Two Poems from Windows
From a tent—still staked in Earth cragged Cascade belly ground slope and echoes water rush snow-dappled ridge shadows’ white shadow I watched we spun dipper sauntering left to right the steady course of that freckling dark While eating a spinach and feta croissant, well-warmed, she strafes the window, brushing roses’ full bloom and dragging a roller bag — grey, inconspicuous, a prop from someone elses’s day. In the mesh webbing, a neon green sippy cup, lid blue, held fast as the right hand of the small skipping boy beside her. His free hand conducting the cloud streaked sky and it moves.
This week I had two distinct moments of stillness where I became aware of the sky moving around me, only to remind myself that in at least one of the instances I was the one moving. The tent poem is the first backpacking trip of the season, up to the wonderful Navaho Peak.
This poem by Gary Snyder was rattling around in my head at the top of the mountain. D and I both reflected on how we always bring small notepads to lookouts and are incapable of writing anything ‘good’ in those moments. Something about the magnitude, and perhaps the body contortions necessary to write on jagged rock. That being said, the awe sits and emerges in different and surprising ways later.
The second poem is a view from a coffee shop window. It was a moment when I looked up from a book and saw something that captured my attention — an unexpected sippy cup.
Some things I’ve been sitting with for the last week or so:
The Arooj Aftab record Night Reign
This conversation with Janine Benyus of the Biomimicry Institute and Azita Ardakani Walton on how natural systems heal and how we mirror them.
This conversation about the interstitium (mentioned in the above podcast!). There’s a poem in this somewhere… about how an ancient and newly discovered human organ covers everything in webbing and transports nutrients around the body… maybe it’s all poems already.
Evil Does Not Exist, is a great new eco-fable film from Ryusuke Hamaguchi. I’m still sitting with his ability to build characters and the ways the film demands attention and stillness. It also prominently features one of the great community meeting scenes.
With gratitude,