I have a bit of a story time for today’s blog piece.
There is a poem I tried to write about two years ago.
When the idea came to me, it seemed easy enough. Some free verse poetry about a bird I had seen at the corner of my home library’s window.
It had such a neat little nest, and two small eggs it was trying to hatch. I am not sure, I might have imagined those eggs. Ha-ha.
Someone who (unlike me) is very intolerant of birds, came in one Sunday morning and threw out the birds’ nest.
The small handful that was the birds’ nest was picked up and thrown out the window that had been sheltering it. The bird came back a short while later to inspect, and found its little home gone.
And it made me think about how animals mourn their loved ones. Somehow, with the bird looking sideways up at me, with its rimless irises and cautious steps towards the place its nest had been, it made me think the bird had suffered a bit of a heartbreak. Imagine all of that work, gone just because you went out for the day’s work.
I watched the bird inspect the now empty space that its nest had been, and I felt sympathetic for it.
Eventually, then it flew away. It didn’t come back.
During that time, I was in the heights of the pandemic. I was hoping for things to just yunno, get back to normal.
But, I was also reading about how to deal with the uncomfortable times. When it feels like the world is in static, how do we get through the discomfort of being forced to sit still? To feel like our lives had been put on a pause we did not consent to?
I found the answer in this bible verse about not worrying about money.
Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? (matt 6 vs 26)
Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is... (vs 27)
I just took it from there and the poem happened.
I know what this might look like – were you even worried about money, or the pandemic’s effect on your life?
I think the worries are similar. I mean, the whole concept of worrying about money is being uncertain of the future, and wanting to use it to hedge against the inflated cost of living in a broken world.
Whether that uncertainty is about whether we will be successful, if we will be loved, if we will achieve our potential. I think we use money (or progression in our lives and goals) as a metric to see how far we can run away from the worries we project unto the future. That if we have this or that, then we will be safe. It is really not what we should aim for. I mean, in certain ways that is choosing an illusion to protect you.
So, I think about the idea of birds being unbothered about the worries of tomorrow. How the concept of tomorrow is a mere abstraction to them, it forced me to do the very uncomfortable thing of learning how to live in today.
I could write an essay on this, but this poem said it best. It did all of the things that it should have done, and said what I really wanted to say in the shortest, most succinct way possible (Like the whole of this very short blog post Ha-ha)
Here it is.
Today is
A bird,
Vanquished thing, building another nest
Beak weaving seedling into another
Plastic wire timing place
As memory, as in that as, today is
A bird
Today is, a bird
Tomorrow doubts true, she has no witness
But today is
Timed in our wire
Today is
Hairy arm out, nest out the window’s crack
Rimless black eye as counterwitness
These circles are no room for tears
They are inhuman and subsequent
Motoring and on and on and continuous
Moving and,
Counting a tomorrow to defer,
Always
As if promised
Could a tomorrow nest an egg
Weave a bird’s song into a story
Perch the lightest feather on its beam
Or let in the light of a sun?
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That is it, that it the poem.
Tell me what you think about the idea of living in the moment. Is it something you try to practice? Or are you team tomorrow always lives forever?
Let me know!
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See you in the comments. (Today)