Listen

Listen
silence; words unuttered; synapses firing,
the woods breathe,
here I feel,
everything stirs; nothing
  stirs,
wind; needles; boughs; branches,
the crisp evergreen breath,
the whisper of morning light through the pines. 

Here
I
am;
here
all
are. 

My impression, the impression I leave, is not my own
   but the shape of the world removed
   the space bequeathed, allotted,  gifted, for "my" existence.

The mind divided is too loud;
fear of life
being in tumult
noise of "self"

Existence is a subtle breath
  whispering to our nothingness

We need
 only listen

about the first fire

lifetimes ago we sat about the first fire
under most of these same stars
staving off the cold night
with its teeth and eyes and claws
its poetry of inverse light

We cannot prepare to live; we live.

We cannot prepare to live; we live.

Removed, by thought,

from the context of experience

awe and rapture dissolve.

All that exists does so now.

The moment is an eternity

of truth and beauty

if only we are present.

Walk, wander, and wonder

So what if you only want to walk,
wander and wonder all the day long.
Is this not your right; is this not enough?

Must we be busy? Must we be
irreverent toward life? Must we be
arrogant in our living?

So what if you want only to live deep.
Is there a nobler, more humble, more
connected living? Is there a life deserving
of less?

A Walking

     
       A breath, a step, a walking; and so we stepped to the moment; the sun again to peak and rise above the woods greeting our consciousness; binding us to the deer, the hawk, the squirrel, the tree; binding all in life.

       We walk, breathe, communicate; meandering into a reality of us; in which we forsake our isolation; embracing our sameness, our humanness, our deaths; in which we affirm why we exist, why anything exists.

        We breathe hope of dieing less and exhale the pain of living more.

The Birdhouse

                This birdhouse hangs mostly hidden from the light of day. It hangs in a chicken coop built a century ago by my great grandfather. My grandfather, Harold Virlyn Barnes, I am told, constructed the birdhouse when he was a boy. It has hung in this spot for at least forty years.

            Evidence of its service to the bird folk lay within. A thin bit of cracked and peeled paint protects not at all. The fat nail heads are but rust. The wood warped, swollen, and cracked. Joints bulging.  Some fragments have fallen altogether to another calling.            

            I like to think of Virlyn coming across this birdhouse, a memento of his youth, in later years and hanging it so that it may be preserved in this retired structure. Hanging it so that in it’s preservation his former self may not be altogether lost; not yet anyway. Hanging it, I am sure, so that in this old coop with chicken wire rusted out the birds may yet for greater length and comfort make use of his youth’s craft.           

            It hung here as my grandfather and his hold on this world fell too to that other calling of decomposition. It hangs now. 

 

                               How many tenants had this

                               tiny home seen?

                               And how many dwellings like this

                               might there be?

                                               

My Life By Billy Collins

Sometimes I see it as a straight line
drawn with a pencil and a ruler
transecting the circle of the world

or as a finger piercing
a smoke ring, casual, inquisitive,

but then the sun will come out
or the phone will ring
and I will cease to wonder

if it is one thing,
a large ball of air and memory,
or many things,
a string of small farming towns,
a dark road winding through them.

Let us say it is a field
I have been hoeing every day,
hoeing and singing,
then going to sleep in one of its furrows,

or now that it is more than half over,
a partially open door,
rain dripping from the eaves.

Like yours, it could be anything,
a nest with one egg,
a hallway that leads to a thousand rooms—
whatever happens to float into view
when I close my eyes

or look out a window
for more than a few minutes,
so that some days I think
it must be everything and nothing at once.

But this morning, sitting up in bed,
wearing my black sweater and my glasses,
the curtains drawn and the windows up,

I am a lake, my poem is an empty boat,
and my life is the breeze that blows
through the whole scene

stirring everything it touches—
the surface of the water, the limp sail,
even the heavy, leafy trees along the shore.