Damn war — from Monhegan island followed by a reflection on life and soul

On our second to last day on the island
the sea was fierce.
It stormed the black rocks
where I sat on a great wedge,
each self-destructive wave
more explosive than the last
like anguished heart beats
from a far away land
where armies hurled missiles at each other.
But because I refused to bless
one side or the other
or name one side good
(As who would deny that most of us
are born to lock horns with our shadow)
I began to fear that I would be swallowed
and removed myself
cursing fiercely — Damn war!

………………………………………

On our fridge, on a scrap of paper is written: “All social issues are temporary and brief. Go deep.” They are the words of Howard Thurman. (1899 – 1981) (Wikipedia:) “Howard Washington Thurman was an American author, philosopher, theologian, mystic, educator, and civil rights leader. As a prominent religious figure, he played a leading role in many social justice movements and organizations of the twentieth century. Thurman’s theology of radical nonviolence influenced and shaped a generation of civil rights activists, and he was a key mentor to leaders within the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr.” I heard Susan Weed say something in an interview yesterday that went right to my core. She said, basically, that the life-force and the soul-force are not the same. The life-force of each of us serves our instinct to survive and maybe, if we are fortunate, thrive, in this life. The soul-force is more interested in serving the journey of our many lives, not just this one. Sometimes our life-purpose and our soul-purpose synchronize. I think that is what makes a person great, or what makes their life enlarge. You know what? I have lost patience with people who don’t acknowledge the existence of the soul, and I have also lost patience with people who don’t believe in reincarnation. I have also lost patience with people who believe that some wars are justified. If you look at our fridge you see a lot of scraps and photos, with quotes and cartoons held up by magnets. I think many refrigerators reveal a lot about their owners, more than the food inside. Now I am going to stick Thurman’s quote back up there, top right.

Someone else followed by reflection

Someone else’s dam has burst 
Someone else’s children are shooting
Someone else’s war is escalating
Someone else’s soup is burning
Someone else’s misery is measureless 
Someone else’s eyes are sad
Someone else’s words have fallen on deaf ears
Someone else’s success has surpassed all expectations
Someone else’s ‘s garden is going to waste
Someone else’s business has folded
Someone else’s path is straight and easy
Someone else’s clothes are ill-fitting
Someone else’s shoes are walking away
Someone else’s neon sign is sputtering
Someone else’s brother is a bigot
Someone else’s karma has caught up with them
Someone else is saying How can this happen?
Someone else’s dreams are nightmares
Someone else’s country has committed war crimes
Someone else’s country is returning stolen treasure
Someone else’s smile is fake
Someone else’s tears are fake
Someone else’s bank account was hacked
Someone else’s friends have moved to Ipswich
Someone else’s sad eyes are Caucasian
Someone else’s story is being told
Someone else’s sad eyes tell a story
Someone else’s son is trying to be a tree
Someone else is looking over their shoulder at us
Someone else is saying Why me?
Someone else is saying Why us?

……………..

Reflection:

“Someone else” in this poem is everyone, everyone but me (and the people in my life). I feel that the more I become aware of disasters in the world (earthquakes, missile strikes, floods, fires) that affect large groups of strangers, the more I realize that they aren’t strangers to their own communities. And when I see a video of a man digging through the rubble of his home to find a missing child, he is no longer a stranger. So, in a lucid moment, each stranger is as real as me and has just as much right to be here. Whether they are a bigot or the brother of a bigot, I still feel bad when they are victims or survivors of disaster. This is a poem of subtraction or elimination. It hacks the anonymity of humanity by taking random snapshots of humanity, a hopeless task, but theoretically, after I am done taking this random sampling of humanity, I will stop feeling quite so separate. At some point one would hope that the list of “someone else” ends with the lister looking into the mirror. If this poem is a hack, the last three lines are where the hack happens. The word “hack” has evolved through several permutations. Originally, hundreds of years ago, (OE) (ME) it meant to chop, hoe or hew. A few years ago hacking referred to the act of exploiting weaknesses in a computer system or network to gain access to data.These days hacking has been de-weaponized and elevated to a kind of super-power, as techno-savvy people are the ones we turn to when our devices crash. The new definition of hacking is something like, the ability to solve a paralyzing problem by decoding the problem and approaching it from inside out.

Dedicated to Donovan

I started writing this poem 
It began with a clear thought
Like water
Then a word came floating


Like a bird to a branch and sang
Then there was someone calling
So I thought I would go out and see
Who was calling Juanita! 


But I did not honor that thought 
I stayed in the same place
And made a sound with my shoe
By rubbing my sole against the floor 


I rested my head on the heel of my palm
And looked out the window beyond the garden 
I saw a little mountain in the distance
Which disappeared and I thought


All we have in the garden now is delicata
But how good they are so sweet
So I asked the snail to lock the gate
The snail said, When have I not locked the gate?

