April 7, 2012

There's a cardinal outside singing and another answering it.  Are they rivals?  Or just company in the dark?  Hard to tell if your not a cardinal, I suppose.  It's just beginning to get light, that deep-as-a-well blue is beginning to show the shadows of trees.  I think a mockingbird just joined the cardinal mimicking its song and starting on others.  It just made that hooting laugh of the woodpecker and I know that woodpecker is not up yet, besides it sound smaller, less volume coming from the mockingbird.  There are so many sounds the birds make, the mockingbird has a lot to choose from and this morning he sounds like he is not choosing but rather making them all in a long expanse of song.  I wonder if that "beep-beep-beep" even and mechanical sounding is someone's alarm clock or car alarm.

I found a poem this morning from the Knopf Poem-a-day for this month, poetry month, a poem from Edward Hirsch, who often writes poems that seem to take up residence in my mind or heart or both and grow there for awhile.

Green Figs

I want to live like that little fig tree
    that sprouted up at the beach last spring
        and spread its leaves over the sandy rock.

All summer its stubborn green fruit
    (tiny flowers covered with a soft skin)
        ripened and grew in the bright salt spray.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good
    and Evil was a fig tree, or so it is said,
        but this wild figure was a wanton stray.

I need to live like that crooked tree—
    solitary, bittersweet, and utterly free—
        that knelt down in the hardest winds

but could not be blasted away.
    It kept its eye on the far horizon
        and brought honey out of the rock.

Edward Hirsch

The fig tree, hardy, grows even in the desert, sweetness from sand.  I don't really want to live solitary, or bittersweet, though there are days that seem to be both, but utterly free . . . Can we ever be thus, utterly free?  Even the fig tree is not, rooted, bound to the ground, dependent on rain and soil.  So are we all bound, to choices, to history, to our place in the life we have made.  It's good to face all the harsh winds that can blow against us, to keep our eyes on the horizon, to make something sweet out of our lives, but utterly free, how could we do that?  It takes roots and connections to make that sweetness, sunlight, rain, everything, even the stuff of stars without which there would be no elements.  I like all those connections, all those ways everything interacts.  I like the idea that the fig tree seed was probably dropped there by a passing bird, and that in the richness of waste, it began to grow in a hard place, and kept growing even in strong wind, even in soil not so good for it.  From the tree of knowledge perhaps that's what Adam and Eve learned, they learned about choices and connections and how to face strong wind and grow in a lot of places unsuited to an easy life.  They learned they would have history, they would struggle, they would die, but that even in that there would be sweetness in their life, honey out of rock to make their exile bearable.

Now the sky is pink with dawn's light, the blue so far above, the birds silent for the moment, in the shadows the cat is creeping along the cane, almost vanishing, striped cat, striped cane, only movement makes seeing him possible.  There is not breath of air, everything still and quiet, no traffic, no joggers, no dogs.  An empty morning except for the cat and the sun rising.

Have a day blessed by all our connections, all the ways people bring honey out of the rock.

Thanks for sending the computer parts, I'm going to order them and Kayla will pay for them as she can.  It was kind of you to do all that work and let us take advantage of your knowing that kind of thing!