The Dogwoods (in the evening)

The dogwoods are turning red again
slowly like
the apples
in my parents' tiny orchard
a brown-red russet
smoothness, roughly-smooth
on my cheek.
under the dogwoods' leaves
last year
I cried out
like a dying bird
from the center of
the tiny cage of
my mind
and the dogwoods
listened.
This year
I listen to them
as I stroll with my hands
in my pockets
and they speak of peace
and times and seasons
for things
and the transitory nature of life
and the quiet setting of suns
over a million landscapes.

These trees know me well.
the dogwoods were my grandmother
Felicia's favorite tree,
and these were her dogwoods
and perhaps for that reason
these dogwoods have always been kind to me,
spreading their branches over me
as I walk through the grass
to my childhood home.

Loneliness

Loneliness sits beside me 

on my porch steps

in the cool of the evening,

a quiet presence at my right hand.

As I watch the sun set

behind the black-branched oaks

and the swallows swoop and dive

against the western sky,

I feel him take my hand

with quiet intimacy.

At night, he sleeps beside me.

When I wake,

I feel him cold and heavy and there,

a weight. The moon makes him look

bigger and blacker and larger than life.

Please go away! I plead with him.

But I don't have any authority over Loneliness.

He comes and goes as he pleases.

Someone once told me that

feelings must be welcomed as friends

for as long as they stay, and cared for

until they leave on their own.

So I tend to Loneliness and listen to it,

and try to treat it as a messenger of God.

Perhaps if I can find meaning in this loneliness,

I will not be afraid of it anymore,

and I will become wise, 

like a quiet-faced sage, 

instead of a bewildered

teary-eyed sobbing wretch.

Oh, I hope so.

Recognizing my Habitat

My body could not stand
the grey and glinting metal
sand and cement landscape of San Bernardino.
Although I reminded it every day
that this was its home,
and tried to soothe my animal soul
with potted geraniums and humming bird feeders
and the opulence of a swimming pool,
some deep part of me recoiled
at the artificiality of this beauty,
and mourned the wound which men have struck
into that arid, scarce, harshly beautiful land--
the gravel pit--a great gash,
the freeways, the gaudy billboards,
the cheerless stucco houses of the poor
and the ostentatious McMansions of the rich,
the roads carved into the sides of the grand mountains
which people climb and descend daily in their SUVs,
without awe, without reverence.

The deafness of the people to the needs and wants of the land is
the deafness of people to the voices of their own souls.
Their hearts, bleeding and tired, do not renew each morning
in the light of the sunrise coming up from the desert,
or the majestic purple of the mountains in the evening.
Why?

There has been a divorce somewhere, my body screamed. A split, a defying of reality.
You will die if it is not righted, my body told me.
I saw into the abyss, and reeled back, terrified.

Today I stepped from my front porch
into the shade of a maple tree,
barefoot, my toes spreading wide in the
soft clover, feeling the wet ground under me
and the warmth rising up
in the humid air--an exhale.
And I was suddenly a child again
and it was an evening at home,
and I was running through the freshly mowed lawn
to the climbing tree
and swinging up the first branches,
balancing on thin, strong little feet,
and feeling strong, and healthy
and hopeful.

I felt I would like to lay down on the lawn
and embrace the ground.
And I understood.
This is why you had to move three thousand miles home again,
for this contact with the land,
for the chirruping of the birds in the woods
and the stalking deer in the tall grass.
For the violets and the daisies
and the delicate little things that grow and
flourish in the underbrush, and the fireflies
that will soon be out in the evenings again.

Joy flooded me.
So you finally know? whispered my soul.
Know what? I asked.
You are an animal too, it said,
And this is your habitat.

In which I personify my garden

I walked into Banana Republic today

wearing old gardening jeans

with dirt stains on the knees

and a faded t-shirt and

muddy sneakers and was

swiftly judged by the skinny-jeans-wearing

petite brunette store clerk

as she hung merchandise

on the clearance rack.

I held my nose in the air and said,

"I can wear whatever I want!"

(well, I said it in my head.)

My internal childlike defiance

made me smile.

I felt cheeky,

like the robins that hop boldly up the mulch pile,

looking for worms.

My garden 

does not judge me

for not having trendy jeans on

when I come to see her in the morning.

My garden

does not judge me

for wearing a ratty old t-shirt

that I have owned for six years,

and she also doesn't care that

I didn't fix my hair

or put on makeup today.

What is the judgement of a store clerk compared with

the grass in my flower bed, which

is cool and green

and moistly squeaks when I grab handfuls of it

out by the roots?

What is it compared with the stalks of iris that push

smooth and slender out of the red-brown clay?

Today, I dressed for

the most important person in my life

and it was not anyone

at Banana Republic. So,

she can deal with it.

