-- Based on a poem by
Gerard Manley Hopkins --
(November 2022)
Pied beauty draws us to the rising
sun
and
its setting, reds and rose and golds
swirled
together in an autumn’s blue sky,
and swirling, too, together, us,
rising and
setting,
piéd race and creed and color,
origins, creating one humanity.
2 am and the dog wants out, a
constant whining
I can’t ignore, and right now, I
don’t like him very much,
forcing me from the warmth of my
bed, the floor
cold under my bare feet. But I
throw on a robe and slippers
and we go, me grumbling, him,
excited, barking, spinning,
a short trek through a chilly room
to the door and out into the dark.
He dashes off into the shadows,
following a smell, investigating,
leaving me, alone, staring up into
a late autumn sky, a brilliant
darkness - blue, black? -
punctuated by the stars, constellated,
earth’s mythology arranged before
me, a star map to eternity –
brightest Regulus, the lion’s
heart, Leo, harbinger of spring;
and Procyon’s eastern anchor of
winter’s triangle; Sirius’ Dog Star
glowing, watching, guarding,
bright, and Cancer’s Crab, Hercules’
distraction; and Betelgeuse,
Orion’s hand, his 3-starred belt and stance,
Orion beginning his winter journey
across the sky, pausing here;
Puppis rising, the stern of the
argonauts, Argo Navis, Jason’s ship,
searching still a Golden Fleece;
and a heavenly host of faint stars
beyond, among, barely seen, or not
seen at all,
visible only in their absence.
And
I wonder,
is this expanse why he pulled me
out,
some canine sense of my needs and
desires,
pulled me out into the night sky to
see
my soul laid bare among the stars,
splendent
in these dark skies of an autumn’s
early morn,
2 am, to align myself to earth’s
mythology,
a universe spread out before me,
weaving me into eternity.
Kokopelli’s flute turns the wind to
music,
blows softly in the dry
Southwestern heat
and too, the moist air of New
England’s clime,
wooing us with its magic and
bringing
with it, life, creation’s greatest gift.
What goes through the mind of a toddler,
that little boy running across the yard on speedy
little legs, arms flapping to keep his balance,
his little round head abobbin’, eyes straight ahead,
staring out and around and seeing everything, alert
to each stick and stone and flower’s stubble?
What keeps him from falling over save my guiding
hands reaching out to him, needlessly really, him
coming up short to stoop and pick up a single dried leaf,
a flag held high in the breeze, or a standard to bear?
His race beginning again, a new direction, a new goal,
he totes a fistful of sticks to wave about and stones to toss
into the lake or just a puddle of water, his laughter light
at the ripples they make, or, sticks pounding on the grass,
he beats as on a drum, a rhythm only he can hear, only he
can feel, the drum beat of his own heart loud in his chest.
What goes on in the mind of a toddler? I’ve forgotten,
so long since it was me, running the fields of childhood,
the dry leaves of autumn crackling under my own feet
shuffling, leaves kicked up or tossed in the way of little boys
discovering who they are, curious creatures, discovering
themselves. And what can we learn by watching them grow?
Only, as they, who we have become and the life we shared.
