Blue Sky

It holds us all

This morning I am thinking about suffering. There’s a lot of it about, as the English say. In some places it’s open and visible, with bombs and crumbling buildings and mothers with babies crying in the streets. In others, like here in my pleasant valley, Mother Nature hasn’t read the news. Looking out my window, everything is normal. Irises are blooming, no fires or earthquakes happening. The moment is all about loveliness. But underneath appearances, in almost any greeting, you may sense traces of some kind of suffering. Presenting causes vary. It could be the tedium of a physical ailment. It could be the loss of someone loved. It could simply be a subtle diminishment of one’s enjoyment of life. Or a vast disappointment in the way the world seems headed. Underneath all of these is there’s always our dread of mortality. Some days, or some seasons, we’re just prone to feeling the suffering of all living things.

What to do?

The good Buddhist will say suffering is part of awakening. I would say (from my beginning mind) that that sounds right, and I’m working on it. So I offer this poem, which comes from a moment of awakening, in the presence of another, in that spirit.

Blue Sky

The woman sitting at the window said
From her black hole of mind
Blue sky is nice
but not enough.

I should have told her 
to fill it with circling buzzards 
and to dot the trees with twittering birds
and to make enough room in the mind to imagine

the blueness itself
wrapping all around the known
and unknown 
ground there is to stand on. 

I should have told her to see it blanketing palm trees 
and mountain peaks 
and even teeming city streets 
flowing with colors and heavy-eyed oxen. 

I should have told her to see it as grace
and open her eyes
and mouth
and drink it all in.