I hope I didn't leave any tracks in the store, though.

I'd feel bad about that.

The Other Side of Spring

Yesterday I sat under a tree
holding a frightened baby bunny in my cupped hands.
It was so soft and warm,
a brown and grey ball of fur,
and it had such
sweet little floppy ears,
and wide bright eyes
and a little twitching nose.
It was a little wild rabbit
and the thrill of holding this tiny
snippet of wild life--wild
young pulsing terrified but quiet life in my hands--
it was profound.
It did not try to run away from me; it did not struggle, although it did
nibble on the tip of my finger with its tiny little teeth.
It could not walk.

I knew it was going to die.
My cat had dragged it by the neck into my kitchen with a
triumphant meow,
and I had caught up the warm panting little body,
and, locking my cat in my bedroom
(where she sat and howled at the door),
I took it outside to release it.
It did not appear to be wounded, there was
only a small puncture under its eye (it raised its little paw to its face
as if to explore the wound), but when I set it in the grass,
it flopped onto its side, helpless.

I got a cardboard box and put a towel in it and made the bunny a nest.
I placed the bunny in the box, and it did not curl up, it simply lay as I had placed it.
I thought, the humane thing would be to kill it.
But I can't do it. I can't do it, even though it's the best thing to do,
even though it's the kindest thing to do. I don't know how to kill anything.
I don't WANT to know how to kill anything. What would I even kill it with? A shovel?
A bucket of water and a sack? No, no, no, I can't do it.

So I made it a warm soft bed in a box
and kept it in my room where scavengers couldn't start eating it
while it was still alive. Where my beloved cat
couldn't get to it and play with it.
(Minka wonders why I've locked her out of my room all day.)

I check on the bunny several times during the day.
Its black eye is dim now and half shut.
It's motionless except for its shallow little breaths
that come rapid, rapid, rapid.
I stroke its tiny ears, and then leave it alone;
I know my presence only makes it more scared.
It won't be long.
I know what something looks like when it's dying.

Tonight I kneel under the tree in the dark
and dig a hole and put the cold little body into it.
This is the first time I've buried something--I mean done it myself.
I sob like a baby, desolate.
I think, why am I crying so hard? After all, it's just a bunny.
Just!
But . . .
I held it yesterday, and
it had such sweet, tiny little paws,
and such bright eyes,
and it was so alive
and so perfect.
It was the most perfect little thing,
so soft and warm and alive
in my cupped hands.

Oh, I don't understand.
Why are the most basic things
the hardest to understand?

Late Spring

Spring came late this year.
It was cold and gloomy on Easter,
like a day in late November,
and then the next week
temperatures rocketed into the high eighties,
leaving us perspiring in tank tops and shorts
before the first leaf was even on the trees.

Now, after a long warm up, a symphony of cherry trees
has exploded into concertos of pink and white,
the larks and thrushes are chirruping me awake
every morning through my open window,
and my little cat stalks the new clover of my front lawn,
searching for the small, furry critters she hears
scurrying under my porch in the night.
I fear she will find the groundhog which, I am sure, lives here.

The wind is now a breeze
and the smell of manure and fresh-tilled earth
rises up to me from the valley. I stand outside,
looking out on the farm land spread out below me
and at the hills,
which are turning a light, timid green.

I am not fooled by spring's slowness.
I am relieved to not be responsible for its progression.
I am happy to just be a part of it,
A creature in this new, green world, a creature
with as much power to rush spring
as I have power to spin the earth on its axis.

I marvel at my finiteness--and,
for the first time in my life--
thank God for it.

Oh the pleasures of the created,
the lightness of being for those
who are not responsible for the song of a thrush,
or the red-gold of the morning sun!

The Birth of Eve

There once was a beautiful walled garden that stood by itself in the middle of the world. In this garden grew every kind of beautiful flower and tree. Peaceful animals lived in it; birds and butterflies and innocent horses and sheep and squirrels flew and fluttered and roamed and grazed and scurried through the garden to their hearts’ content.  

The garden was tended by a man and a woman. They both lived and worked in the garden and had always lived and worked there. They took care of the flowers and shrubs and trees and were friends with the animals and made pets out of some of them. The people were very beautiful and happy, like the animals and flowers and trees. Everyone was happy in the garden because the garden was perfect, and nobody knew anything else.

Then one day, a new animal arrived from somewhere outside of the garden. No one had ever seen anything like him before. He was very long and thin and instead of walking on all fours, like the horses, or on two legs, like the people, he wiggled on the ground because he had no legs. Everyone welcomed this strange creature into the garden, and he seemed relieved to be there. The people picked him up and put him into the knothole of a giant and beautiful tree, the tree that the people called The Tree of Life, since the main part of their diet was made of its fruit.  The animals wanted to know what he called himself.

