I want the world to bring me to my knees
Whether in joy or sorrow I do not care
So long as one day I learn to surrender.
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It rained last night at Gaston Pond again,
So everything that was first a trickle is now a flood
And on the trail
Even last winter’s wet leaves have turned an ashy, carbonic gray.
How to cross the floods of life?
The early Buddhist nuns put it this way:
You cross a flood slowly, barefoot,
Feeling for stones.
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Each early morning I walked in the woods
With mom’s binoculars, looking for birds.
And each morning I saw and heard many birds, for it was the time
Of their spring migration.
Woodpeckers, herons, ducks, hawks, wrens, finches…
I did not know their special names, but I remembered
A posterboard of Sibley’s drawings and identifications tacked up
In some forgotten basement kitchen or hall.
So I began to scour the halls for this board, to learn the birds’ names.
After some days of searching,
It became apparent that this image must have appeared in one of the many vivid dreams I dreamt that week.
And I understood that the object
Of my longing, and the search it engendered, existed only in my mind.