Country Cafe

Country Café

Nice high ceilings, big open windows, country kitchen chairs, and tables, wooden US flag on the wall, big preamble of the Constitution on the wall under glass, a man with wife sitting below it, he with an NRA tee shirt on. I want to tell him it’s not just his, it belongs to all of us! Glad to see they have not edited out the part that says ‘to promote the general welfare’. It belongs to and includes all of us, every one of us, even those you and I don’t like or agree with. I enjoy the space, the country feel, but the coffee is sub-par, and the hash browns tough and too crunchy and somehow flat. I’m reading a chapter entitled ‘Paganism’ from ‘Holy The Firm’ by Annie Dillard. Trains have been passing by. Now sitting out front on a porch bench writing, country songs suddenly switch to ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’. When I paid my bill there was a stack of US Constitution booklets on the counter (the kind those so-called militia men were carrying around at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge), free for the taking. That’s fine. It’s the “Mine not yours” attitude I object to! Just like their so called version of Christianity. When you walk into someplace like this I love the country-friendly attitude you have here, but I fit in with my blue jeans and red ball cap. I worry that they’ve lost their soul, their Christianity has lost it’s soul, their country-friendly attitude has lost it’s soul once the “other” walks in, or I tell them I voted for Obama twice and love him, or that I read Annie Dillard.

Am I being unfair? Am I prejudging, judgmental? I hope so, I hope it’s just me, but I’ve been to the town of Connell, Wa. I’ve seen this before.

Zio and the Nightwind

Zio and the Nightwind In the golden afternoon, and in a fresh breeze, the Zio ran with the Nightwind, as companions will, side by side, keeping pace, out to live life’s pleasures of the moment. The airs spoke of a quietness, the simple splash of bow wake, the light singing of the zephyrs in the rigging, it was a time of joy of simply being.
In the distance cumulous clouds boiled up as high towers in the sky, billowy and bright. Below them the sea turned a steely gray, and around and behind where singular clouds of pinks and orange. And we …we were off, racing to nowhere, racing towards Eden.
I lay content in my state, against the wheelhouse boards, watching those distant cumulous clouds boil, thinking of what it would be like to live in those celestial chiefdoms, where mists do battle with turbulence, whose castle walls are ever changing. Heaven there or heaven here; what difference. Perhaps they should be viewed as sails, high riggings, with mainsails and spinnakers, …ships of state, a’ sail on higher seas then ours, and with perhaps a greater purpose. A fleet on the way, guided by a different compass rose, manned by a heavenly host.
Perhaps so. But if they peer down on us from their coign of vantage, surely they must think …”Oh, what a lovely sight! Man’s vessels under sail, enjoying such a fine afternoon. Look how they lay against the breezes, side by side, keeping pace. Companions. Lovers. Caressing life’s gift. Surely it must be The Zio and The Nightwind, together again. The most lovely of all Man’s ships.”
And so it surely is. And so it is.
~EraSeek

When I Have Grown Old and Body Weary

When I have grown old and body weary,
When mind and eyes are fading
And all my pleasures are past me,
When I breathe slow and heavy,
And my last steps are near,
Do this for me!

Take me to a grand trailhead!
One that I have loved or know not yet!
Replace my cane with a long and light ice axe,
Allow me a kiss and hug,
And prove your love for me!
Set me on my way!
Allow me my last freedom!

Chain me not to this society's answer
Of relinquished responsibility:
Sentenced to a bed I do not know!

Allow me my last breath among beauty!
No matter how harsh!
Of mountain and stream,
River and blizzard.
Driving rains,
And wind so strong I know it is God's own breath!

I release you your responsibilities,
Save this one:
Set me free on my final day!

What the Poet Says

What is it the poet says
when he says nothing much at all?

What is it the poet says
when the poem has no rhyme or reason?

What is it the poet says
when his sentence is broken here and there?

What is it the poet says
when all his words are seasons?

A Singular Line

It began as a line.
No, it began as a point from which the line proceeded.
No, it began as a stick from which the point was made and thus from which the line proceeded.
No, actually, it began with a thought. But it was not much of a thought, it was more of a simple action, the action of plucking up a stick and poking it into the ground. This created the point from which proceeded the line.

He drew the line in the earth with the simplest of thought, and the singular purpose that it would be straight. This was simple enough in that there was nothing about to interfere with this purpose, neither building nor home, track nor road, neither tree nor bush, person nor any place of name. A desert without bump nor lizard, hill nor snake, it being flat in all directions. An endless horizon. On he drew, without regard for time or treasure. On he drew in the noonday heat and the cool of night, always under an endless sky.

All lines have a beginning, that being a point in time and space, but must it have a purpose? Must it have an end? Some lines separate sides as a purpose; left from right, this from that, us from them. If this line ever had that as a purpose drawing up sides was the first casualty of its linear life. This line had come to care less about this or that! And on he drew his singular line...

Now as I have said all lines have a point of origin in time and space, and thus travel from somewhere to somewhere, but this line was not traveling to anywhere, at least in particular, and as a matter of fact could have cared less, nor even considered it. Thus, some cosmic destination was the second purposeful casualty in its linear life, if it ever existed at all.

The line was now well beyond the horizon, and the horizon grew further away, although it was never further away than it always had been. And on he drew. His feet were tired and his wrist was sore, his suit had become quite sweaty and he had developed a kink in his back, but he hardly noticed any of this. On he drew.

Lines are funny things when they travel great distances without great purpose, they begin to forget their beginnings. It fades from memory. And thus it was with this line. Thus the third casualty of this line's linear life; its beginnings.

And on it went. The longer he drew the line across the face of the earth, the less he or the line knew or cared about its own length. Its distance faded until nothing was of any concern but the point at which the stick touched the earth. The ever presence of the present. But wasn't that always the case?

He withdrew the stick from the face of the earth and the line, then and there, died as a living active thing. It had never defined anything, nor cared to.  Its own future never even considered. Its own past, faded from memory. Its present, now withdrawn.

As he uncrinked  his back, he stood up straight and turned to look back along the line's length, and for the first time in days was flush with a singular thought, and even a sense of pride: "Damned if that isn't one straight line!"

Couplings

In quantum mechanics there is a strange coupling of future and past. It suggests that the future determines the present and we in the present determines the history of what would only have been possibilities of the past.

The Tools we use in Life

We shape the tools which in turn shape us. But every tool does but one thing, it extends us out into that which is greater than ourselves.