“I am called a serpent,” he said. He curled up in his knothole with a happy sigh and fell asleep. He slept for many days. The woman came to check on him every day and left him some berries and grass and nuts to eat. She was worried that he might get hungry while he slept.

On the third day, the serpent woke up. The woman saw that he was awake and was delighted. She asked him how he felt.

“Much better,” he said with a sigh and shook his head sadly. “This is a beautiful place. What is it called?”

“Eden,” said the woman. “Thank you. We think it is a beautiful place. Where did you come from, serpent?”

The serpent sighed. “I would rather not think about where I came from. It was not a beautiful place. It was horrible.”

“What does horrible mean?” asked the woman.

The serpent looked at the woman and shook his head. “If you don’t know what horrible means, I’m not going to be the one to tell you.”

So the woman told the man and the other animals that night that the serpent was from a place called Horrible, but that he didn’t want to talk about it.

“He is our guest, so we must honor his desire to not speak of his home, although it is very strange. Everyone knows that home is the best place in the world,” said the woman. The man and the other animals agreed.

However, the woman was very curious about the serpent’s home and about the outside world. She had never been outside of the garden walls because . . . actually, she wasn’t sure why. So the next day, she went to the Tree of Life to talk to the serpent and found him sunning himself on a branch near his knothole.

“Serpent, tell me about your home,” she said.

The serpent shuddered. “I told you, I can’t tell you about my home. Even if I wanted to tell you about it, you couldn’t understand. I want to forget about my home. Now don’t ask me again.” Then, as he saw that he had hurt her feelings, he added, “But if you would be so kind, tell me about your home, this garden. I would like to hear of good things.”

So the woman told him about the Garden and the flowers and shrubs and trees, and the birds and butterflies and innocent horses and sheep and squirrels that made their home in the garden, and how she and the man took care of everything, and lived happily under the shade of the giant trees. The serpent listened to her speaking and saw how good and kind and innocent she was herself.

“This is a good place. You should never leave this place,” said the serpent, when she had finished.

The woman blushed. “How did you know that I want to leave it?”

The serpent shook his head. “You should never leave this place. This is paradise.”

“What is paradise?” asked the woman.

The serpent looked at the woman and smiled sadly. “If you do not know what paradise is, I’m not going to be the one to tell you.”

And so that night the woman told the man and the other animals that the serpent had said that they should never leave the garden because it was Paradise.

“Why would we want to leave it?” said the man. “It is home, and everyone knows that home is the best place in the world.”

The animals all agreed, but the woman was silent. She was frowning. A new thought had come to her.

“How do I know that home is the best place in the world if I’ve never been out in the world?” she thought. “How silly they all are, thinking they know everything! They know nothing, and neither do I.” She felt irritable and restless, stayed awake all night while the man slept and the butterflies and birds fluttered and twittered through the branches of the Tree of Life.

The next day, the woman slowly walked to the Tree of Life. She looked very sad.

“Serpent,” she said. “I have made up my mind. I have to leave the garden.”

The serpent, sunning himself on a branch near his knothole, almost fell off in his surprise. “My friend,” he cried, hanging upside down from the branch by his tail, “what are you talking about? How can you even think such a thing?”

The woman gently lifted the serpent back onto his branch and looked into his shiny black eyes, which were full of concern.

“I can’t help it. Ever since you came I haven’t been able to stop wondering about the rest of the world. You know so much, and I don’t know anything about anything. I want to understand the world better, like you do. I want to explore it and find out what kind of a place it is. I’m tired of being stuck here.” She waved her hand at the living green walls around her.

“My friend,” said the serpent, agitated, “you cannot leave this garden. You do not know what kind of a world it is out there. You do not even know the words to describe what kind of world it is out there.  Your home is here, and the one thing you do know is true: Home is the best place in the world.”

The woman stamped her foot impatiently. “How do I know that home is the best place in the world when I have never been out in the world?”

When the serpent saw that the woman was thinking this way, he realized that it was useless to argue.

“It was better for you to be ignorant,” he thought. “It is my fault. If I had not come, you would have been content here inside these walls. Now you can’t be content here anymore. And you have lost your home, although you don’t know it yet.”

“My friend,” said the serpent slowly, “What will you do? Will you leave the man and the animals?”

“Yes, I have to,” she said. “But that is why I am sad today. I have never been apart from them before.”

That night, the woman told the man and the animals what she planned to do. They were distraught and tried to persuade her not to go. The man even started to cry. The woman put her arms around him to comfort him and then he said, “If you go, I must go too. I have never been separated from you before.”

