when faces called flowers float out of the ground

when faces called flowers float out of the ground
and breathing is wishing and wishing is having-
but keeping is downward and doubting and never
-it's april(yes,april;my darling)it's spring!
yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly
yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be
(yes the mountains are dancing together)

when every leaf opens without any sound
and wishing is having and having is giving-
but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense
-alive;we're alive,dear:it's(kiss me now)spring!
now the pretty birds hover so she and so he
now the little fish quiver so you and so i
now the mountains are dancing, the mountains)

when more than was lost has been found has been found
and having is giving and giving is living-
but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing
-it's spring(all our night becomes day)o,it's spring!
all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky
all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea
all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)

-e.e. cummings

Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?

Questions of Travel
by Elizabeth Bishop

There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams
hurry too rapidly down to the sea,
and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops
makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes.
—For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains,
aren’t waterfalls yet,
in a quick age or so, as ages go here,
they probably will be.
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling,
the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships,
slime-hung and barnacled.

Think of the long trip home.
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?
Where should we be today?
Is it right to be watching strangers in a play
in this strangest of theatres?
What childishness is it that while there’s a breath of life
in our bodies, we are determined to rush
to see the sun the other way around?
The tiniest green hummingbird in the world?
To stare at some inexplicable old stonework,
inexplicable and impenetrable,
at any view,
instantly seen and always, always delightful?
Oh, must we dream our dreams
and have them, too?
And have we room
for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?

But surely it would have been a pity
not to have seen the trees along this road,
really exaggerated in their beauty,
not to have seen them gesturing
like noble pantomimists, robed in pink.
—Not to have had to stop for gas and heard
the sad, two-noted, wooden tune
of disparate wooden clogs
carelessly clacking over
a grease-stained filling-station floor.
(In another country the clogs would all be tested.
Each pair there would have identical pitch.)
—A pity not to have heard
the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird
who sings above the broken gasoline pump
in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque:
three towers, five silver crosses.
—Yes, a pity not to have pondered,
blurr’dly and inconclusively,
on what connection can exist for centuries
between the crudest wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden cages.
—Never to have studied history in
the weak calligraphy of songbirds’ cages.
—And never to have had to listen to rain
so much like politicians’ speeches:
two hours of unrelenting oratory
and then a sudden golden silence
in which the traveller takes a notebook, writes:

“Is it lack of imagination that makes us come
to imagined places, not just stay at home?
Or could Pascal have been not entirely right
about just sitting quietly in one’s room?

Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there … No. Should we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?”

a penny or a blossom

When Annie Dillard was a small girl, she hid pennies in sidewalk cracks and sycamore trees as a game. After hiding the penny, she might draw directions on the sidewalk in chalk, pointing to the surprise gift. She writes that her penny-hiding game was not for her benefit; she derived joy simply from the knowledge that another person would find her penny and imagine it as a free gift from the universe.

Earlier this week, as I was walking to school, I happened upon a blooming bush of forsythia.

The days were miraculously warm last week, and the trees burst into life intrepidly. I whispered to them: not yet and not yet. Their rapid blooming caught at my heartstrings. What a feat is vulnerability.

And this week, the temperatures dropped in tens: ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty degrees colder. Last week we baked, this week we are drawing our coats back from the closets where we had hoped they might remain until next fall. Gathering up our defenses. Spring spoke over a loudspeaker into the morning air: Remember: I am beautiful, but I am fickle. We should have known. She is capricious, but that is her nature.

I could not save the flowers with my warm whispers. They began to wither: the magnolia blooms trembled and folded. They drew their soft petals around themselves as cloaks and became small: is that not what you or I would have done?

As I walked to school, I observed the differences in the neighborhood. I eavesdropped on some dogwoods, who were speaking in stage whispers to one another: Hello, old friend. Oh yes, we will remain at our winter home until mid-April. Yes, yes, we thought we might return sooner... the sun seemed to be quite sure about its return to town... but there is no rush. See you back in a few.

