Honey to the Ear

As recent posts may have indicated, I am in the mood for poetry. And today, having run across a most beautiful piece by one of my favorite poets, I felt obliged to share it here.

Vultures

Like large dark
lazy
butterflies they sweep over
the glades looking
for death,
to eat it,
to make it vanish,
to make of it the miracle:
resurrection. No one
knows how many
they are who daily
minister so to the grassy
miles, no one
counts how many bodies
they discover
and descend to, demonstrating
each time the earth’s
appetite, the unending
waterfalls of change.
No one,
moreover,
wants to ponder it,
how it will be
to feel the blood cool,
shapeliness dissolve.
Locked into
the blaze of our own bodies
we watch them
wheeling and drifting, we
honor them and we
loathe them,
however wise the doctrine,
however magnificent the cycles,
however ultimately sweet
the huddle of death to fuel
those powerful wings.

– Mary Oliver

Shooting the Evening

As promised, if later than I had planned, due to technical problems, a whole new post.

I’ve always enjoyed spending quiet time just soaking in a good evening. Watching a brilliant sunset, picking out the first stars, listening to the sounds of frogs, crickets, cicadas calling. My perch usually takes the shape of porch swing but I once spent a fantastic evening at a picnic table in the Midwest that rivals the best of them.

We drove miles down a dirt road to a small patch of rolling farm country and pasture land in the middle of Kansas. It had been hot that day, over 100`F, and we had covered many, many miles on a trip headed West in a car with no air conditioning. We stopped not long before sunset, seeking refuge in the shade of a group of small trees near a picnic table. A light breeze drew across the hillside and shallow valley below and I thought perhaps we had stumbled on a small piece of Heaven.

We moved the picnic table into the shade and ate a bite while birds stalked tiny prey in the grass and flew in looping patterns over the grassy field a few hundred feet away. Backlit by the sinking sun, they snapped insects out of the air and sang their successes. The tall grass below them and the bugs they sought burned golden in the sunset light, gilded brightly against a dark line of trees bounding the far side of the field. The breeze was cool, the air dry, and we sat in perfect comfort watching the show.

Just up the road, an old windmill creaked and bumped through its slow and deliberate revolutions. Cattle grazed in the surrounding pasture. From time to time they bawled and lowed and wandered to the tank below the windmill for a drink of water, water delivered from somewhere underground to a quiet Kansas pasture by workings that had weathered there for more years than I and my traveling companion had been alive. Its steady sound was as natural as a creek gurgling over cobbles. I found it unspeakably comforting.

As evening drew the shades and the birds and bugs found their homes for the night, we sat reversed on the seats, our backs propped against the tabletop, and trained our eyes farther upward. Constellations materialized in the clear evening sky. Bugs called in a low chorus from the grass and trees. The windmill creaked reassuringly. And we stayed up until after midnight talking about the world, our lives, and counting shooting stars.

We left early the next morning, dawn still caught in the dewey grasses. We had miles to turn. But I left a piece of my heart on that hillside, and I took a piece of Kansas with me when we went.

It’s the reason I love to travel. It’s a cornerstone of the hope I hold for myself and this world. It’s something pure and simple and beautiful, and I saw it. I didn’t just look at it with open eyes, I saw it. And every time I see a place, a person, an object, I am forever changed … usually for the better.

Storm Sunset

A few days ago a small thunderstorm swept through the area to my West and put on quite a show. I enjoy non-destructive thunderstorms – have since I was a kid – and seeing them from a couple miles away allows for some fantastic viewing. Feeding off the late afternoon heat, the storm boiled into the sky and passed near enough to drive me indoors with rain. With sunset in full gear and the rain easing off, I walked to a small clearing near the house and watched as the storm tracked neatly to the South leaving a perfectly clear sky behind.

I should have taken my camera, but once the show got started I wasn’t about to leave. Nature offers few intermissions. As the sun slid over the horizon of trees and hills to the West and the thunderstorm edged away South, rays of light caught the upper portions of the stormclouds and painted them gold. The lower clouds faded from orange and red to maroon and gray with a beauty and sublety that fixed me in place. Occasional flickers of lightning brightened the main cloud column. Evening mist – steam – filled the rambling valley I overlooked and a crescent moon finished the masterpiece of land and sky in a bright sliver against the deepening blues of coming night. Only a madman would have left to fetch a camera.

It would have been beautiful on film, no doubt, a stunning photo of summer evening, but paper and pixels could never do it justice. There are some things that eyes need to see for themselves, that hands need to feel and lungs need breathe. How do you accurately describe the taste of a ripe peach? Words, visuals, images only go so far.

So I stood in rain-peppered awe following the storm’s southerly push and the sun’s splendid farewell until color had faded from the uppermost tip of the anvil cloud and the moon ruled the dark sky. It was so beautiful. At times like that I feel filled with child-like wonder, as if some part of the world were suddenly new again and I got to experience it first-hand.

I suppose in a way it was. Every day is new. Every living thing grows and changes. Non-living things are acted upon and altered. It is an ever-shifting world so, yes, I suppose every thing is always just a little bit new.

I find that unspeakably encouraging.

Lessons From Sam

Several years ago I made a big move, started a new job, and met people who would forever change me. It’s funny sometimes how the people around you can effect your life so quietly, so subtly that you don’t even notice it, perhaps for years. For me, no one changed my life like Sam.

I was fresh off a small college campus, still wet behind the ears and, truth be told, a little green around the gills at the chance I was taking. Eighteen hundred miles from home, fourteen hundred miles from the nearest person I knew, I had an old car, a new job, and one big wild hope. My first week on the job I met Sam.

I worked for a small outfit owned by a sweet, aging couple who knew the value of a dollar and frugally kept as many as they could. To that end, they hired Sam to mow the business’s grounds and do odd jobs as needed. “He’s a little slow,” the owner told me in preparation. “And he doesn’t mean any harm, but he’s a big guy. Sometimes he doesn’t know his own strength.” I immediately thought of the character George in Of Mice and Men and was a bit afraid. I didn’t relish the thought of working around someone with reduced mental capacity and potentially dangerous machinery. All nerves and ugly imaginary scenarios, I waited for him to appear.

When he did, a large mop of dark hair towering above his companions, I watched him closely to see how he acted around the owner and other workers. And discovered my fears were completely unfounded. Instead of a menacing hulk I found a polite young man who was quick to smile and who wanted to help in any way if he could. In a few weeks time, I was looking forward to his visits. My co-workers were nice enough, good people, but seeing Sam walk in was like sunshine breaking through heavy clouds. Somehow he always brought a sense of joy with him. But some of my co-workers never quite got used to him, never got over their awkwardness with him, and all I can say is that the loss was completely theirs.

Sam had a hard time with names, especially of those he didn’t see on a regular basis, but he knew the people behind them. The owner equated his mind to that of an eight-year-old and he often stuttered, especially around strangers, but was surprisingly clever at times and had a wonderful sense of humor. He was a bit backward and shy but never spoke an ill word of anything and always did the best he could. I loved Sam. He was like a big little brother to me.

I worked with Sam for three years before a change in jobs moved me out of the area. Over the next few years I visited on occasion but then moved farther away and have not been back since. I often think of Sam and wonder how he is, if he has any friends in the workers there now. I miss him. I miss his smile and his innocence and the joy he carried. The way he said my name like we hadn’t seen each other in months and he was thrilled to see me, even if we’d worked side by side the day before. I miss the pure goodness of him. In a confused and ugly world, he was such a calm and beautiful island.

And Sam taught me a lot, like not judging people before I got to know them. He taught me that some people are worthy of your trust and that an open heart feels lighter than a closed one. And that friendship is not limited by age or social class or IQ or anything else. He gave me confidence by accepting me exactly as I was; showed me that it was perfectly okay to just be myself; reminded me that great things (like happiness) can be found in small acts (like picking berries with a friend). But more than anything I think he taught me to just be happy with what I’ve got. Period.

I’ve had a lot of friends over the years, some very good close friends, but nobody was ever quite like Sam. I got to missing him again and just thought I’d share that.