The woman smiled and her eyes shone with hope. “We will find something wonderful, I know it! We will find what the serpent said . . . Paradise!”

“Perhaps we will find Horrible, too,” said the man, trying to be excited.

“All the better,” cried the woman. “I want to find it all!”

The next day the woman and the man got ready to leave the garden. All the birds and butterflies and innocent horses and sheep and squirrels and the serpent came to see them off. The woman went from animal to animal and said goodbye with a tender kiss and a pat on the head. She was calm, but glowing with excitement and purpose. Finally, she stopped at the Tree of Life and affectionately rubbed the serpent between his beady black eyes with her forefinger.

“So you are really going?” said the serpent gloomily.

“Of course I am!” she said.

The serpent did not smile back. “If you are going to go, you need to know one thing.” He sounded so serious that everyone became quiet and stared at him.  “There is no Tree of Life in the world. Don’t try to look for it. If you try to look for it, you will go hungry looking. But there is another tree; it grows abundantly throughout the world. It is called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Its fruit is edible.”

“How will we recognize it?” asked the man, who was feeling frightened at the thought of not being able to eat from the Tree of Life.

“You will know it when you see it,” said the serpent, and he slid back into his knothole.

There was nothing left to do or say, so the woman and man walked out of the garden to look at the world and see what kind of place it was.

The day after they left, the animals woke up confused and anxious. They went to the serpent and said, “Brother, help us! You are wise, and we need a leader now that the woman and man are gone.”

“Leave me alone,” said the serpent from inside his knothole. “I am no leader, and I am not wise.”

“But you have been throughout the world and have seen so many things,” said the animals. “We must have someone to lead us.”

Still the serpent said nothing and stayed inside his knothole, for he was consumed with guilt over what had happened to the man and woman. The animals wandered around the Tree of Life all morning and could not eat or rest. Finally, a horse said to the other animals, “We should follow our two people. What is this place without them?”

So the animals left the garden to search for their people. But the serpent did not follow; he stayed in his knothole in the Tree of Life.

And so the serpent spent a very lonely year in the walled garden. He missed the company of the kind woman and the simple man and the animals. He rarely left the Tree. He lived his quiet days eating fruit and sunning himself on the branch by his knothole. One day, as he slithered out to breakfast, he looked around the garden and noticed that things had started to change. The more delicate and fragrant flowers were wilting, the trees and shrubs were turning brown, the grass was scraggly and tangled, and the heavy vines were beginning to grow out of control. Strangest of all, the garden walls, which had stood for centuries without maintenance or repair, were beginning to crumble. The serpent sighed and went inside his knothole and did not come out again for a very long time.

One day, years after the people had gone away, the serpent looked to the east and saw someone walking towards him. He thought it strange that anyone should be in the region at all. There was nothing to see there, for all that remained of the once verdant and pleasing landscape was harsh, dry brush encircled by a perimeter of fallen stones. The garden had vanished; the Tree of Life stood green and alone in a deserted wasteland.

“It must be some poor lost soul,” thought the serpent.

The figure came closer and grew in size until the serpent could see that it wasn’t a man, but a woman. Then, with a little start of surprise, he realized and it was she, his old friend. She walked slowly towards him, head down, back bent forward a little, as though she carried a great weight on her shoulders. Every now and then she would look up, scan the horizon, frown, and continue walking wearily towards the Tree. She was hesitant as she climbed over the fallen stones, and picked her way around the dry bushes as though she couldn’t understand how they had gotten there.

When the woman walked into the shade of the Tree, she looked up into its branches and noticed the serpent. She stopped and stared at him, her eyes blank and wondering. Then she blinked. “Serpent?”

“Hello friend,” said the serpent.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Why aren’t you in the garden?”

“I am in the garden,” said the serpent. “Well, anyway, and I am where the garden used to be.”

“No, this is not the garden,” she cried. “There is no garden here, and never has been.” She took a step back and stared. But she looked and looked at the Tree of Life and realized there could be no mistake. It was the same Tree, and she was standing in the middle of her old garden.

“No, this can’t be,” she said to herself. “I did this? I did this? How could I do this? How could this happen?”

“The punishment rarely fits the crime,” said the serpent. “That is the way of the world.”

“But I committed no crime!” cried the woman. “What crime did I commit? What law did I break? I was curious and restless. Is that a sin?”

The serpent said nothing.

She looked around her, tears streaming down her face. “All I wanted was to come home,” she thought. “And this isn’t home anymore, but there is no where else for me. Where else can I go?”

“I don’t know,” the serpent said. “I don’t know. This is my fault. If I hadn’t come, you would have been content.”

