The illusion of independence begins with the snip of the umbilical, is furthered with a slap, is fulfilled as we are weaned, walk, and then withdraw to our own beds; we lean into our own efforts, rise to our own challenges, inflate with what we perceive to be our personal successes, deflate before our personal defeats. We desire a fruit, find it, and bring it to these lips: so the feeling of hunger passes. We choose a destination, a mountain peak, and climb with these limbs, fuel this body, attain the summit. This body tires, we lay it down, and it finds rest and soon recovers. We reach and do not touch, and our heart sighs. We touch and the one we touch departs, our heart cries.

Breath as though a breath will always be. Steps as though the steps will never end. Work as though our toil invites eternity. Try as though each success were an end. Rejoice and rage as though the purse we filled and emptied was of life instead of lead. Eat as though our food were birthright instead of gift. Climb as though the summit were the sky. Sleep as though tomorrow always arrived. Reach as though we somehow are alone; cry as though departure proved we never had been one.

Appearances arrive early; and since those appearances offer the impression of being somehow incomplete, since the young body teaches the young mind, and the young body feels wants and desires so strongly, this seeming inadequacy is supported by those whose perception of isolation is greatest. When one feels very isolated, when one feels there can never be enough, the only course of action is to grasp after whatever is within reach. Sometimes the anguish is so great, the grasp relies on an incompleteness, consciously or unconsciously cultivated by a culture whose basis is never enough. The surface of things -- the surface of our wants and losses, of our hungers and satisfactions -- are children's drawings of the real world. They are the body without its marvelous organs, its miracle of being; they are stick-figure fathers and stick-figure mothers, beautifully and innocently drawn, and sticks of boys and girls, whose touch is a pencil-line, and whose connection is one-dimensional. Innocence is fine, and sweet, and deserves its place. It is in that innocence that those who have lived their childhood, to become mothers and fathers of their own, find and offer the food to fill the belly, and find and offer the toys and tools for that young body to grow and that young mind to develop.

Yet there is a place where greater learning occurs. A parent who knows enough will teach a child about having enough. Your stomach has had its fill -- look how little is needed! There are dimensions beyond the singularity of the Self. What begins as simple self-indulgence becomes gentle self-awareness, then in two dimensions the picture of another, and in three dimensions a body that moves and dances and involves your own. Beautiful, warming third dimension. And then there is time. Where the one I met and loved today is the one whose angst and struggles make them intangible tomorrow. Where the one I met and loved and lost finds support in our connection, and returns seeking me. Where the one I met and loved and learned how to be with over time -- maybe marrying? maybe giving birth to new lives? -- watches as her body ages, and tries to puzzle out what it all means.

Ah! And then beyond the river of time we swim in (and often against!)... well, it is a river. A river has banks, does it not? And a bed, with clear sky above it and outside of it, and a sun that warms its gravity-bound descent? I don't know what is beyond what I am able to perceive, but I do know that my perception is limited. What I love about limits is that, by their very nature, they guarantee a Something on the other side. So when I get tired, when the heart and the mind become weary with the passage of this river, and the splashing about that I and my good companions do in its currents, so often bumping up against one another and against those rocks, creating minor, unintended bruises... when I get tired I lie on my back and contemplate what I cannot see. But know is there.

I do wish, for example, that certain physical pains were not present in the waters tonight. Ah, stone in the river. I would prefer, as another example, that certain accompanying psychic pains were slower to reach out, that the fears which embrace us in these waters were less chill. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Sometimes, when we reach up our hand, or reach out, there is this presence beyond us that, with the greatest Grace one can imagine, reaches back.

I know there is a way to walk on water. Someone has already done it. It's just on the other side of this common understanding, on the other side of what I decided that I know.

(0)

I.

The waning moon has turned this hour above the crowns of trees, and spilled its liquid light into the yard. So this evening is accompanied by a shadow of sun's heat. That same moon that years and years ago was torn from earth's belly, born from her and borne away on some celestial tide: once blazing with the fire that gave us life, now its patient ashes spy upon our daily dance, at times shy and out of sight, at times winking at our plight, or otherwise full-faced and offering its white-washed world for our somnambulisms.

With no one's arms to hold you from these sights, the dimensions fall into each other, you join the ranks of every color-blinded creature as it flies or crawls or navigates the night employing sharper, duller vision. A leaf-rattle makes the paw pause mid-step, a stick snap shakes the courage of the smallest, while the sudden flush of air or nearly-silent slant of wing above makes cowering the act of statues whose hearts race from one moment alive to the next, still alive, alive yet still, waiting for no tooth or talon's spike to rake the nerves.

Some of us are larger, and suffer less.

But suffer even so, adventure when better ventures aren't reached by opening fingers, opened hearts. A footstep starts the body where the spirit would prefer to stop. Still. A stick snap stops the world around the boot of men: who goes there? What would a man be wanting of the night, if not a hunt of one sort or another?

The moon will not stand still; her mother moves below her, always at arms-distance. The child spins as if to turn away; the weight of their connection keeps her always falling toward the larger body. A pure, white face. Smiling as she rises, sad when she departs. A desert of desire, whose fires went out so long ago, depends on stars' impression to brightern her face.

