A Shadow of a Nest

The Human Cannon Ball climbs down into
      the barrel of the cannon, safe in the tube’s
darkness, waiting, like me, for the film to punch
      him up the metal shaft and into the canvas

air, down-tent, to the inflated landing bag.
      I’m holding my breath because a pair
of purple finches have nested in the exploding
      fuschia next to the door and are gun-shy

when anyone comes or goes, so their young
      are fed more on my family’s comings and
goings than their own hunger. Mother
      flits from the willow to the box elder,

waiting for evening, for a lull long enough
      to poke a seed into a new throat. So I
ask everyone to use the back door which is
      easy to forget to do and not to scent the nest

with our kind, out of curiosity or the wish
      to kiss a berry into one of the four blind
gaping mouths. Father, rosy and raspberry,
      not purple, stays on a near branch, as if

standing on a spring, waiting to see if I will
      have the courage to breathe, when the Human
Cannon Ball is launched into the air
      and turns himself like a maple leaf, a snow

goose feathering into a corn field, toward
      the arms of the audience, which can never
take the place of the pink blown-up plastic
      bag that will save him a few frames and words

from now – if I can stand here, still as a shadow
      of a nest, breathing like the wind that flies
through the weedy branches of the box elder,
      here, empty as the air that needs to take him up.

—Gary Margolis

The Devil is in the Details

Books being written

Are strewn with pitfalls

For those who write them

A tendency to sermonize

A veering into allegory

A lack of plausibility.

If one creates an imaginary garden,

The toads in it should be real.

Only tell of events which have already happened

In Joyce's "nightmare" of history

Only describe technology

Already available.

No made-up gizmos

No made-up laws

No made-up atrocities.

God is in the details,

They say.

So is the

Devil.

Margaret Atwood

(arranged quote,

derived from her NYT article,

on "What the Handmaids Tale Means")

Let This Darkness Be A Bell Tower

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

- Rainer Maria Rilke
Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29
(translation by Joanna Macy + Anita Barrows)

Nature Teaches Us How to Be

The scenery, when it is 

truly seen, reacts on the life 
of the seer, 

how to live, 

how to get the most 

of life, 

how to extract its honey 
from the 

flower of the world.  

Nature spontaneously keeps us well. 

Do not resist her!

~ Henry David Thoreau
(arranged quote)