Songs From The Wood

And then there are days like this past Friday. I had a miserable night, Shanthala was at work, we were back home from staying with our friends and the house felt so large and lonely. Maya woke up an hour before her usual time which meant that I got even less sleep than usual and I had a full day at work ahead of me. I had asked the nanny, Ginez, to come by after 9 thinking that my meeting wasn’t till 10, but I had completely forgotten about a meeting from 9-10. So I had to send email to the folks hosting the 10 o’clock meeting that I’d be 15-20 minutes late. And I have to borrow my friend’s car to make up the time.

My stomach disagrees with the quality/quantity of something I ate the night before and I feel crummy. My joints feel stiff. My upper back complains about my carrying Maya so much and my neck laments about having spent the night at an odd angle. I look outside to a gray, cloudy and cold world, like some late fall or winter morning. But we’re in the middle of summer. Where is that California sunshine ?

Crabby, sleepless, sore, lonely, I start getting ready for work. I put Maya down and sit down on the potty. The only book around is William Stafford’s collection of poems, “The Way It Is”. I open a page at random and read:

It’s a balance, the taking and passing along,
the composting of where you’ve been and how
people and weather treated you. It’s a country where
you already are, bringing where you have been.
Time offers this gift in its millions of ways,
turning the world, moving the air, calling,
every morning, “Here, take it, its yours”

I turn another page and read:

When a goat likes a book, the whole book is gone,
and the meaning has to go find an author again.
But when we read, it’s just print – deciphering,
like frost on a window: we learn the meaning
but lose what the frost is, and all that world
pressed so desperately behind.

My face begins to relax. Some of the tenseness goes out of my body. I begin to breathe slowly again, deeply. I turn another page.

Air crowds into my cell so considerately
that the jailer forgets this kind of gift
and thinks I’m alone. Such unnoticed largesse
smuggled by day floods over me,
or here come grass, turns in the road,
a branch or stone significantly strewn
where it wouldn’t need to be.

I hear the soulful call of the mourning dove outside the window, the high notes of asolitary crow somewhere, the twitter of some birds that had no name. And I turn another page:

No leader is free; no follower is free -
the rest of us can often be free.
Most of the world are living by
creeds too odd, chancy and habit-forming
to be worth arguing about by reason.

And the re-enchantment with the world begins again.