SeaHeart

So, I went to the woods to write poetry today. I walked along the wooden path through the swamp, and I found a narrow, crooked space to sit down at the roots of a tree and spin my story out onto the page. The sun shone down and warmed me, and an occasional robin came to keep me company, and it was beautiful, and it was spring.

I'm walking back to my car, over the bridges and along the wooden path, when I hear a terrible sound--a sort of "smack" sound, like flesh against something solid. I could see the road, could see an SUV had hit one of the Canadian Geese who love these swamps so much. The goose floundered, hobbling across the rest of the pavement, dragging a broken wing behind him.

He stood on the gravel for a very long moment, wing useless and splayed on the scree, one leg crippled and out at a sharp, splintered angle. He stood, and he made up his mind about something, and--very slowly--he limped down the hill toward the water.

I watched him, heart in my throat. He kept tripping, kept falling on his wing, but he didn't make a sound. And, when he got to the water, he folded his wings with much care upon his back, and curtsied into the liquid that reflected the heavens.

He swam, neck arched and bent, silent through the water, refusing to accept the fact that I assumed he was broken.

It was one of the most real and beautiful things I had ever seen.

I say this prayer to the Goddess every morning, and felt compelled to share it today. You probably know it as a poem, not a prayer--but every line of it is the most unimaginably sacred thing to me, and I've always used it as adoration. It contains truth, deep gratitude and boundless love and joy to Divinity, however you see Her.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginably You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

~ e.e. cummings


image by bellyfish511