Heterodox
And which of you by being anxious can add
one cubit to his span of life?
Matthew 6: 27
A and B would scarcely remember
When the two weren’t friends A knows of B
That after grim chemo his hair came back
The doctors reckoned they’d licked his disease
B’s tall A is sufficiently shorter
He never till lately noticed B’s round
Of pattern baldness Yes his hair is back
And out of sight A kneels on the ground
The cancer’s back too God if you’re there
Thinks A If you can truly do wonders
Let B grow into a natural baldness
A knows his is no conventional prayer
And conventionally worries it’s wrong to kneel
And beg with his being’s every morsel
that B will be thus strangely blessed
Real baldness all of a sudden that crucial
Whiskey Jack
It still felt as close to winter as to spring when I pitched my tent on a nameless island. Entirely alone there, in fact everywhere, each day I contemplated my patch of a lake whose head and foot lay well out of sight.
One morning at dawn, a gray jay, whiskey jack to some, dropped onto my shoulder and found a thread to tug, no doubt for her nest. Whiskey jacks are famously bold, but this should have struck me as a wonder. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the bird glow like a gem in the sunrise.
The jay, the mixed scents of spruce needles and of smoke from my breakfast fire: how did I consider any of this mundane? It was just that I’d chosen to lose myself in a young man’s sorrows. Panfish slaked my hunger, I drank the lake’s pure water, but I ached for more. More what? I couldn’t have answered that. I was barely twenty-one, and sentimental about my angst. I should have been stirred by the jay’s perseverance, but I too was persevering– in gloom.
Then a commander wind barged in. It exploded a bough behind me. When shock subsided, I felt a seep of tears, which I wouldn’t be able to interpret for decades. I’d never considered the virtues of humility, but perhaps on that morning I did have inklings. The whiskey jack’s indifference to that brutal crack! and her dedication to a modest task may have been examples I couldn’t recognize in those days. You don’t have to remind me: with 20,000 more days of hindsight, I can bully these facts into parable. I’m as human as the next person.
I’d go on a long, long time in pursuit of elevation, not industry. I heard a shriek high above the island. That eagle kept wheeling above, blessed to see everything for miles around as one great whole. I scarcely gave a thought to the little bird on my shoulder.
This was worth waking to this morning.
Whiskey Jack is so powerful and poignant. I loved seeing this piece of your spirit today.