On Parting

Andrew Wyeth

On Parting



It's over you know, the summer's over.
Clouds of dust as the last vehicle went out.


A jeep hauling a small boat on a trailer
Through the dust of the grey country road.


Patterns of tires, patterns of cast leaves
Printed in ashen dust


The next day clouds of snow, the crumbled sky
Falling and settling on the trees
Of the bare abandoned forest.


They have all returned to the city, while I remain
Sorting my summer notebooks:


Drawings of tender plants begun in the spring
Pressings of leaves


Which are prints of tough early autumn, before
The rot comes that thickens
The floor of the woods.


And what lies beneath the snow, the needle duff?
Cities of pebbles and crushed shells,


Kingdoms of beetles, republics of worms,
Forest of hyphae, tangled mycelium,


Roots of trees coming upon each other
In the dark.



Anne Zumigalski




"It's over, you know." Zumigalski is talking about summer - but these days I can't help but feel this poem's broader sense. Life has changed in such a way these last months that seems to mark a definitive "before" and "after", a change of season. What new weather will come, I don't know. I sit here, like the speaker in the poem, "sorting my summer notebooks", thinking over what I have heard and seen and experienced, wondering what it means, and how it will carry me through what is to come.


 

The Iris

Unknown

The iris standing in the marsh - so blue,

Its roots have drunk the sky's reflected hue.

HO-O

fr. A Net of Fireflies

translated by Harold Stewart

Pretty hard to add to that. And that's the thing about haiku - the distillation of so many thoughts. Packing the maximum punch into each word. Lovely, isn't it? The roots drinking up the reflected blue? . 
 
   

Daisies

Unknown

Daisies

It is possible, I suppose, that sometime

we will learn everything

there is to learn: what the world is, for example,

and what it means. I think this as I am crossing

from one field to another, in summer, and the

mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either

knows enough already or knows enough to be

perfectly content not knowing. Song being born

of quest he knows this: he must turn silent

were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead




oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly

unanswered. At my feet the white-petaled daisies display

the small suns of their center-piece - their, if you don't

mind my saying so - their hearts. Of course

I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and

narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know.

But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,

to see what is plain; what the sun

lights up willingly; for example - I think this

as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch -

the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the

daisies for the field.

Mary Oliver



More Mary Oliver. More of her poems to punctuate my days. She recalls me to nature, and especially the "personal" natural world. "Science"might quibble, might say she anthropomorphizes, which is to accuse her of being childish and sentimental. I disagree. Seeing an animal or object as having personal meaning to us, having individuality (in the sense of uniqueness and purpose), and of their existence impacting us, as in "saying" or communicating a message to us, all of this seems obvious and true to me. (It's very strange to think that scientists, of all people, whose work involves studying natural things and phenomena closely, and whose lifework is so enjoined with nature that it could be said that it becomes part of their person; and whose attempts to describe and explain what they discover comes more close to pure poetry than any other profession aside from poets themselves, that they have so often been the ones telling us "Don't make this about you! Don't ascribe human characteristics to other forms of life!" is incredible. Impossible. "Take what is given..see what is plain."! 

 

 I walk through a field of daisies, and wonder what the mockingbird is singing about. It is singing about something that matters, both to it and to me. I look at a daisy and say it has a heart, meaning that it has a centre, an intention, and a Source - as I do - and recognize the thread between us, the pattern and symmetry we both are part of. 

 

Fact is only part of the truth. Proof is in life, in how we live in spite of what we say we think. It's personal. The bird mocks us, "as one who knows enough already or knows enough to be perfectly content not knowing". No matter how much we learn, birdsongs and flower hearts will always be speaking to us of more. Learning "all there is to learn" is not necessary, not the point. The connection, the pattern, the Source, all these, these are better than knowing. As cummings said in "little birds" ,

"may my heart always be open to little
 birds who are the secret of living
whatever they sing is better than to know". 

LXXII.

Raymond C. Booth

LXXII.

If all rivers are sweet,

where does the sea get its salt?

How do the seasons know

they must change their shirt?

Why so slowly in winter

and later with such a rapid shudder?

And how do the roots know

they must climb towards the light?

And then greet the air

with so many flowers and colors?

Is it always the same spring

who revives her role?

Pablo Neruda

The best questions are the first questions. Child questions. Wonder questions. “Why is the sky blue?” The remarkable thing about that question is that the child is aware that the sky could have been a colour other than blue. It seems as if we adults lose the ability to think this way.  Like in the fantasy books where children experience magic, but forget it as they get older. That always makes me sad. Why do we forget? Is it possible that this magic can return as we get older/wiser? I remember my university professor saying that the story arc goes from Innocence to Experience to Experience + Innocence, and that the last was best of all because it was Innocence that cannot be taken away. Neruda’s question poems remind me of that. These are Musing and Marvelling Questions rather than Requiring-an-Answer Questions. Child-like without being childish. Here is acknowledgement of mystery, of puzzles, of possibilities; awareness that things could have been another way, and a sense of wonder that they are the way they are. Neruda’s questions give me hope that we jaded, cynical, so-called “realists” simply haven’t reached the age of Wonder Wisdom yet.  So here’s to the return of wonder! And God help us on our way.