Luck Is a Star

Quang Ho

Luck is a star.

Money is a plaything.

Time is a storyteller.

And the sky goes blue with mornings.

And the sky goes bronze with sunsets.

And the fireborn - they go far -

Being at home in fire.

Carl Sandburg 

 Sandburg throws down this "something-is-something else" with such ease. "Luck is a star"? Okay, if he means something far away and beautiful that we dream of reaching, I can follow. "Money is a plaything", yes, money is like that, something we use and move around and pass and receive it very much as we would pieces in a game. And also, a plaything, not the deep-down stuff of life (in spite of all talk to the contrary). "Time is a storyteller", that's the best one. So full of thoughts and ideas - I could chew on it a good while. How Time spins stories, how it uses the sky as a backdrop for its drama. Sky goes blue, sky goes bronze; Sandburg makes such sweeping word/image gestures it knocks me back. And then the kicker - "the fireborn" - with just one word, how he changes us! We're not put-upon, victims of fate or chance, we're the Fireborn. We're characters in this story. Above us, the sky changes colour, the stars call us, the money moves from hand to hand, and we are tested by fire. What will it prove us to be? How far will we go? Only Time, the storyteller, knows.

 

Anenome

Unknown

Anenome

In the meadow the anemone

is creaking open to the dawn.

By noon, the sky’s polyphony

will flood her white lap till she drowns.

The tiny muscle in her star

is tensed to open to the All,

yet the daylight’s blast so deafens her

she barely heeds the sunset’s call

or finds the willpower to refurl

her petal-edges – her, the power

and will of how many other worlds.

In our violence, we outlive her.

But which new life will see us flower

and face the skies, as true receivers?

Rilke

“The sky’s polyphony.” I had to look that up to make sure I had it right. Polyphony = ‘the style of simultaneously combining a number of parts, each forming an individual melody and harmonizing with each other”. So does that make the anenome like an open ear? Is she listening to the music of the spheres? Rilke calls her a star, so that makes her an earth-star receiving messages from a sky-star. And though delicate, she takes everything in, something we “in our violence” don’t do though we outlive her. The thing that speaks to me most is the question whether we also can flower and become “true receivers.” It's against our nature to receive. We want to act, accomplish, conquer – hence our “violence”. But the anenome shows us that a life of beauty, though breathtakingly short and fragile, is in fully opening ourselves, listening, and receiving. Can we do it? Rilke doesn’t know.