                  Suddenly the air turned gold and white, there was a rushing wind, and a sound of roaring, and God appeared before them, in gold, white and pink robes. He was too bright to see, but his voice was strong and made the ground around the Tree of Life tremble. The serpent hid his face, but the woman looked through her squinting eyes, although she knew it was perhaps dangerous, because she wanted to see God.

                  “I sent the serpent to the garden,” said God. “Do you think he could have come otherwise?”

                  “Why,” asked the woman. Although she was afraid, she was also angry. “Why would you do that?”

                  “You wanted to leave,” said God. “You were unhappy. You were restless and curious. You were meant to be all of those things.”

                  “But the garden was so beautiful, and now it is gone!”

                  “There have been and will be many gardens,” said God. “Each has its time, and each comes to an end. You may mourn for it, for you loved it. But it is not a calamity. ”

                  “But the world is a horrible place,” said the serpent, still not looking at God. “And now this innocent woman and man have to live in it, and make a way in it, and deal with all of its trials and horrors and pains. It is not fair, and you know it!”

                  “Serpent,” said God. “You are a catalyst of change; this is your function in the world. Remember that you do not know things that you have not been given to know. You bring knowledge, but not wisdom. The woman will find wisdom another way. It would be best if you would not speak of things you do not understand.”

                  The serpent was quiet.

                  “Woman, where is the man?” God asked.

                  “I don’t know,” she said, looking confused. “We had a fight—I wanted to come back to the garden and he didn’t want to. I haven’t seen him for a long time.”

“Woman, it is time for you to build a new home,” said God. “You will always be able to come back to the Tree, for it is yours. It will live without tending, and it will welcome and refresh you when you need it. But you leave it again for now and find the man, for he cannot live without you. This is your first necessity.”

                  The woman said, “You forgive me then? For leaving the garden?”

                  “Why do you ask for my forgiveness?” said God, and the cloud disappeared. 

The Canoe

A young man decided to paddle his canoe down a dark river into the center of the earth. He knew it was dangerous and uncertain, but he believed that if he kept going, he would come out to the light on the other side of the world.

He paddled and paddled for days and nights and weeks of nights and days, and the river kept rushing farther and farther into the earth, and the tunnel kept taking him deeper and deeper and farther and farther, until he was farther into the darkness than anyone had ever been before. By this time, he was terrified. He stopped paddling, because he realized that it didn't matter if he paddled or not--he was rushing downward at a great speed and the canoe was out of his control. Terrified, he held on to the canoe with both hands and prayed to be spared.

Finally, the canoe slowed. The rushing of the water quieted. The canoe leveled out. It no longer rushed headlong into the blackness but glided silently forward. There was still no light.

"I must be almost through the tunnel," the young man thought. He waited. He wasn't sure how many days and nights passed, or if only a few hours passed. He prayed, "Oh God, let me find my way out of this darkness. I don't care if I see the other side of the world anymore, I just want out of this darkness."

There was no answer. The young man floated silently, borne steadily away by the underground stream. Then the young man understood.

"The only way out of the darkness is to make it to the other side of the world," the young man said to himself. "There is no other way out."

He realized he was at the mercy of the underground stream. There was nothing he could do except sit in the canoe and wait. He felt a kind of despair, and also, a kind of relief. Either he would or he wouldn't make it out, either he would or he wouldn't see the light again. This was none of his business somehow. The stream had taken over.

The young man rested in the bottom of the canoe with his hands under his head, feeling the current rushing around him, bearing him farther and farther into places unknown. He looked hard at the darkness and saw nothing. He closed his eyes and saw nothing. He opened his eyes and closed them and saw nothing whether his eyes were open or closed.

He rested.

The water rushed on through the tunnel. The canoe rode the current. The young man slept. 

In Repair

I am so tired most of the time
it's as if I have spent the day
working in the salt mines,
or running a marathon,
or single-handedly taking care of
an entire orphanage of toddlers.

What I have been doing, however,
sounds less impressive.
Today I looked at the rain falling from the eaves
in giant, turgid drops.

Meanwhile
somewhere deep inside
things are being churned around
drawers opened and slammed shut
papers shifted and shuffled
lights turned on here, off there
and all the hammering and sawing
and drilling and painting going on
in the depths of me
would be enough to employ a troupe
of immigrant laborers for a year.

My psyche,
which supplies the man power for all of this,
sends my body the check
and says pay up.
And I do.

Watching the rain fall is pretty much all I can manage sometimes.

A Ride through a Pasture in an Old Farm Truck

Three of us went out to bring the cows in

as the world was turning in for the night,

as the black silhouettes of birds

dipped and swooped against the orange sky.

We drove across fields

and towards an irrigation machine,

a giant spider on metal legs

sent out to wash the world.

