angelbirdflies

My dad sat quietly on a chipped azure bench, blue eyes watching the tide like an old friend.  Weathered hands tugged at the corners of a thread-worn, teal blanket wrapped securely around shoulders, once broad and strong, now narrowed and bent. White hair and a wayward beard blew like sea foam across his face, assaulting eyes with sand, salt and curls.  My dad didn’t use to lounge on the park benches of tourist traveled beaches.  No.  He preferred unguarded waters and abandoned stretches of sand on which to rest his chronically tan and muscular body. At ninety, his feet no longer walked with their former ease on the unsteady shoreline, so he sat instead, listening to a distant surf with face tilted to the sun. I perched on the sand at his feet, grateful for a few hours together.  Dad opened his eyes when a pigeon landed nearby with a flutter of wings and a soft, “pruuuu, prrruuu.”  Dad watched the bird pecking at the sand.  Soon more pigeons arrived and...

Nothing wants to suffer. Not the wind  as it scrapes itself against the cliff. Not the cliff being eaten, slowly, by the sea. The earth does not want to suffer the rough tread of those who do not notice it. The trees do not want to suffer the axe, nor see  their sisters felled by root rot, mildew, rust.   The coyote in its den. The puma stalking its prey.  These, too, want ease and a tender animal in the mouth  to take their hunger. An offering, one hopes,   made quickly, and without much suffering.  The chair mourns an angry sitter. The lamp, a scalded moth.  A table, the weight of years of argument.  We know this, though we forget.  Not the shark nor the tiger, fanged as they are.  Nor the worm, content in its windowless world  of soil and stone. Not the stone, resting in its riverbed.  The riverbed, gazing up at the stars.  Least of all, the stars, ensconced in their canopy,  looking down at all of u...

Listen to the story told by the reed, of being separated. “Since I was cut from the reedbed, I have made this crying sound. Anyone apart from someone he loves understands what I say. Anyone pulled from a source longs to go back. At any gathering I am there, mingling in the laughing and grieving, a friend to each, but few will hear the secrets hidden within the notes. No ears for that. Body flowing out of spirit, spirit up from body: no concealing that mixing. But it’s not given us to see the soul. The reed flute is fire, not wind. Be that empty.” Hear the love fire tangled in the reed notes, as bewilderment melts into wine. The reed is a friend to all who want the fabric torn and drawn away. The reed is hurt and salve combining. Intimacy and longing for intimacy, one song. A disastrous surrender and a fine love, together. The one who secretly hears this is senseless. A tongue has one customer, the ear. A sugarcane flute has such effect because it was able to make sugar in the reedbed. ...

Distance is an illusion. We stand apart so that we may know each other better.

  “Te tiro atu to kanohi ki tairawhiti ana tera whiti te ra kite ataata ka hinga ki muri kia koe.”  – Maori saying which translates “Turn your face to the sun and the shadows will fall behind you.”

A month ago Bodhi came into the kitchen with my phone in hand and said, "Listen Mom, I want to put you on a dating app."  I balked.  He countered, "Just listen a minute, with Owen gone and me growing up you just don't have much connection anymore.  You deserve to be loved mom.  We don't want you to be alone."   I hugged him and took my phone, on which he'd already downloaded some app called Hinge. I deleted it.  He asked me to think about it.  I did.  I even tried eHarmony for a few weeks.  I went on a few masked and distanced dates.   Here's what I learned: I DO NOT LIKE DATING APPS.   I probably don't much like dating.  I don't like cocktail parties either.  I'm easily overwhelmed by human maneuverings and terrible at small talk.  I am also not an easy chemistry or person to match. I feel life fully and don't consider that a weakness.  After years of relationship mishaps,  I am only interested in dating so...

This place where you are right now, God circled on a map for you. -Hafiz

12  You will go out in joy      and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills      will burst into song C )" style="line-height: normal; position: relative; vertical-align: text-top; top: auto;">  before you, and all the trees  of the field      will clap their hands. Isaiah 55:12

I’m an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it’s also tonic and deeply spiritual, glorifying the smallest life-form and embracing the most distant stars. -Diane Ackerman

  Christmas  Love 2020 Love. We're all here, at this perceived threshold of Eden, learning about love.  Love’s Beginning:   Initially we fall in love with a projected self-image of perfection and the projected self-image of perfection in the other. But that's not really love, that's Narcissus adoring his reflection on the lake's surface. Real love continually expands to include the messy, awkward, unpredictable, unresolved, lived experience of individuation within systems of disrupted belonging.  Love’s Ripening:    Our cultural preoccupation with the earliest stage of love is a kind of disconnection. It's visible in our branded self image on Instagram and how we are encouraged to shut down emotionally. It's visible in our schools and prison systems, in our corporate capitalism and politics, in how we treat those in need and how we deify beauty and youth. And unfortunately this superficiality of love can be most visible during the holiday sea...

The deed took all my heart. I did not think of you, Not ’til the thing was done. I put my sword away And then no more the cold And perfect fury ran Along my narrow bones And then no more the black And dripping corridors Hold anywhere the shape That I had come to slay. Then for the first time, I saw in the cave’s belly The dark and clotted webs, The green and sucking pools, The rank and crumbling walls, The maze of passages. And I thought then Of the far earth, Of the spring sun And the slow wind, And a young girl, And I looked then At the white thread. Hunting the minotaur I was no common man And had no need of love. I trailed the shining thread Behind me, for a vow, And did not think of you. It lay there, like a sign, Coiled on the bull’s great hoof. And back into the world, Half blind with weariness I touched the thread and wept. O, it was frail as air, And I turned then With the white spool Through the cold rocks, Through the black rocks. Through the long webs, And the mist fell, An...