Many of the blooms had tucked in, but the forsythia was rather plucky. I picked off a strand and twirled it between my fingers. My intention was to pluck its flowers and tuck them in my hair--reminiscent of my high school days in southern California. But the wind was particularly bullish, and I had a sense that the flowers would shrivel once they left their branch. So I simply held it, and kissed its fragile blossoms. It is nice to kiss a flower. Lips and petals were destined to meet.

We walked about a mile together. I was busy contemplating the meaning of love, the fickleness of the weather, the strange and restless tuggings at my heart these days. I wanted to keep the branch with me, but the wind was wrestling with its tender flowers. So, almost at my final destination, I placed it carefully on some soft grass underneath a sycamore tree. We parted ways. A bit of yellow for my colder day.

Today, rushing up the same hill, I found my forsythia branch exactly where I had left it, three days earlier. Nestled into the grass, safe from the busy street. The strong winds could not budge it. My penny.

There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But—and this is the point—who gets excited by a mere penny? It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won’t stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get (Dillard, 17).

The universe is constantly gifting us with pennies. They come in the form of flowers or birdsong, the smile of an unassuming child, a particularly lovely shaft of light coming through a window in the afternoon. And our only job is to be present.

O, that we might arrive, receive, and be gratious.

simple blessings

I'll take what I can get around here, so today I am grateful...

That I had the strength to climb out of my bed.

That my dear friend Katie came to sit, eat pink m&m's, and be with me last night, making everything a lot brighter.

That we're reading Dorothy Day in class today.

That I made an almost perfect cup of coffee just now.

That I have the season finale of Downton to look forward to!

That the sun has graced us with its presence.

That I have the most supportive family in the whole world.

On Learning to See, Again

It's all very strange, isn't it? I walked into this office and set my things down upon the desk. I flipped a switch on the computer below me, and took a quick sip of my too-hot coffee, and turned my attention, immediately, greedily toward the monitor in front of me. The monitor is extra-large, perhaps 20" x 14". Every day, my routine is the same. I gaze into this beast with longing: to travel, to escape, to receive immediate feedback from a world of distant millions. I spend hours looking into this soulless machine that doesn't so much as blink an eye at me.

What about longing for the world that is just beyond these doors? What about seeking attention from only the bare, fragile trees, who are longing to be gazed upon with tenderness despite their broken state? Why do I search for answers in rooms which are not rooms, not really, but pages upon pages of the human language shackled up in type and the inhibited world of screen?

Once I walked into this building, and rode the elevator to the second floor. I do not usually take the elevator, but I took it one day late last fall. And as I stepped inside, another world greeted me. Right there, inside of the elevator! The walls were covered with white sheets. In one corner sat a little white wooden chair, and a small table with a little lamp and some flowers resting on top. Maybe I fell into a Norman Rockwell painting or the set of Our Town. Somehow, the elevator on the west end of Devlin Hall had transfigured into a small moving world of possibility. It was gone the next day, which only made me believe even more firmly that I must have stumbled into something much realer than a dream.

This morning, as I waited for that same elevator, I let me gaze fall upon a classroom to the right, nestled in the corner of the building. The sun made its entrance just as I did, settling, gently amidst the rows of tired looking desk and chair sets. For a brief moment, I wondered at the conversation I had stumbled upon. The groggy morning talk of desk to desk, cranky old grandmothers who had born the weight of disgruntled students for long years. The chalkboard stretching its long arms against the surface of the wall, yawning, coughing ivory dust. The windows, squinting furiously at the intruding sun: a mother waking her still-sleeping children, beckoning them to rise as the school bell rings just outside the walls of Devlin Hall.

There are worlds within our worlds. And all that we think we know falls open upon one more glance. When I look deeper, I see stories in chairs and elevator shafts and abandoned rooms. The floors we walk on whisper old tales to us, the earth groans with the weight of our bodies, yet serves us just the same. And we spend our moments sitting on and touching and looking at objects we assume are dead. Using them for utility rather than seeing them as beautiful, engaging beings. A chair is not a chair is not a chair. Same as an elevator shaft is not an elevator shaft.

When I turn away from the beast in front of me, I encounter meaning in the most ordinary things! A thousand possibilities in one cup, this closet, an imperfect apple, your two, lovely eyes.