The Only Creatures That Claim to Be Anything

[Image: “The Kiss,” by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river:

Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously.

(Tom Robbins [source (in part)])

…and (last six lines):

Rest before you sleep

Requiem after Fauré, for my father

Rest before you sleepYou’ll be walking for hours
thenas usualaway from homeyour shoes
in your handyour feet not yet used to the road
Perhaps they need to feel the gravel
to know where they’re headed

A woman I knewwho lived mostly in the woods
mentioned the danger in presuming to know
what an animal thinksThe foxfor example
stopping by her open tent and looking in

I suppose she would’ve felt this way about your feet
She would’ve said how could anyone know
what a pair of tired feet need along the way

I would’ve asked her how she knew the feet
were tiredSuch discourse produces nothing
but anything less would be silence
and that would be intolerable
I wish I knew why I was telling you this

It’s easier to read the mind of a fox than to guess
what a man’s about to say when he returns
from the woodshead full of rootsveins
more like branchesshoes in one handfeet
blisteredand none of this necessarily
an indication of how the feet feelwhat miles
uphill and back have done to the soles
and to the small bones that propel a man

It’s safe nowI thinkto speak for the fox
who is only as cunning as we say it is
We’re the only creatures that claim to be anything
then build a house of facts around the claim

I’ve come for vindicationNo point in trying
to disguise it as a lesser wishWake upstop
while you still know where you arePut away
your elusive countryGive your sleep a rest

(Dionisio D. Martínez [source])

Not from whiskey river:

The Jain Bird Hospital in Delhi

Outside the hotel window, unenlightened pigeons
weave and dive like Stukas on their prey,
apparently some tiny insect brother.
(In India, the attainment of nonviolence
is considered a proper goal for human beings.)
If one of the pigeons should fly into the illusion

of my window and survive (the body is no illusion
when it’s hurt) he could be taken across town to the bird
hospital where Jains, skilled medical men,
repair the feathery sick and broken victims.
There, in reproof of violence
and of nothing else, live Mahavira‘s brothers and sisters.

To this small, gentle order of monks and nuns
it is bright Vishnu and dark Shiva who are illusion.
They trust in faith, cognition, and nonviolence
to release them from rebirth. They think that birds
and animals—like us, some predators, some prey—
should be ministered to no less than men and women.

The Jains who deal with creatures (and with laymen)
wear white, while their more enterprising hermit brothers
walk naked and are called the sky-clad. Jains pray
to no deity, human kindness being their sole illusion.
Mahavira and those twenty-three other airy creatures
who turned to saints with him, preached the doctrine of ahimsa,

which in our belligerent tongue becomes nonviolence.
It’s not a doctrine congenial to snarers and poultrymen,
who every day bring to market maimed pheasants.
Numbers of these are brought in by the Jain brothers
and brought, to grow back wing-tips and illusions,
to one of the hospitals succoring such small quarry.

When strong and feathered again, the lucky victims
get reborn on Sunday mornings to the world’s violence,
released from the roofs of these temples to illusion.
It is hard for a westerner to speak about men and women
like these, who call the birds of the air brothers.
We recall the embarrassed fanfare for Francis and his flock.

We’re poor forked sky-clad things ourselves
and God knows prey to illusion—e.g., I claim these brothers
and sisters in India, stemming a little violence, among birds.

(William Meredith [source])

…and:

Remember

Remember the sky you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

(Joy Harjo [source])