Who wouldn't see a spark up there? Some ember that was better than its gray surround, some tiny spark of life the kindled past into a second sunrise, companion star, ga olden guide to keep us honestly awake and in each other's arms, to banish sleep in favor of a man or woman's favored sleep companion.


II.

One can speak more plainly. An apple, for example: there was nothing woman ever gave a man that was his unmaking. I need to rewrite Genesis, since its metaphor is difficult to embrace. If (for example) Eve opened Adam's eyes, it was to the preciousness of life. I guess that might be painful; but hardly an expulsion from the Garden, rather its invitation. There is some tacit assumption by the readers of those ancient writers, of a paradise that was lost, only to be regained after this body's been betrayed as temporary residence, somewhat of a slum-lord's tenement.

Paradise is every moment, but our skill in seeing it somewhat clouded by emotions or events. The paradise of creation both in the company of men and of women, building walls or taking them down, raising up pillars of life or whirling in the great river of each others' dancing, scratching at the earth or forging teams to push back need, or needing the sweet waters of ourselves to wash over that hard labor and make us one.

No, an apple, or a pomegranate, maybe have been a gift of fruit, of sustenance, of sight or of delight. The days that followed striving to maintain that paradise. If missed, at times, it cannot be mistaken that it always will exist.


III.

The television told me tonight that 1 in every 8 people in the United States suffers hunger. If that is high percentage, imagine my old friends in Indonesia, or the Sertão, or India, where population is so great or natural resource so scarce that the ratio is likely inverted. What will you do about that? Remove the idea of guilt-by-inequity. An action forced by guilt was a blind action, and a slap. Instead, imagine your wealth. The problem is not easily solved, yet making small movements to resolve it makes it easier. What if...

What if a few dollars each day went to help a nation's hunger? What if we set aside the cynicism which says "our effort makes no difference; too many plunderers between here and there; too much need in my own family". Yes, yes, yes. Still, many of us have the strength of surplus, and every effort makes a difference even in ourselves, even knowing that we have acted changes how we walk and think. There are many programs through our communities and churches which make donation less anonymous, which carry goods and capital hand to hand. And we are throwing pebbles down the mountain: gravity helps us: we are of the wealthy nations, whose small stones hit others and still others, so that once our tiny effort reaches bottom, the side of a mountain may have moved.

Something to consider. While the moon is circling overhead, telling tales of generations upon generations of humans; when a woman stands beside her man, or a man puts his arms around his woman; when night rolls into its deepest slumber, and wakeful people wonder what it means to be alive.

(0)

Here is the canvas of the sky. One long stroke of gray, you see it brushed upon the blue blue pastel of the day, it is an overhead wave, a sun-shade, a blanket pulled over the eyes, a watercolor from a sponge, a lights-decay. And then it rains, of course. It is cold as it can be, just enough energy in the shortening strands of the sunbeams to heat those flecks of ice and melt their hearts as they fall earthward. So they fall instead of float, merge instead of mass, drop instead of drift, and winter waits another week or so to make its white appearance.

Then: haaaaaaaaaa the cold blows in from the same direction, as though the sky's designer were one-handed, always wiped his slate from left to right, from sunset to sunrise. The night is black as black, and light as light, and those stars! now that the evenings are cooler and cooler still, seem bolder or less drowsy, they glimmer knife-like, spark-like, out of reach, you wish they would take flight and visit, settle their bright visage at the edge of the lawn. Why not? They are so small, a jar of lightning bugs is all. The cold cold wind blows all the sultry nonsense out of the way, and every evening's serious as geometry and careful as clocks. Tick tick, tapping from the past, leaves at the window, play-acting sleet-sounds, fleet flight to ground. Then underfoot the scent of new earth, under heel the sound of new earth.

Here's the canvas of the heart: the wealth of tears, warm rain that melts before it reaches skin, the ice it was contained within undone by the sun, however short its strands of sunbeams have become. What grace to earn theese seasons with a smile. What riches to know that winter comes then spring again, and summer, fall and winter spring, in a sprightly spin that we've the fortune to dance in. A cloud covers the blue blue horizon and spreads until it's gathered all your friends under its blanket. And then it rains, of course. Instead of floating, taken by the tide, our hands reach out and weather what weather would not leave behind. We all fall earthward with a sigh, and look to heaven for the wings of snow that await another day. Where knife-like, spark-like the wind whips flakes toward our skin, we wrap these layers round us to keep the precious loving in.

Ahhh, the wind cries at the corners of the mind, makes a small howling like the ghost of forgotten fright: all outside, all part of November's song, give thanks for the harvest of love, winter brings its bite. So quickly! we give thanks for the harvest of love, because it is the fruit of our reaching, because the full table we have offered ourselves, again and again and again, with delight, despite old winter's wind.

(0)

the eyes are a chamber of the heart
and the lips and tongue, a chamber of the heart
the fingertips and skin are a chamber of the heart
the sense of smell is a chamber of the heart
and the ears are a chamber of the heart

so near enough to see you
to taste you and to kiss you
to touch you and to feel your warmth
near enough to catch your scent
to hear "I love you"

if we don't feed our love with senses
the heart slows and sleeps
the heart bows and retreats
like a servant of the spirit
politely asked to leave

(0)