Grinding the green grass under its black shiny wheels

it came on

in the long slow movement of massivity,

slowly rolling,

slowly, slowly,

so slow

it was hardly moving,

slow like the world turning,

slow like the moon changing,

slow, over days and nights, and more days,

traveling, traveling over the lush green field,

creating the lush green field,

the mist resting over it like a blessing,

the water--the living, freezing,

dribbling, splashing water--

drenching the land

(the land is loamy and heavy with life).

The work dog stretched out in a joyful run,

chasing our red truck

like a black-and-white comet

as we blundered over bumps,

and jiggled and jostled inside our tin-can cab.

We finally park beneath the machine,

between its spidery legs.

Drops splatter over the windshield,

the old manure crusted over the door handles

is made smeary and alive again

by this wheeled giant,

drawfing us, the truck, the cows who wait

impatiently by the paddock,

the most important thing in the landscape,

the bringer of life,

the thing that makes any of this, and us, possible,

slowly, slowly turning forward

slowly, slowly turning toward the stars.

That happened several weeks ago.

I like to think of it,

imagine it still traveling in that quiet place,

watering the ground.

It was so reassuring somehow.

Strange Bedfellow

We only just met yesterday,
but we really hit it off.
In fact, Bryan came right over and said hello,
very friendly, very kind.
Sometimes you just know . . .

As I fell asleep last night,
with my window open to the porch,
I heard someone outside--I was sure I heard someone outside,
some stealthy footsteps pacing in front of my window,
But I thought, it's ok, it's only Bryan.
And then Bryan was through the window and in my bed!
I thought, This is sudden!
We only just met, my goodness, so forward!
But it just felt right.

Bryan curled up by my side and started to purr,
And I reached down and petted her tiny whiskered face,
And listened to the cicadas and the crickets singing the night away.
Welcome to New Zealand, Bryan said.
Thank you, I said. It is good to be here with you.

Purr, purr, purr

Over

Getting over someone is sometimes like trying to push yourself over a rock sunk in a river while lying on your belly on an inflatable mattress and paddling with your outstretched arms.

Getting over someone is sometimes like trying to get used to the cold, like standing outside in the snow and thinking, "If I just stand here a little longer, I'll warm up."

Getting over someone is sometimes like sending a postcard to a friend and finding out that your friend moved and didn't tell you.

Getting over someone is sometimes like a taking a long, bleak walk on a gray day alone down a country road in winter.

Getting over someone is hard.

It is always, always hard.

Birthday Benediction

Just before sunset yesterday

I saw a blue heron

rise up from under the bridge

where I stood,

and lift itself silently over the water, 

floating away over the swollen creek 

into the tops of the trees.

And the warm, moist air,

full of the smell of the river,

and the rich scent of thawing earth

blew softly through my hair,

and the gently dying sun

reached out across the yellow fields

from its throbbing crimson bed 

and touched my face,

and the river and the trees and the heron

quiet, reverent,

all watched in approving silence.

Your own soul is a kingdom, 

the river said to me,

a vast continent, 

a wonderland,

and it offers itself to you

when you come to it 

in peace.

Four Portraits

I went to the National Gallery this weekend and fell in love with these four paintings because the artists have caught the subjects' expressions so well that you feel you can read their thoughts. This is what I believe each one of these women to be thinking.

Bertolome Esteban Murillo

A Girl and Her Duenna, 1670

Girl: Oh yes, I know I am beautiful, what of it? What are you doing?

Duenna: Oh look at him staring so boldly at my young miss! Yes, I know what you're thinking, you dirty old lecherous sonofabitch. You have babies nursing in every kitchen in every great house in Sevilla! Yes you can look, but you just keep on moving along, yes sir . . .

Nicolas de Largilliere
Portrait of Elizabeth Throckmorton, 1729

"I am so beautiful that even a nun's habit cannot contain my inner radiance. I am beautiful at thirty five while your wife is missing hair and teeth and her skin is worn and old from cleaning and washing and caring for your children and it no longer glows like mine. I am off limits. Paint me if you like, but I am out of the reach of any man, protected by this habit, by my vows, by these walls. Put all of your longing for me into your painting, make me rosy and sensual if you like, you cannot touch me. It will be a better painting for that, won't it?"







Judith Leyster
Self portrait, 1630

"I am a professional in a world in which I am first owned by my father and then my husband, in a world in which any money I make belongs to my husband. My children belong to my husband, my body belongs to my husband, but I am still a professional woman. I am not only a professional, I am an artist. I am by that very fact unconventional in a conventional society. Yet here I am, with an easel and a palette, somehow figuring out how to be what I want to be in spite of patriarchal constraints, in spite of my gender's limitations. Aren't I cool? And this painting within a painting, pretty awesome right?"

