Holding the Bowl of the Heart
Gratitude List:
1. Dragonflies
2. Imagination. How you can say, “Hey, look! That cloud looks like the Loch Ness Monster diving deep!” And someone from outside your own strange mind will say, “Wow! Yeah!” And totally get it. That’s kind of how poetry is, too, come to think of it.
3. Beans cooking on the stove
4. Revelatory dreams
5. The Music of Layne Redmond
May we walk in Beauty!
Becoming. . .
Several years ago in mid-September, I was sitting in the parking lot at Temple Beth Israel with boxes of vegetables for our CSA pick-up. During the hour and a half that I was there, at least thirty monarchs floated southward above my head. Like the birds and the dragonflies, monarchs are migrating now, too.
We used to go to the beach at this time of year, when most people have gone home for the summer. No crowds to get in the way–only warm water, cool breezes, and all the wingfolk flying south: flocks of a thousand swallows, and dragonflies and monarchs. The Wetlands Institute at Stone Harbor, NJ has a Monarch Migration Festival every September.
It’s the hummingbirds and the monarchs that really get me, such tiny and vulnerable little bodies sailing out over the Gulf to Mexico, to South America. Dragonflies look like little machines, like helicopters built for the distance, but even they are vulnerable to weather, far out over the Gulf.
Now is the season for refueling, preparing for the leap into the blue, water and air. What will I risk in this space of my life? What void will you leap into? Like those orange butterflies, we can trust that the long journeys of the past and the knowledge of the ancestors that lives in our own wings will inform our own flight.
Orange wings dip in farewell–
monarch catches a breeze
and wings toward the Gulf.
(I don’t really have a seasonal word as such in this haiku, but the second part of it is about the migration, so that gives the clue.)
Gratitude List:
1. Limber. Jon used this word yesterday to express something to do with fluid thinking. I like that word, especially as I am more and more aware of how the aging process demands more focused work on keeping the body limber. I like to think that my mind can also be limber if I keep it exercised.
2. Clouds: In yesterday’s sunrise, the clouds were first tangerine and indigo. Magenta. Then ivory and indigo and gold against a Maryblue sky. Clouds of mist hung low over the fields, pooling around the ankles of the cows. Clouds hung low over the River. Layers of clouds filled the sky.
3. Monarchs. Yesterday I took a walk and found four large caterpillars munching on milkweed behind the greenhouse. Eat well, little ones.
4. Janelle’s bees. The Middle School Science room has a hive right in the room. The Queen was quietly holding court, the larvae were squirming to get out of their little chambers, and the workers were dancing directions to each other.
5. This year’s Silhouette staff. That’s the school literary magazine. We had our first meeting yesterday, and they are so eager and willing to get right down to work. I think it’s going to be a really great year.
May we walk in Beauty!
The tree at the center of the labyrinth. Camp Hebron.
Today is one of the days that I really need to do the gratitude work. I know this because it was hard to make the list today. I’m not falling apart and I am not depressed. I’m just huffy and grumpy and a little stressed out. When I go inside myself to seek the things that I am grateful about, and all I can find is little orts of shame and grumbliness, then I know I need to breathe into it.
I used to walk away from those uncomfortable feelings: “I shouldn’t be feeling shame. Brene Brown says that it is unhelpful! I don’t like grouchy people. Negativity brings us all down.” But they’re there. If I growl at them and walk away, they always grow.
So I’ll sit down a while with them, roll out a few marbles of gratitude that I find tucked in my pockets, and play a little while, see what happens.
As my wise mother tells me: “It doesn’t have to be either/or. It can be both/and.” I don’t have to be a calm and grateful person OR a grouchy bear. This morning, both apply. At least the grateful bit can help to tame the grouchy bear so she doesn’t go around mauling people.
Gratitude List:
1. Dragonflies. I don’t think I am being too whimsical when I say that I think they like to people watch.
2. Stroopies: Perfect little waffle snack with a sweet caramel center. A local company with a mission to hire refugees. May they grow and thrive.
3. Getting to try again. This one is a little shame-based, perhaps. I brought a child to tears last night with my program to get the homework and music practice done. I was a bit of a bully, even if I was trying to be friendly about it. I think he forgives me. I treated him like a problem to be solved. We’ll figure it out. We’ll try again, and I will go in next time with more self-awareness and compassion.
4. Growing into the roles.
5. Reaching the little goals.
May we walk in Beauty!
Crabbing
At first, it’s just a glimpse
of a small black gleaming triangle
far out between the waves.
You do not even know if you have seen
what you thought you saw.
But there is it again, and then
you see the rolling arc
of sleek and silent bodies
slipping through the roll of waves
and you think that you could almost swim to them.
Suddenly, there’s a sense of hush
even amid the roar of waves
and everyone is standing, eyes shielded
or hands on hips, that smile on their lips
and the same look of wonder in their eyes.
Suddenly, a long silver-black body
leaps free, and all the gathered watchers
have catapulted too–
for one hushed breath, we all are dolphins,
fins and tails above the water,
a path of sun sprinkling the waves.
Gratitude List:
1. Paddle boarding. I could have ended up in the middle of the sound had they not called me back. I was following the web of sun sparkles across the water, and got lost in the space between worlds.
2. Those other bright-winged folk, the Dragonflies.
3. Bonding with my nephews: games and puzzles and birding and food and sand and water.
4. Sharing platefuls of steamed clams and breaded shrimp with a little seafood lover last night for supper. We wait all year for this.
5. Good, thoughtful speeches. The art and finesse of speech writing is not dead.
May we walk in Beauty!
Mockingbird Chronicles 