Heartwood
Out the window, I see you.
In a grass patch just a few yards off of the runway, your twists and leaps, your scruffy wandering tail, draws me into your world. I search for my binoculars in my bag amongst the soft chatter as a few more people shift their focus out the window, noticing you too.
The man next to me asks “Is that a coyote?” as I’m now holding the binoculars to my face. I confirm, and a portal opens into your world.
o=o
I begin to admire your complete unawareness - or perhaps disregard of the huge system of operations at play around you. You seem to be searching for something in your little grass patch, and I root for you as you bury your snout into the weeds.
I wonder what this place looks like to you
On my end of the portal, I sit with a herd of fellow mammals packed into a massive tin can with wings, waiting for our other mammal friends in a tower to give the captain of our tin can the word that we can take flight, that your concrete covered field is clear from the hundreds of other giant metal birds that take off to different parts of the world every day.
Do you know those birds are full of creatures like me?
You don’t seem to care, and I doubt you’re a fan of us anyway.
“I hope they don’t shoot him down,” the man says in a half-concerned tone.
I agree, and I’m sucked backwards through my metal tubes into the cold, air conditioned plane again.
The portal closes
-=-
I suppose we humans know what humans do. It would be no surprise to us to see another mammal shot and killed because it stood in the way of a quicker, more convenient, and comfortable future. We would probably just sit there, letting the fuel combust and the turbines spin, leaving your lifeless body thousands of miles behind us. And later someone would scoop you up and toss you in a dumpster. And the flight attendant would serve us drinks.
I hold onto you with my eyes as we begin to move along down the runway to prepare for takeoff. As you slip out of my sight, I make a silent wish for you before we soar off into the sky.
Admittedly, I am guilty for playing along. It’s something we’re taught to do when, in order to maintain the conditions for so called “peace,” we must be out of touch with our hearts. We murder our curiosity and empathy so we don’t think twice when we walk past people starving in our streets or when our government attempts to strip its own people of their rights to their bodies. Meanwhile, our scheduled lives are so packed to the brim that we have no time to grieve what we’ve lost.
Like a gun show on the worlds stage, our government funds genocide as it continues to flex its arms in the face of our protest, all so those who are in power can grow ever more powerful and alone as they stuff their hearts away, growing deeper and deeper into a bunker of money and illusion in a desperate attempt to evade the imminent danger of death. In their refusal to accept death, they are blind to it, and they cast a widening dark shadow for miles, swallowing real people, real children, real families, real life.
It’s sickening, and my anger wants to turn to hate. And that hate wants to believe in enemies - because my brain tells me that it would make things a lot simpler to have someone - something, to blame for it all. But my heart knows: make an enemy of another and I make one of myself. It makes one of all of us.
We all come from the same space dust.
Love asks us to let go, and to accept that things change. And change is like death, yet change is the reason we’re all alive.
But I know, it’s more complicated than that. War likes it more complicated than that - and war is in everything. When we think of war, we think in terms of nations and militaries and an earth that is suffering and dying and killing itself. But when I turn it around,
A portal opens
o=o
And there’s war in my heart, in those corridors I keep so well guarded, to protect myself - because I know how bad it hurt when war first visited - because I’m terrified. I wish that I could pass backwards through my life as I’ve hurtled forward in what’s felt like one continuous falling motion, breaking things and being broken in ways I wish I could fix.
When there’s war in my heart, there’s no liberation, no forgiveness, no healing. These things happen when all the forces inside me lay down their arms and cry together.
The portal closes
-=-
A stillness has settled across the cabin, each one of us having gotten lost in our own little worlds. We careen through the air, and the steady booming sound of wind breaking across the wings fills my ears. I scan the forest of evergreens below me, sprawling for miles and miles, each tree huddled close.
In a forest, trees can communicate with each other through common fungal networks underground at their roots. They can send stress signals to each other warning other trees of possible threats, and they can even send each other nutrients through these networks. They have been found to share these resources and signals with neighboring trees, across species.
