Poem: Early Frost

This morning the world’s white face reminds us
that life intends to become serious again.
And the same loud birds that all summer long
annoyed us with their high attitudes and chatter
silently line the gibbet of the fence a little stunned,
chastened enough.

They look as if they’re waiting for things
to grow worse, but are watching the house,
as if somewhere in their dim memories
they recall something about this abandoned garden
that could save them.

The neighbor’s dog has also learned to wake
without exaggeration. And the neighbor himself
has made it to his car with less noise, starting
the small engine with a kind of reverence. At the window
his wife witnesses this bleak tableau, blinking
her eyes, silent.

I fill the feeders to the top and cart them
to the tree, hurrying back inside
to leave the morning to these ridiculous
birds, who, reminded, find the rough shelters,
bow, and then feed. 

         Scott Cairns 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Similarities

I think being a woman is like being Irish...
    Everyone says you're important and nice,
        but you take second place all the same.

                     Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green

 

Good stories

All stories have a beginning, a middle and an ending,
        and if they're any good, the ending is a beginning.

                         James Clavell, 1986 interview with Don Swaim 

 

 

 

 

 

Bound for home

But do not ask me where I am going,
As I travel in this limitless world,
Where every step I take is my home.

The Zen Poetry of Dōgen: Verses from the Mountain of Eternal Peace
translated by Steven Heine

The delights of age

One of the delights known to age,
    and beyond the grasp of youth,
        is that of Not Going.

                    Anthony Burgess

 

 

 

 

 

Planning for the inevitable

I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful
        that an idiot can run them.
                Because sooner or later, one will.

                     Warren Buffett, panel at premier of 2008 documentary I.O.U.S.A. 

 

 

 

 

The spirit's one home

Thomas Merton wrote, "There is always the temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues." There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage. I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus. Ezekiel excoriates false prophets as those who have “not gone up into the gaps.”

The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit’s one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the cliffs in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock—more than a maple—a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.

 Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek