s known. And so, an August day comes back, used before it starts.

Is there any comfort in that? The way the day unfolds like it always has? And when I hear nothing new, is that really all there is to hear? Beneath, beside, behind this day, is there another waiting?

Maybe that’s why September comes. To surprise us in spite of our August-y ways. But right now, here on this previous Saturday, I’m trying to listen.

What’s repeated and repeated and repeated? Something is trying to be known, and before the moon startles you again, the crickets stay.

The Wild

I fell in love slowly. Only once I understood the skies, and the storms, and the bend of the trees by the pond, and those by the bay, and those by the field.

It took a long time to know this wild space. The thicket I walked right past for years, until I noticed, finally, its small orange berries one lonely fall day. The squiggled tree where the egret sits, the pine tree where the owl calls, the way the grasses turn red in late August.  All of this I misunderstood, because I didn’t stand still, or stay quiet, or look up, or look closer.

Sometimes, years went by from the couch or the chair, and the world rose quickly from the pane of a window someone else put before me, or I put myself behind — and all that was wild went on without me. Elsewhere. On snow days and summer nights, in fleeting moments between staring at screens, I had dreams of lands I’d never know, and imagined beauty that belonged to everyone else. It’s true, I heard the peepers and the saw the full moon on the first warm night; even I could hear the loon cry, and feel the ancient yearn of a sky full of stars or swallows. Even then, the wild called to me.

But I didn’t know the way she was. That she was more than the backdrop for my morning commute, and that there was more to be known than a Saturday could teach. I didn’t know the way she was at all.

I fell in love slowly. Only once I saw the way she moves in solitude, by a grey sea, or green hill, or through the narrow path across the shadowed margins of the day. Only once I knew where the apple blossoms were, and the hollowed trunk, and the massive roots. I know now how the chill comes, the way the frost heaves, and all the ways the sky is blue. Like all great loves, I know the curve of her now. She is my home, now.  And I would be nowhere else but here, in this late afternoon light; wild, seen, known, and loved.

Monday in America

I stand at the beginning of the week, in the middle of the world, breathing the air we all breathe. And if your Monday looks more ambitious than mine, if it kickstarts your heart with a bell and a bull or a rabbit chase or a run, I may stare at the blur of your back while I stretch my sights toward some other reason to get out of bed, but still, when I wake my feet will land on August 1st, just like yours.

Maybe you stand outside the grocery store with a sign that says “2 kids: will work for food”. Maybe you’re in line at Starbucks, maybe packing for vacation, maybe scrolling through your phone wondering why the hell you are so stuck to this habit. Maybe you are sitting in a jail cell or grieving alone or dying in a hospital bed or a city street or a hot air balloon.

And if it is your last breath, let me take my first in your honor. Because on Mondays I have to remember that even the grasses aren’t free but sewn together at the roots and bent by the will of the wind and left to the mercy of the goats and the skies. On Mondays I have to remember that one cannot be free when others aren’t. On Mondays I have to rise to join you where we all live, or go back to sleep, soundly, curled up in a trump at the bottom of humanity. Because without the rest, Monday’s stay forever the morning you avoid; beheaded, dreaded, cleaved from the wisdom of what we welcome in.

Rise, now. Even though Monday has you in its clutches it’s held by all the others that come before and after and always. Live, now. Even though August begins for all of us, it ends too soon for too many. Wake, now. This is the only real way to be free.