Introductions

Balthasar van der Ast

Introductions

Some of what we love

we stumble upon—

a purse of gold thrown on the road,

a poem, a friend, a great song.

And more

discloses itself to us—

a well among green hazels,

a nut thicket—

when we are worn out searching

for something quite different.

And more

comes to us, carried

as carefully

as a bright cup of water,

as new bread.

Moya Cannon

How many of the things we love have been stumbled upon, run into, or been shown us by a friend? How many times while walking have we come around a bend to a view so unexpectedly gorgeous - a tree with leaves on fire or a corner pocket of woods crowded with Queen Anne's Lace? What about the day Mung Bean and I were talking in the schoolyard and happened to look up at what I've never seen before or since - a rainbow ring around the sun?

 

So many beautiful things have found me.

 

The cobalt feather of a Stellar Jay, a Golden Cowrie shell, a piece of worm-eaten wood that looks like a miniature landscape - that's not even getting into the books that have jumped at me, or the poems, or how a painting gripped me by the neck as my eye ran over a wall...

 

Hello, gifts.

 

Glad to meet you.

 

Moth Song

Virgil Elliott



  

Moth Song

I tasted it, the gold

In the gold, I saw the sweetness

At the end of my uncoiling

Tongue, by the beautiful ends

Of what curved from my forehead,

And I swam, gliding, I dove

Through the air toward gold

And sweetness meant to be

Chosen, begging to hold me

And be drawn inside me.

But I stop now, I hang

Still, suddenly suspended

Without having chosen to be

Still in a breeze still full

Of calling and beckoning

Red and blue around gold,

And what comes to meet me

Holds me and turns

My body, spinning a lightness

Around me to fold my wings

Close into a darkness,

And it turns me slowly

Into a flower and drinks me,

And I open, I become

Completely known, I blossom.

David Wagoner

Smoke and moths - we're seeing a lot of both of those these days. Forests burning, moths swarming - it's as if a surfeit, a splurge, a super-abundance has, yes, "blossomed" around us, swirled us within its rhythms, moved us with its influence. Every 10 or so years, when the conditions are just right, the moths come out in great numbers, any window with a light behind it is covered with fluttery moth-bodies, any outside light obliterated with feathered furies. Add to that this misty-musty thickness of smoking forests - it's a strange atmosphere. 

But the poem intrigues me for other reasons as well. This bewildering lure of destruction - what is this? What draws us toward our demise? Why do we dance with death? What is the fascination of fire? I have no answers to this, only questions.

Plainsong

Ger Stallenberg

Plainsong

Stop. Along this path, in phrases of light,

trees sing their leaves. No Midas touch

has turned the wood to gold, late in the year

when you pass by, suddenly sad, straining

to remember something you’re sure you knew.

Listening. The words you have for things die

in your heart, but grasses are plainsong,

patiently chanting the circles you cannot repeat

or understand. This is your homeland,

Lost One, Stranger who speaks with tears.

It is almost impossible to be here and yet

you kneel, no one’s child, absolved by late sun

through the branches of a wood, distantly

the evening bell reminding you, Home, Home,

Home, and the stone in your palm telling the time.

Carol Ann Duffy 

 “Trees sing their leaves”. Is that true for us too? Do we sing through our actions, through our movements, through the things we make and say? Is there a melody in how we do our daily tasks, in our work? I get the image of a street full of people, their music colliding and harmonizing - winding, weaving, circling and rising up. An image, but the fact is, everything we do has an effect, a consequence, a percussion you could say, a sound. Music isn't so far-fetched. That line, "The words you have for things die in your heart, but the grasses are plainsong, patiently chanting the circles you cannot repeat or understand." just hits me. So often there are no words for what what's in us, yet listening to or watching the trees or the waving grasses embodies those unnamed thoughts. Being among these there is release, rest. The earth expresses what escapes us, what dodges the encumbrance of words, and gives us a movement and sound, a music. "This is your homeland." How beautiful. "Lost One"," Stranger who speaks with tears", "no one's child" - "through the branches of a wood...Home, Home." Earth and earthling together, singing - Home.