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;     For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings     That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

The Facts of Life  By Padraig O’ Tuama "That you were born and you will die. That you will sometimes love enough and sometimes not. That you will lie if only to yourself. That you will get tired. That you will learn most from the situations you did not choose. That there will be some things that move you more than you can say. That you will live that you must be loved. That you will avoid questions most urgently in need of your attention. That you began as the fusion of a sperm and an egg of two people who once were strangers and may well still be. That life isn’t fair. That life is sometimes good and sometimes better than good. That life is often not so good. That life is real and if you can survive it, well, survive it well with love and art and meaning given where meaning’s scarce. That you will learn to live with regret. That you will learn to live with respect. That the structures that constrict you may not be permanently constricting. That you will probably be okay. That you...

“Wishing Well” by Gregory Pardlo: “Outside the Met a man walks up sun tweaking the brim sticker on his Starter cap and he says pardon me  Old School  he says you know is this a wishing well? Yeah  Son  I say sideways over my shrug. Throw your bread on the water. I tighten my chest wheezy as Rockaway beach sand with a pull of faux smoke from my e-cig to cozy the truculence I hotbox alone and I am at the museum because it is not a bar. Because he appears not to have changed them in days I eye the heel-chewed hems of his pants and think probably he will ask me for fifty cents any minute now wait for it. A smoke or something. Central Park displays the frisking transparency of autumn. Tracing paper sky, leaves like eraser crumbs gum the pavement. As if deciphering celestial script I squint and purse off toward the roof line of the museum aloof as he fists two pennies from his pockets mumbling and then aloud my man he says hey my man I’m going to make a wish for you too. I...

  “A Blessing” by James Wright: “Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have been grazing all day, alone. They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness That we have come. They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. There is no loneliness like theirs. At home once more, They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, For she has walked over to me And nuzzled my left hand. She is black and white, Her mane falls wild on her forehead, And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist. Suddenly I realize That if I stepped out of my body I would break Into blossom.”

The Night Migrations Louise Glück - 1943- This is the moment when you see again the red berries of the mountain ash and in the dark sky the birds' night migrations. It grieves me to think the dead won't see them— these things we depend on, they disappear. What will the soul do for solace then? I tell myself maybe it won't need these pleasures anymore;  maybe just not being is simply enough, hard as that is to imagine.

The Red Poppy Louise Gluck The great thing is not having  a mind. Feelings: oh, I have those; they  govern me. I have  a lord in heaven  called the sun, and open  for him, showing him the fire of my own heart, fire  like his presence. What could such glory be if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,  were you like me once, long ago,  before you were human? Did you  permit yourselves to open once, who would never  open again? Because in truth  I am speaking now  the way you do. I speak  because I am shattered.

THE BIG PICTURE by Ellen Bass I try to look at the big picture.  The sun, ardent tongue licking us like a mother besotted  with her new cub, will wear itself out.  Everything is transitory. Think of the meteor  that annihilated the dinosaurs. And before that, the volcanoes of the Permian period — all those burnt ferns  and reptiles, sharks and bony fish — that was extinction on a scale that makes our losses look like a bad day at the slots.  And perhaps we’re slated to ascend to some kind of intelligence that doesn’t need bodies, or clean water, or even air.  But I can’t shake my longing for the last six hundred Iberian lynx with their tufted ears,  Brazilian guitarfish, the 4 percent of them still cruising the seafloor, eyes staring straight up.  And all the newborn marsupials — red kangaroos, joeys the size of honeybees — steelhead trout, river dolphins, all we can save  so many species of frogs  breathing through their  damp...

The Child’s Right to W onder By Angelina Lloyd, MEdPsy In the Autumn of 2009, I drove to school beneath a  canopy of sun dappled leaves turning orange, yellow and red.  I mentally prepped for my morning line time, eager to present a lesson on the changing seasons.  Imagine for a moment: the lights of the classroom dim and a single lamp, sans shade, stands bright at the center of the circle, the sun .  I theatrically raise a rainbow colored globe tilting on its metal axis, the earth .  I turn it ever so slowly, explaining that one rotation of the earth on its axis is a single day.  Together we watch light fall on globe, night and day .  I demonstrate the spinning of its axis as we make our year-long trek around the sun, 365 (and ¼) days . I point out how the northern hemisphere tilts away in the cooler months and toward the sun in the warmer months. Voila’, seasons explained.   I parked my car, ready to set things up before the children ar...

A beautiful poem of self loving forgiveness to self...  “Phase One” by Dilruba Ahmed: “For leaving the fridge open last night, I forgive you. For conjuring white curtains instead of living your life. For the seedlings that wilt, now, in tiny pots, I forgive you. For saying no first but yes as an afterthought. I forgive you for hideous visions after childbirth, brought on by loss of sleep. And when the baby woke repeatedly, for your silent rebuke in the dark, “What’s your beef?” I forgive your letting vines overtake the garden. For fearing your own propensity to love. For losing, again, your bag en route from San Francisco; for the equally heedless drive back on the caffeine-fueled return. I forgive you for leaving windows open in rain and soaking library books again. For putting forth only revisions of yourself, with punctuation worked over, instead of the disordered truth, I forgive you. For singing mostly when the shower drowns your voice. For so admiring the drummer you failed t...