March 13, 2012

A foggy morning getting foggier, cool air warmer water, fog filtering in from the bay, stealthy as a snake.  Gray air and shadows, a morning for quiet, everything subdued and remote.  The cat asleep on the porch, the birds quiet, the trees still.  Nothing much going on.

Sometimes when you read or listen to the news, there are stories that affect you to a greater extent, the soldier in Afghanistan who kills civilians, even children, in an indiscriminate shooting, this morning's story about a 12 year old forced by school officials to give up her password to her Facebook account, mothers allowing their children to be killed by their boyfriends, some things I would wish I knew nothing about, not because I don't want to know what's going on in the world, but because I feel so helpless to do anything about what I am being presented with.  How could I have helped that soldier, how can I protect that child's privacy, how could I protect that baby from the very people who are supposed to love and protect him?   I don't know the answer.   I don't think anyone does.  There are so many things happening so quickly, I am sure I am not the only one to feel lost and more powerless than I would like to be.  It seems sometimes the only ones with power are those that shouldn't ever have it to start with.

So, today it's all the green growing things that are my solace, all the trees, and grasses, the cane with its voracious life, and also the birds who squabble and then sing, who have such fragile lives and yet continue to sing.

What the Seed Knows

winter plods on like a Russian novel, spring
     hints, haiku

tight blouses unbutton, jackets unzip,
     skin is not just skin

rich soil proliferates
     in the heart, in the hand
     that can never let go

rivers flow unseen, underground, unfettered
     unfathomable

some dig down, some rise up
     some survive

sleep is not dreamless:
     how else the orange, the dogwood?
     the phalanx of asparagus?

coddled in the pod,
     all the seed needs:

darkness, more snug
     than light

grit splits the rock, raises
     a tiny fist, screams
     the world into profusion
     of petaled racket

     to uncurl and unfurl
     to unhusk from the crust

to inhale, exhale
     turn toward what's bright

Anita Skeen

I'm glad there are seeds to scream the world into petaled racket.  Yesterday evening Mikayla showed me all the maple seedlings growing where there is the least bit of water and . . . grit, in the crack between the porch and the house, along the edge of that old outside table, among the weeds by the hose, in random pots of dirt where there use to be other plants, and that don't have new ones yet.  She's going to take some of the seedlings to work for a friend.  Michael still has his little maple trees from last year and the year before, making bonsai out of them.  To look out on all that green is soothing to the spirit, reminds me the world continues to grow green in its own time, even leafless things are not dead, but may be waiting to burst into new green.  

Like the seeds, I will inhale, exhale and turn toward what's bright.  What else can be done?  We can only do what keeps us going.  Ah . . . and here comes some sun!