Month: June 2006

Almost Heaven

My favorite section of Dorothy Livesay’s The Self-Completing Tree is the very last one, entitled â€?”At the Finish.â€? I’ve noted more poems in this section than in any other section of the book, all equally deserving of your notice, all the more reason you should run out and buy this book or get it from your local library if you find that your tastes and mine run along similar lines. After all, since I’m no longer required to run a classroom, I make not pretense that my taste in poetry is any better than anyone else’s.

That said, here’s my favorite poem in the section:

BELLHOUSE BAY

Last night a full silver
moon
shone in the waters of the bay
so serene
one could believe in
an ongoing universe.

And today it’s summer
noon heat soaking into
arbutus trees blackberry bushes
Today in the cities
rallies and peace demonstrations exhort

SAVE OUR WORLD SAVE OUR CHILDREN

But save also I say
the towhees under the blackberry bushes
eagles playing a mad caper
in the sky above Bellhouse Bay

This is not paradise
dear adam dear eve
but it is a rung on the ladder
upwards
towards a possible
breathtaking landscape

There are moments in nature so serene, so magnificent, so infinite, that it seems impossible to doubt that the world will go on forever, perhaps explaining why so many religions have come to know God through his handiwork.

Although I find it impossible, even undesirable, to ignore the news when I finally find myself muttering at the computer screen or flipping off the TV, I regain my sense of perspective by going outside, sitting on the front deck, enjoying the flowers, and waiting for a hummingbird to honor me with its presence.

Pt Defiance Park, the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge, and Belfair may not be heaven, but they are as close as I’ve been able to find lately, and I’d be more than happy to spend eternity in any of them.

I would even go so far as to say that we cannot save our world, our children, or grandchildren unless we can also manage to save the towhees and eagles that share this small space we call our world.

Urge Congress to Vote for Better Fuel Economy

Despite the Bush administration’s recent propaganda about America’s addiction to foreign oil, they‘ve again shown their true intentions when â€?”more than a dozen efficiency efforts… [were]… set for trims or elimination as the administration pushes long-term projects.â€?”

As Mark Clayton points out in this recent Christian Science Monitor article:

the Bush administration is anxious to fund its new Advanced Energy Initiative – long-term research into nuclear, coal, wind, solar, and hydrogen power. But to accomplish that, it is cutting lesser-known programs like ITP whose payoffs are far more near-term.

You have to ask yourself how serious this administration is about reducing oil demands when they cut the budget for a small program that â€?”helped produce a design technology for lightweight cars and trucks that in 2004 alone saved the nation 122 million barrels of oil, or about $9 billion.â€?”

The new fuel economy standards proposed by the Bush administration, though an improvement in the administration’s previous stance, fail to adequately deal with the problem by trying to appease the American auto makers’ who want to continue to produce oversized SUV’s and pickups according to most environmental groups.

If you think that the auto industry can do a better job of promoting fuel economy, urge your member of Congress to vote for the Boehlert-Markey fuel economy amendment currently being considered in congress.

Livesay’s â€?”For the New Yearâ€?

Though I’ve heard it argued rather convincingly that poetry about poetry should be banned, Dorothy Livesay has a couple of poems about poetry I liked quite a lot. My favorite is

FOR THE NEW YEAR

Stamped in the throat
bird song
biologists say
is inevitable
as that beak that eye
that red wing
is not learned
is born with the bird.

Perhaps then there’s another
dimension behind our learned
word patterns …
perhaps an infinite song
sways in our throats
yet to be heard?

This poem strangely reminds me of the first poem I ever willingly memorized, Hardy’s â€?”The Darkling Thrushâ€?” which may partially explain my affinity for it.

Of course, my recent fascination with bird photography has also attuned my ear to the complex bird songs that fill the wilderness air, and it’s not hard to imagine that the beauty of these songs attracts mates to the same extent it attracts human listeners.

Could it perhaps be true that each of us has an â€?”infinite songâ€? waiting to be heard, that we’re all poets waiting to burst forth in song?