 Antoine Van Dyk

Marchesa Elena Grimaldi, 1623

"Cower before me, minion, for I could have you chopped into tiny pieces if the whim entered my head. But also, love me, for I am beautiful and intelligent, and have slaves to wait on me and luxurious clothes. I am in every way superior to you and the only reason I permit your presence is so that I will have someone to admire me. Now be off--I am done with you." 

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

Family walk around the duck pond, Columbus, Ohio, November 2012

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

A Short Story

"Everyone, when they're young, knows what their Personal Legend is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend."

--Melchizedek the King of Salem, from The Alchemist

She would gaze up at the hills

There once was a little girl who lived in a walled town in the middle of a small valley. The valley was surrounded on all sides by high green hills, whose rounded tops were dotted with red wild flowers in summer and covered with smooth, unbroken snow in winter. 

Every morning as the little girl walked to school, she would gaze up at these hills and wish that she could climb up and explore them. She was sure that she could see wonderful things from their tops.

“Wouldn’t it be fun to climb up those hills?” said the little girl one day to her friend. They were playing in the schoolyard.

“Oh, you can’t go up there,” said the friend. 

“Why not?” she asked.

“Teacher said,” he replied, shrugging. He did not care about the hills and did not question why children weren’t allowed to play on them. He ran off to join a ball game and left the little girl staring wistfully up at the grassy slopes.

the walled town

Later that day, she asked her father about the hills.

“Will you take me up to the hills around the town, Daddy?” she said. “I want to go see them but the children at school say we aren’t allowed to go up there.”

Her father looked at his daughter with compassion. “Yes, I used to want to climb those hills when I was a boy, but they are dangerous and wild. That is why no one from the town ever goes up there, and you are not allowed to go either. I tell you this for your own good, my dear. Forget about those hills.” Her father smiled and hugged her.

She was a good daughter and loved her father very much, and loved her teacher, and did not wish to get into trouble. So she did as they said.

the little girl grew into a woman

The years passed and the little girl grew into a woman. She noticed the hills around her less and less because she had been told to ignore them. But she was unhappy. She became withdrawn and sometimes she would sit at her window and cry although she didn’t know why.

She was going to be married to an important industrialist in the town who was very rich and had a beautiful house. She loved him because he was everything that her parents and the town admired—capable, practical, successful. But the thought of marrying him made her tired and restless. As the day of the wedding approached, she began to feel desperate.

“I cannot marry him,” she said to herself one day as she was sitting by her window and crying. “But I’ve given my word and everyone expects it. And he is a good man. What else can I do? What else is there? Oh I am so unhappy! Is anyone in the world as unhappy as I am?”

He was everything the town approved of

The green hills that surrounded the town seemed to remind her of something she used to want, but she couldn’t remember what that had been.

Her family noticed that she seemed ill and became worried about her. They called for the doctor to come examine her, and he arrived at the house with his black doctor’s bag that afternoon.

“Everything seems all right,” said the doctor after the exam. “But she is suffering from low spirits.”

“And what can we do?” asked her mother anxiously.

“Make her go into town and see the parade today,” recommended the doctor. “Take her to the park. Make her go shopping and buy pretty clothes. See if that will revive some interest in her for life. Girls always perk up when they buy a new dress.” He laughed.

So her family did all of these things, and the girl permitted herself to be taken around to all of these places, even though it hurt her to do it, because she didn’t want to disappoint her parents, and because she hoped it would make her feel better. But when they got home, she felt worse. She went into her room and shut her door and sobbed on her bed.

“What am I going to do?” she thought in anguish. “They are killing me—they are killing me! Oh what am I going to do?”

She felt ashamed of thinking of her family that way because she knew they were kind, good people who were only trying to help her. She felt like she was betraying them by thinking these thoughts, and this made her feel worse. She decided that she would try to be happy and make the best of her situation.

“After all, what else is there to do?” she thought wearily.

That evening, she put on an elegant gown and arranged her hair in the mirror. She was beautiful and looked lovely. She smiled in the mirror at herself and looked like the perfect society belle. She went down to dinner and sat by her fiancé and talked charmingly, and everyone was relieved to see that she was better that evening.

“The outing worked,” said her aunt to her mother. “See, I knew she only needed a change of scenery to right her.”

That night the girl sat by her window and stared at the green hills that ringed the city and cried her heart out.

“What will I do, what will I do? I can’t do this forever,” she thought desperately. “Oh, I wish I were dead!” And then she cried harder, because wishing you were dead was too horrible to admit even to yourself.

That night, the girl cried her heart out

Later she grew calm. “I am a bad person,” she thought as she lay in her bed and watched the moon rise. “That is why I’m so unhappy. Everyone else is so happy. There must be something wrong with me.”

She suddenly noticed the green hills outside of her window. They looked grey in the moonlight.

