A Poet's Journal: October 19, 2014

 

October 19th, 2014

For the past two or three days now, evening has revealed an unexpected joy as it passes into the twilight hour.  The season of migration has come, and I have taken up this passing relationship with things that fly above, to better know them, lest I become a stranger to myself, knowing little of my surroundings.  Yet there are already many dilemmas about which birds I actually see, if they are migratory or not, and their flying formation.  For it is true that there are so many worlds of understanding one on top of the other, and us only living in one of them, that if we ponder the variety of anything that passes before us daily, it seems so far-fetched to believe that we could transcend them with one glance and, if only for a moment, feel what any other may feel just by looking at them.  But this is the most authentic part of our observation; what we see creates the world we live in, and if close enough, may be given the ability to know them, while becoming adept to those things that surround us.  Without the slightest effort we may live the lives of passing birds, or just as simply, the lives of good human beings, never once grasping the good or the bad, the knowing or the unknowing, or the name or no name, of any situation.  And so whether these birds are actually sand-hill cranes, egrets, or the common duck, matters not; to see the evening, to watch the birds fly, all this without any other worry, that is the ripest thought of all.  Patience nestled in the lonely expanse of mind has eternity on its finger.

Douglas Thornton