Look up just now
And you might see
Catching your eye
As they did today mine
A massing of migrants
An assemblage of blackbirds
Winging by the hundreds and thousands
Schooling in a serpentine stream
Moving within an imperative dream
Flowing with an efficiency found in such unity
Wide as a river and miles and miles long
Drawn high aloft by imploring instincts
Defying death while affirming life
An avian stream
A river of life
Passing by in the sky.
Falling down has its upside
If you happen to roll over and look up
You may see what passes you by when
You are more normally squared to the ground.
There is the moon
In its comings or goings
Pale and ghostly blue
Dodging amongst the clouds
Which seem to sluice both north and south
Simultaneously
Condensing and vaporizing
In a passing cycle-dance.
And then there was a tiny, downy feather
A lesser avian cloud
Donated by some passing Chickadee
Falling and rising
Pulsed by Brownian movement
With no sure destination
Moving into the great soupy sea
Of innumerable objects
Specks of dust so small
That may join and grow into sky spectacles
Of storms and rainbows
Crossing the heavenly horizon
And finally beyond the eye
And into the realm of dreams.
Reality check.
Looking around the universe
There is a lot to see.
I wonder if you and I see it the same way:
Exactly, somewhat, or what planet are you from?
Sometimes I see butterflies;
They hatch from their pupa
And fly away. On
their very first day!
Looking good
They navigate the wind,
Skirting through the hickories
They find an invitation to a flowering meadow
Full of nectar,
And fuel up.
And all with the brain the size of a pin head.
They make their way;
Some over generations and continents.
My brain is bigger
Maybe 1400 grams
About 3 pounds
Smaller than a whale or an elephant…
It took me 20 some years to grow it.
Several school and many lessons later
I may be smart enough to riddle out
Butterfly realities,
Maybe.
A little.
My brain is like yours and billions of others
Sapiens-wise
Intelligent but maybe not all that smart.
We spend much of our realities
Building flying machines
Burning fuels
Poisoning bugs
Shooting guns
Killing things,
Homo homicidal,
‘Cause our bigger brains think it is the right thing to
do.
It’s our advanced reality
An unrepentant reality
We do it and cannot stop
So it seems.
Here’s an idea:
Spend a few minutes with a butterfly.
They won’t mind a visitor.
And then answer the question(s)
That stir in your big brained reality.
You’ll come up with a few.
Me?
I am wondering who the pinhead is
In this universe?
It was a short passage of time
And too much of it misspent in wanderings,
Administered poorly it seemed,
Passively spent
And fearfully squandered.
And now more often than not
In full blown retreat
He looked for a savior.
And for a brief moment or two
Mostly at the suggestion of others,
The well-intended
As well as the institutional sages,
It was suggested that he’d find his savior
While brushing his teeth…
What a burden to bear.
Clearly this was false hope
He construed
As his redeemer
The one who would guide and comfort
The one who would lift the load
Didn’t look like that at all,
At all.
She needed to be slightly saintly
A servile savant
And a recapitulant,
A babe, bold of the garden
A righteous earth mama
A Babylon sister.
Now weary of being at point,
He wanted to pull over to the side of this road
And just yield,
And to lose this long hauled load
And replace it with a warm womanly cookie
Baked in the ovens at Victoria’s Secret.
Some scientist would tell you
(Maybe it was me?)
That the fly that crosses the room
Zigging and zagging
Bobbing and weaving,
Its wanton wanderings,
Is doing exactly,
Exactly as nature has intended;
No foolish effort
No wasted energy
No time ill spent.
And every effort, if observed and considered
Carefully
Is purposeful and practical in its life ways
And brilliantly, blithefully
Evolved and adapted for its sure
Successful mission in the life of a fly.
So stretching this truth to its probable bounds
This wisdom of the ages
Dances and displays all around us each and every day
There, but for the asking…
And so I consider the efforted attentiveness
That can be given to such study,
If we open our hearts and minds,
Or the foolishness found in our human ignorance
Of such wisdoms…
Begging
Can we learn to live and be fly-wise?
Or is our peril folly
And likely to lead us to
Our ultimate demise?
Lie to me about my truck
But do it well.
You are well practiced
So don’t cheat me of a first class deception
Filled with transparencies and travesties
Lie to me
And do it well
Because I do not want to linger
In your smoke screens of untruths.
And if you are going to cheat me
As part of this sweet deal,
At least don’t leave me sitting in your waiting room
TV blaring about some other bodies
Who have been lied to and cheated,
But only to the extent the FCC
Will allow CNN to pain our tender hearts.
~
If
Blah-bla
Your truck
Blah-bla-bla
Might be done
Blah- bla-bla-bla
If not today maybe tomorrow
(Such is sorrow)
“Thank you for your patience,” says she.
“It’s an old truck,” says I.
So maybe, maybe
Come on baby!
~
I am envious of the cat.
So relaxed as to seem like and inert black puddle
With the exception of the last three inches of his tail
Which sometimes goes
Twitch-twitch, thump-thump
On the hollow wood floor,
Drumming out a meaningful message
That I think I can comprehend
As we speak a common cross species language:
It’s a story of anger.
It’s a release of much frustration.
Meanwhile,
My day ties its slip knot tighter and tighter on
Muscle and sinew,
Spirit and soul
And I have no terrible tail to release such frustrations
And only a masseuse’s elbows and knuckles
To free my nightmare molded muscle memories.
~
Outside the waiting room window
There are English Sparrows
Passing their afternoon
Bathing in the sun lite red dust.
They nest down, splash and play
Flapping and preening their grey-brown feathers.
Can sparrows smile?
I think they may.
For now I continue to sit
In the less luxurious waiting room at Firestone.
Management might consider a dust bath for us
The abandoned.
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