2nd & 3rd September, 2004
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Rod 4/16/04 Photo by Billy Iz
A Thought for Today
Compassion is the best friend anybody ever had. It’s
good for those who receive it and better for those willing to pass it along.
FROM the¨BOOKS
The Times of Man
three
Always in autumn the hunted hundred
moving separately from the circle
going off into the wood
or deep within the world –
You see them just beyond the mind’s edge
kneeling before the night,
their mother church.
Taking her round face into their hands
they pull it forward
till it passes the eye and moves
inside the head
there to hound the arteries, compartments
and canals
within the brain.
What are they doing ? Is it magic
or moonlight once absorbed then gone ?
We are always left to wonder.
The ritual never varies
it is always quite the same
and once you’ve seen it
it remains predictable and as obvious
as the outcome of a hurried prayer
or a mantra done by rote.
Autumn is the mother church.
Though her acolytes have different names
and faces
from year to year, they never change,
nor did the mumbled chants seem different.
If there were angels in that circle
and like as not there could be
you might slowly walk the eye rim’s distance
and catch one by the tail.
As autumn circles in on brown-tipped wings
the harvesting begins–
or from a too short summer ends.
How hard the harvest is depends
not on the Elements
but on the elements that make up man.
Where are the brave ones now
proud people of perception
and as near the sun could turn them
persons of perfection.
Remember those who came stepping
from the shadows into sunshine ?
Long ago it was, before the green began.
Some trees have not a green leaf left.
No sign of living or of having lived.
Some men too are now bent over
more so than they were with fall’s first
double bow.
Something,
something isn’t,
something isn’t right.
Something like a speck of sand
inside an oyster
itches and has need of being scratched.
Some who ventured out in summer
are counting pumpkins now,
making pickles, stripping squash,
measuring the size of every vegetables
sorting each one out according to the price
its marketing should bring
as compared to what was spent
in the planting and the tending.
This small task done
man moves back inside himself,
withdraws even further.
With nothing but a mirror
in the mind or on the wall
man has trained himself so well,
built up his disguises
and his forts
till even sagging muscle flexes back
each time he sees his own reflection.
There between the hedge and that old oak
a fat gray squirrel sits in mid-life
unmoving but for batting eyes
that seem to circle noonlike in his head.
He isn’t bored but seems to be deciding
with some degree of contemplation
the order of things.
Should I forage for the last short grass
still alive within the neighborhood
or begin the stocking up again
of life’s free acorns?
Everything that moves
does so with precision –
thrashers thrashing wheat,
mice and cats, a fat gray fox
running from the blades
of diesel-powered harvesters
as though they flee a hurricane– and they do.
In the quiet places and at night
owls grow sleepy-eyed and prop themselves
against high branches.
Here comes the measurer -
a bloated concertina caterpillar
sulking as quarter inch by quarter
he surveys garden walls and wells.
His statistics when collected
will not help to make a sale,
but he’ll have seen the whole
of this whole U.S.A.
within the confines of a single garden.
The beaver now repairs his dam.
Crows argue over southern routes and clime.
The hunters sneak in silently.
Not just the strong survive
the cunning fare far better.
Still all the cunning learned,
inherited, or practiced
will not guarantee the wild-eyed animal
freedom when the trap springs shut.
The wolf who chewed his leg off getting free
limps away and dies.
The shotgun blast
that left an antelope in agony
is taken up and whistled by the loon.
Man, ill-prepared
even for the loneliness of evening,
finds himself in thought again and wondering
what kind of barricade or fence to make
against the loneliest of all his nights.
The business of autumn
is letting life lie where it falls.
The business of man is picking up
himself and every brother
who falls or stumbles
in the yellow leaves.
For every wounded stag,
guts tumbling out of gaping man-holes
not staggering amid the wood,
three dozen huntsmen brag
about the big one who lumbered off
stretching out their arms
till arm’s length’s not enough
to show the wideness of his antlers.
With each applauding crack of thunder
the rain regenerates itself
till it’s an unexpected flood or hurricane.
Not to worry.
All the shutters have been shuttered,
the cat’s inside beneath the bed
and not a single door’s been left ajar.
But this rain cannot be blotted out
by music or the newly lighted fire.
Not even making love will make it stop.
There’s the hollow feeling
that something still outside should have been
taken up and carried forward
into the safety of the house or barn.
-from “The Power Bright &
Shining,” 1980
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