Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Communion

Shortly after hearing about the shootings in a Sikh temple earlier this week, I had a dream in which a stranger came upon our property and shot two deer, a mother and her daughter. For me, the deer represents many things, among them peace, gentility, grace and benevolence. 

As I listened to radio reports about the shooting, including interviews with members of the Sikh community, it seems their world view also embraces these tenets. 

It is shocking and horrifying to think that swift, sudden and violent death could be visited upon a community gathered in peaceful prayer and yet, it happened. Happens. The sacred is violated, both in the breach of holy space and the willful, thoughtless destruction of life. 

And the deer comes through in the dream world, a messenger, perhaps a guide. How can I take her message into my heart and honor it, live it, learn from it? I begin to explore these questions in the following piece, and know that if I continue to carry them and the images from which they spring, more will be revealed in time.


For The Deer/Honoring a Dream

They stand, heads bowed
side by side, as if in prayer,
then lift in unison
to partake of this morning’s communion,
young green leaves from the weeping cherry
still moist with dew.
They eat hungrily, happily.
The daughter’s movements
follow her mother’s by a breath
like a shadow,
or an echo,
like this, like this.
Learning by watching.
Learning by doing.
So much to learn,
to see, to taste.
The bumblebees hum in the honeysuckle,
birdsong rings out across
the yard.
Squirrels chatter and give chase
up and down the oaks,
and each life lends its voice
to the hymn.

A clap of thunder from the pristine sky.
It must be lost,
wandered too far from its own
mother,
meandered over many mountains,
now crying, trying 
to find its way home.

Another.

Death arrives at my door
on the shoulder of a man,
his white shirt
criss-crossed in the color of blood
and partially obscured
by the dark figure slung over him
like a sandbag.
He does not know he carries the weight
of The World.
He acts as though it is nothing,
mere baggage to be dropped and left
until he finds a simpler, easier
way to manage the load
that weighs him down like lead,
like the very lead
with which he filled his cargo,
precious cargo,
though he could not see it
through his dark eyes and prescription glasses.


A sprig of green leaves
hangs at the side of her mouth
and her still-open eyes are empty in their frames
of long black lashes.
Beside her, the future lays still
and growing cold.

The daughter’s movements
followed her mother’s by a breath
like a shadow,
or an echo,
like this, like this.
The fur at her new and narrow throat is mussed and red
where the blood on his hands
tried to return to its
source
when he handled her so roughly. 

He took them both
because he could. 
Two,
the number of kindness and balance,
of duality and
choices.

Without warning
the false thunder arrived and
struck like lightning.
No time to run.
No time to hide.
No time to teach the little one what 
or how to fear.
There was only time enough
to teach her peace,
and how to live in harmony
with her surroundings,
how to love the earth alive beneath
her feet
and in the rocks and trees,
sky and water,
flowers and
Every Living Thing.

But I am still here,
still learning.

 8.7.12


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