This symbiosis has posed questions on evolutionary theory itself, that perhaps cooperation, not competition, is the true driver of evolution.
But not all trees are lucky enough to live in forests like these. The sapling doesn’t really get much say in where its seed may end up sprouting, yet they always seem to make do.
The first poem I remember writing was about a lonely tree on the edge of a cliff.
It’s been so long and I don’t remember how it goes, but the image is still beautiful to me.
Another portal opens
o=o
It’s 3 days ago. Ally and I are walking through the forest at Green Timbers Lake. We nearly pass a trail placard until we notice a full cross section of a tree trunk encased inside, so we stop and begin to examine the specimen.
It sits with its inner wood facing outward towards us, displaying a whole history of life, in rings, from the center to the widest edge.
On the placard, in tiny lettering encircling the trunk, the different sections of the wood are labeled with definitions. We squint and tilt our heads as we read.
Just below the bark is the Cambium. It is the living, growing part of the tree, and it is continually expanding in all directions outward. The cambium forms those rings of light and dark, formed from the summer, and the winter, respectively. Some years are dryer and colder than others. In those times of scarcity a tree grows slower, but it results in stronger, denser wood.
In the very center is the Heartwood. It’s the oldest, densest part of the tree, and it functions as the trees support and strength. It is completely made of dead cells which were once sapwood. The sapwood lies between the heartwood and cambium. It helps distribute water and nutrients throughout the tree before eventually turning itself over to the dead, becoming one with the Heartwood.
In all its growth, a tree never refuses the strength and power that exists in its center, always honoring what came before, because without it, they couldn’t possibly bear the weight of their own crowns.
The portal closes
-=-
I’m home now in Salt Lake City. It’s June 12th, and I’m in my living room. I can hear Martha eating from her bowl in the kitchen. The sun shares just a few more rays of light through the windows as it tucks behind the mountains, and I say goodbye for now.
and in a moment so incredible and ordinary
I listen real close,
and I can hear the Great Choir
full of harmony and dissonance
and its beautiful
it never really stops
that hurtling,
until one day, when it does.
so I just hope
among all these piles of regrets
that I’ll continue to confront what lies in the darkness of my own heart
day by day
maybe it will be like taking out the trash,
a lifetime of choosing to see the beauty in believing, accepting, and nurturing
something so imperfectly perfect, that will surely end up dead some day.
Because - I don’t know about you - but I want to be good fertilizer when I end up in the dirt again.
You are what you eat, and the universe has been swallowing us (itself) whole since the moment we were born… …so does that make us kinda like the universe’s shit? That it continually shits and eats over and over again in an endless cycle... ..oh god I’ve taken this metaphor too far.
All I’m saying is, it’s happening right now, and maybe we’ll make up a more nutritious meal for the universe (us) if we feed our own souls well.
so
what do you feed a soul?
well
I’m still figuring it out
but here’s a try:
a portal opens
o=o
I saw you
when I saw your glow
and it filled my soul
like photosynthesis
I saw you as a coyote on the runway
but i’ve seen you before
in The Midnight Parade
a Moth, it’s wings pinned to a board
trapped beneath display glass
begging death unlock his door
like the misunderstood, the bleeding heart
the Underdogs, the sunflower, and the Bee
the Bluebird, who once sang softly above me
won’t you lead me back
to Angie’s Orchard
where we fell in a bed of forget me nots
on the lawn in front of the old folks home
kissing like kids in a movie
looking up at their windows, you said they’d be proud
and we imagined them dreaming inside
and keeping a promise
like May 25th, 1999
well, I wasn’t there yet but I know you were
I see you now, glowing
It doesn’t matter when or where
Somewhere Between Here and There
you could be in the lost and found of the cosmos
far but not forgotten
still glowing
yanno, the good ol’ days
the ones you don’t know are the ones til they’re behind you
so it goes
…and goes
es como la Renacuajo y la Rana
swimming and transforming
in the Deathlight,
I will always see you.
In all things, I am only borrowing
so please forgive me
I just hope
to share a little more
so you can borrow mine
here, in this
I am trying to shine.
