Not the Weaponry of Reason, But of Pure Submission

[Image: “Easy,” by Rob Cruickshank. Found on Flickr.com; used here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!). No information available, really, although this seems likely to have been taken in the Hamilton, Ontario area.]

From whiskey river:

Terns

Don’t think just now of the trudging forward of thought,
but of the wing-drive of unquestioning affirmation.

It’s summer, you never saw such a blue sky,
and here they are, those white birds with quick wings,

sweeping over the waves,
chattering and plunging,

their thin beaks snapping, their hard eyes
happy as little nails,

The years to come—this is a promise—
will grant you ample time

to try the difficult steps in the empire of thought
where you seek for the shining proofs you think you must have.

But nothing you ever understand will be sweeter, or more binding,
than this deepest affinity between your eyes and the world.

The flock thickens
Over the rolling, salt brightness. Listen,

maybe such devotion, in which one holds the world
in the clasp of attention, isn’t the perfect prayer,

but it must be close, for the sorrow, whose name is doubt,
is thus subdued, and not through the weaponry of reason,

but of pure submission. Tell me, what else
could beauty be for? And now the tide

is at its very crown,
the white birds sprinkle down,

gathering up the loose silver rising
as if weightless. It isn’t instruction, or parable.

It isn’t for any vanity or ambition
except for the one allowed, to stay alive.

It’s only a nimble frolic
over the waves. And you find, for hours,

you cannot even remember the questions
that weigh so in your mind.

(Mary Oliver [source])

…and (in slightly different words):

Whatever exists in us is a natural situation. It is another dimension of natural beauty. People sometimes go to great lengths to appreciate nature, by climbing mountains, going on safari to see giraffes and lions in Africa, or taking a cruise to Antarctica. It is much simpler and more immediate to appreciate the natural beauty of ourselves. This is actually far more beautiful than flora and fauna, far more fantastic, far more painful, colorful, and delightful.

(Chögyam Trungpa [source])

…and:

Seven in the Woods

Am I as old as I am?
Maybe not. Time is a mystery
that can tip us upside down.
Yesterday I was seven in the woods,
a bandage covering my blind eye,
in a bedroll Mother made me
so I could sleep out in the woods
far from people. A garter snake glided by
without noticing me. A chickadee
landed on my bare toe, so light
she wasn’t believable. The night
had been long and the treetops
thick with a trillion stars. Who
was I, half-blind on the forest floor
who was I at age seven? Sixty-eight
years later I can still inhabit that boy’s
body without thinking of the time between.
It is the burden of life to be many ages
without seeing the end of time.

(Jim Harrison [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Walking Home

Everything dies, I said. How had that started?
A tree? The winter? Not me, she said.

And I said, Oh yeah? And she said, I’m reincarnating.
Ha, she said, See you in a few thousand years!

Why years, I wondered, why not minutes? Days?
She found that so funny — Ha Ha — doubled over —

Years, she said, confidently.
I think you and I have known each other a few lifetimes, I said.

She said, I have never before been a soul on this earth.
(It was cold. We were hungry.) Next time, you be the mother, I said.

No way, Jose, she said, as we turned the last windy corner.

(Marie Howe [source])

…and:

Golden Anniversary

They must have been different once,
fire and water, miles apart,
robbing and giving in desire,
that assault on one another’s otherness.
Embracing, they appropriated and expropriated each other
for so long
that only air was left within their arms,
transparent as if after lightning.

One day the answer came before the question.
Another night they guessed their eyes’ expression
by the type of silence in the dark.

Gender fades, mysteries molder,
distinctions meet in all-resemblance
just as all colors coincide in white.

Which of them is doubled and which missing?
Which one is smiling with two smiles?
Whose voice forms a two-part canon?
When both heads nod, which one agrees?
Whose gesture lifts the teaspoon to their lips?
Who’s flayed the other one alive?
Which one lives and which has died
entangled in the lines of whose palm?

They gazed into each other’s eyes and slowly twins emerged.
Familiarity breeds the most perfect of mothers—
it favors neither of the little darlings,
it scarcely can recall which one is which.

On this festive day, their golden anniversary,
a dove, seen identically, perched on the windowsill.

(Wislawa Szymborska [source])

…and:

22: Nostalgia isn’t overrated, and it isn’t underestimated, either. But it’s sometimes poorly understood: nostalgia, and the experiences and things which evoke it, suffers from too much conscious attention — from too much thought. If you stand on the shore as the water rolls up to lap around your feet, if your mind stops to consider what forces of time, physics, and weather have brought these waves to this moment, stops to contemplate where the water has come from and where it goes next, and when, then you, friend, will miss the dizzying vertiginous moment when your whole being knows: it is not the water in motion, but you yourself.

(JES, Maxims for Nostalgists)