“I remember,” she thought, “how I used to want to explore those hills. How silly I was to want that!” She started crying then, and thought, “There isn’t anything to them, probably. They are wild and dangerous, I’m sure. And there isn’t anything up there to see, probably, just a lot of grass and ordinary trees. I can see trees down here.”

And then she thought, “But I wish I had seen them . . . just once . . . when I was a child! I would have loved to explore them. But I am a woman and going to be married. I must do the right thing and be a good daughter and a loyal fiancé. That is the most important thing.” But in spite of herself, she looked again at the hills, and tears gathered in her eyes. She pushed them away and said to herself angrily, “Oh, forget those hills, they are nothing! Nothing!” She fell asleep then, exhausted.

Two weeks later, she put her disturbing thoughts away from her and married the town industrialist. It was a beautiful wedding and everyone in the town celebrated and her parents were pleased with the thought that she was happy and settled at last. And the girl felt happy because she had conquered herself finally and had done the right thing.

Years passed. Her husband the town industrialist became more successful, and he was busier and busier with his business, and had no time to talk to her about the things in her heart. Whenever she tried, he became impatient and looked at his watch and interrupted.

“That’s nice, darling,” he would say, “but I am late to a meeting. You understand, don’t you? I will see you tonight. Please remember to have my slippers waiting for me by the fire when I come home this time. You are too forgetful.” He would pinch her nose and kiss her cheek and walk out the front door, whistling cheerfully.

More years went by and she had children. They were all like their father and she sealed up the things in her heart against them as well, for she was afraid they wouldn’t understand.

One day she saw her littlest boy looking up at the high green hills around the city. He was a chubby little thing of about six and had been her favorite since he was old enough to talk. She felt there was something different about him, that he was more like her than his father. As he looked at the hills, she saw bewilderment, fear and longing cross his face.

“Mommy, Daddy says we musn’t climb those hills. Why musn’t we?”

“Because they are dangerous. They are wild and dangerous,” she said, and felt angry. “Don’t ask me about them again! Why would you want to go up there? Why would anyone ever want to go up there? What notions you have!”

Her child’s eyes grew wide—his mother had never been angry with him before. He never asked her about the hills again and soon forgot all about them. His father’s blood in him was stronger after all.

The years went by and she rarely went anywhere

She withdrew more and more into her own room as the years went on. She rarely went anywhere because none of the places she could go interested her. Her family grew up and left to make their way in the town. They were happy and married and had families of their own, and all of her sons worked in their father’s business. She watched their happiness and wondered at it, and wondered why she had never been happy herself.

“I do all the things that they do,” she thought, “and I have been all the things that they have been, and I have thought all the things that they think—and they are content, and I am unhappy. Always, always unhappy! What makes the difference? Oh, I am such a horrible person. So ungrateful to my own blessings! How many people would give everything they have to live my life!”

When she was a very old lady, her husband died. Her left her well provided for, and she continued to live in the big house in the center of town. She cried for him and put on mourning. By this time, she could not imagine life without him. She stayed in her room and had the curtains drawn, because she was afraid of the sky and the giant moon at night and the bustle of the city.

To amuse herself, she had her servants bring her art supplies, and she would sit up in her chair during the day and make papier-mâché models of a city in a valley with high, green hills surrounding it. After a while, she left out the city and only made hills. She made the hills bigger and bigger each time.

She drew pictures of high green hills

Soon she grew too weak to make papier-mâché models, so she began to draw pictures in crayon instead. Her hands by now were shaky and gnarled by arthritis, and she was only able to draw crude outlines of things, and so her pictures looked like they had been drawn by a small child. She drew pictures of high green hills. She drew a small girl standing on the top of one of the hills. She drew the little girl in a purple dress and made the grass around her dotted with red wild flowers. She made the servants hang each picture on her bedroom wall. Soon the walls were covered in pictures, and still she made more, until her floor and ceiling were covered with them as well. 

“The old lady has gone crazy,” the servants whispered to each other.

On a day in the summer, the old lady died. There was a respectable funeral and her children buried her next to their father by the family monument in the church cemetery. A week later, two of her children came to the old mansion to get it ready to be sold, and discovered her room just as she had left it--completely full of pictures.

“Oh poor Mama,” the daughter said, wiping her eyes. “She was a good woman and a good mother to us, but I don't think she was ever really happy.”

“Don’t pity her,” said the son, scowling at the artwork on the walls. “She was my mother and I know we musn’t speak ill of the dead, but she made herself miserable. You know she did.”

“You're right, of course. Oh well," said the daughter, slipping her handkerchief back into her pocket, "I guess some people just don’t know when they have it good. Poor mother--she’s a lesson to us all!”