…………………………….

This poem inspired by Donovan’s song “First there is a mountain” is a simple celebration of and evocation of Donovan’s spacey, trippy lyricism that left so much to the imagination.

Excerpted lyrics of “First there is a mountain:

Oh Juanita, oh Juanita, oh Juanita, I call your name
Oh, the snow will be a blinding sight to see as it lies on yonder hillside

The lock upon my garden gate’s a snail, that’s what it is
The lock upon my garden gate’s a snail, that’s what it is
Caterpillar sheds his skin to find a butterfly within
Caterpillar sheds his skin to find a butterfly within

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is
First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is
First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is
First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is
First there is a mountain

There must be twenty ways to kill our planet: and a reflection

Buy cars of many colors,

Drive back and forth at top speed.

Farm cattle in giant feedlots

All over the world.

Feed them crap that makes them burp

Until the atmosphere fills up with methane.

Keep burning oil

And drill for it in pristine places out of sight out of mind,

And off shore were nobody can see the rigs

From their beach houses. 

Overfish the sea.

Blame other countries

For not doing their part.

Heat up the atmosphere and the sea

As fast as possible

Pushing back doomsday deadlines.

Fight endless wars

To distract the public

From what is really coming down.

Enlist younger and younger people

To run the army. 

Make it fun for them like a computer game.

Come up with cool ways to adapt

To the end-game

Like selling junk that is supposedly recyclable.

Make plastic boards

To build boardwalks and picnic tables.

Build cars that run on batteries

That use lithium carbonate, manganese, nickel and cobalt.

Make people feel smart for buying electric cars.

Encourage people to vent their anger

By engaging in giant meaningless symbolic ceremonies

Like football or ecstatically burning effigies 

So they can return to work for another year without 

Shooting everyone in the office.

Kickstart the space program

And make it into a race

To see who can discover life in space first

While life on Earth continues to disappear.

Keep projecting everything fearful and negative

On foreigners and minorities 

So the human race never pulls together

To accomplish anything epic.

Keep encouraging consumption

And never conservation.

Keep making plastic.

Keep focusing on fighting fires

Instead of solving the problems that cause fires.

Don’t require courses on sustainable living

And environmental science in schools.

Don’t pay any attention to how

More money is spent on redundant weapons systems

Than on food, education and health.

Keep dumbing down the media

So they don’t focus on the real story

Which is that we have completely mastered

Killing our planet.

……………………………………

The saddest way that we kill the planet (on this short list) is by “projecting everything fearful and negative onto foreigners and minorities so the human race never pulls together to accomplish anything epic.” Have we really never done that–pulled together? I invite you to come up with an example. Give up? Now consider, the whole planet is dying. But the way it is dying is the way an old person dies of old age. Systems are slowing down and failing. The ground less fertile, the great ocean currents are slowing.The sad thing is the planet is not that old for a planet. It’s sick. Some might say mortally sick. If it wasn’t sick it would renew itself, just as I have seen places (forests, fields, river, lakes) renew themselves after human and natural disasters. How this works, and it doesn’t take long, is amazing to watch and uplifting. I remember when my brother and I used to argue about whether nature was dying or just being beaten up. I tried to convince him that there was a line that was being crossed and that once the line was crossed nature wouldn’t recover.Things would spiral out of control and Earth would become like Venus or Mars.These conversations predated tipping points (introduced by Joachim Schellnhuber, 2009), which provided us with the vocabulary to explain how climate systems can collapse, which lead to the broader understanding of how a life-sustaining planet might die. Anyway, I the poet, wound up winning the debate because (in a mere 15-20 years), the science caught up with my intuitive convictions. Now I am saying that, if we could just pull together, as a species, we might be able to save the planet. Do I think that will happen? Maybe. How would it start? (shrug) Where would it start? (shrug) Has it ever happened before in the history of the world? (shrug) But probably not. But people change. Consciousness is evolving. We’ll see. Tipping points can tip the other way.

Who will stack the wood

The wheelbarrow is upside down on the wood pile.
Woodpecker in the pine tree asks,
Who will stack the wood?
I will, says the poet, I will stack it tomorrow.
But the next day the wheelbarrow is still upside down.
Who will stack this wood?
Asks woodpecker to no one in particular.
I will, says the poet. I will stack it tomorrow.
But the next day it rains.
Who will stack the wood? Asks woodpecker in the black walnut.
I will, says the poet. I will stack it tomorrow.
But the next day the lawn needs mowing
And the wheelbarrow stays upside down.
Who will stack the wood? Asks woodpecker
In the old sycamore.
I will says the poet. I will stack it tomorrow.
But the next day, you guessed it,
The wheelbarrow is still upside down on the woodpile.
Woodpecker is gone
But slug on the flagstone has been paying attention.
Who will stack the wood? Asks slug.
I will, says the poet.
I will stack it tomorrow.