2 poems 1 nite

catch
soar
kiss freely
bliss


beautiful
angel
found
friend
true

The Cardinal

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. – Anais Nin

Cardinal. A constant. Here year round regardless of the cold, the meanness, the tragedy of winter. Resilient.

In this past winter –when the cold was relentless, when it hurt to breathe, when you thought nothing could ever really live again, he appears.

The only color in a world of gray.

They say of the cardinal that they are the perfect combination of familiarity, conspicuousness, and style. Sometimes the only life in the dead of winter.

Who would think that the most obvious is the most possible? Who would’ve thought that the one who stays…who doesn’t migrate his stunning scarlet self to the south or east or west, but remains regardless of the pain, the cruelty, the fight for territory, for truth and for lost time…stays?

He re-nests, taking up new terrains---trading in one hangout for another; finding new places to find seeds or in some cases plant ‘em; spending days, weeks, months reflecting on his own reflection, asking himself, “Why? When? What now?" And eventually works to rebuild, re-nest his life with his own twigs, trinkets (not someone else's), his own weights and beauty.

And wouldn’t you know that flighty, flitty hummingbird gets lucky…finds herself forgetting to migrate (she's always running late), and ends up working out (toning, really) her feathers at the same shrub of the cardinal.

They sit. He sits, she flits. She stretches. He grimaces. She pretends she is closing her eyes-but watches him in moments of silence. He works hard to move beyond expectation, a half-moon wing stretch–eventually finding ease in the once impossible.

Soon they chat and flit, flit and chat. Days and Nights. Late nights and days. Nooners and late late nights. Red bull afternoons and double latte nites--until they realize that she, this hummingbird, a dreamy migratory who kept missing her flight south and west, (kept forgetting to log her miles), and he...this cautious constant who thought his prior nest would never end could need and want the other.

For years, unbeknownst to them this seemingly unlikely pair were a feeder, a friend, a flower away. She would be slurping up nectar (a vegan), he could be seen sunning under its petal; she would be singing some sad song and he knew its lyrics; he would be hanging with his iridescent friends, she knew several of them from flight school.

They, Cardinal and Hummingbird, may have been on divergent paths, their journeys quite different (he had helped spawn a couple kids; she flitted from garden to garden putting on flower plays) yet they were so similar in sense..in spirit. Had drive. Felt deep. Loved hard. Had discussions less about the surface and more about substance

"What do you think of eminent domain," she chirped, "You think some Grackle can just take over your nest even though you built it and they need it...?"

"Where would a bird go ..if they were forced to give away their nest and a new nest would cost so much?," he wondered.

They were connected less in story...more in soul-and they liked it that way.

All constants need moments of randomness and unevenness and migrators (even ones who just dream of migration) always need a constant. It’s chemistry. Two unlikely (slightly unlikely being both birds ‘n all) properties mix it up and end up making a better property, a cocktail of sorts, one with sugar, lemon and vodka.

Harmonic convergence, they call it. And in the middle, they meet.

Savasana...Resting Pose

My cultural legacy—though it may be a legacy of necessity having been exiled from every nook, cranny and community for centuries –is to wander. My mind. My speech. My body. A state of perpetual unknowing. Movement. Searching..for something. Home. Place. Peace.

Since I haven’t changed my physical landscape for sixty-plus seasons, I am in a state of constantly regenerating. Like a worm cut in two. To regenerate, you yourself have to come up with the missing piece if you want to live, (in the case of the worm, the piece is the head, I think). You are your own reserves. You are your only chance at survival.

So maybe that’s quite possibly why I like the birds—they change the landscape…mine and theirs. They, most of them, unlike me.. migrate. Switch it up. They are just like, “This cold shit is whack and I’m takin’ flight—for warmth for where stuff isn’t dying, like Detroit, like manufacturing or unions, or an era. I’m going to fly my little grosbeak self to the south. For safety. Survival.”
In birdspeak, of course.

I travel but don’t leave, wander but don’t risk... though I’ve tried the last several years –but mostly through dreams…dreams of another life in work, in love.

One foot here, half a body elsewhere. Hoping that another place often catalyzed by the possibility of love--mostly self-generated and initiated—-would be my promised land. A Canaan of sorts. Sure, maybe I could migrate elsewhere, find some flock, but it seemed so elusive –so overwhelming to fly alone.

Maybe because of the ease..or the reality.. or something less tangible, I stayed in this terrain—found a new window to look out and in—and it opened up worlds within worlds, making that which was old, tired, toxic--‘poison from standing water’ (Yiddish)—newer… shinier …sunnier. It didn’t lift me out of loneliness, but it has lifted me a little, so I could lift up some others.

And in the midst of new windows, new terrains…a constant.

Some birds are here year round -- they stay, sure maybe they change sub-divisions, move from a spruce to a new sexier sapling, or squat in some others' nest from another season but they are here. Rooting. Building. Being. Becoming. And in some cases, just a flock, a feather, a friend, a mat away.

If you are always looking to fly West or East or South you may miss what nests here, what breathes beside you.

This constant, cardinal-like, striking, chiseled, and thus a slight anomaly in a class of sparrows & starlings sat beside me for months as we stretched, held warriors and pigeons, balanced in trees and eagles, up-dogged & down-dogged, fell and got back up.

We (the constant) spoke slightly—he telling me of impending flight from his current life/wife- and me mentioning a return (to my childhood) home.

“It’s interesting you still call it home” he says to me.

Before we closed restaurants, chirping and chatting for all hours, before we kissed in the car like teenagers, before he emblazoned a freebird on his body, before I had a dream of him straightening up my bedroom for me, before he sprinkled and showered my everyday thoughts, we are at rest.

Our mats next to each other… it is rest, savasana.

...maybe his thoughts are no thoughts at all –or maybe it’s when he wanders most wondering, how did I get here? Or maybe it is just a moment a reward for moving beyond perception and capability to ability...to touching toes, to reaching the impossible.

…and me, sometimes I wander to far off places and people, other times I recognize my own body and breath—but this one time—I sensed something else—

I knew this man with the blue mat, and the brown eyes would be a constant in my life. That we somehow were right for this space, and place and time. That maybe we had wandered far…found ourselves in rooms without windows, worlds without warmth, but here at the intersection of past and present …we breathe.