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.
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.
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.
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