I've seen him make great looping circles high in the sky. Perched on the very top of the dead pine at dawn, he watched me run circles on the ground. I came up to the fence where I could see him clearly. He looked at me. I looked at him.


www.peregrinefund.org/Explore_Raptors/kites/misskite.html

www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/species/kites

www.gpnc.org/kiteM.htm

The room suits me:
a sewing machine called Harmony
sandals called FAITH
afternoon sunlight through a sky light
a gray cat curled atop towels on the bed.
I feel safe.
I sit on the floor
head resting against sleeping cat
and draw fish
pairs, schools, loners
they swim in all directions…

I draw another fish and another
each fish a thought
no longer contained
as though their liberation onto paper
will render order out of chaos
will finally permit me to see…

a waxing moon rises
within countless shades of green
louisiana spring
one hot afternoon

a kite perched high
beak full of twigs
has building on his mind
nothing more

three kites soar
two white and one gray
nothing better
than flight without thought

love bugs hover
above my feet
I smell tractor fuel
and honeysuckle

the sun's light sparks
off leaves and grass
the pump house wall
the barn's dirt floor

the moon is quiet
hiding in the light
to be a brilliance uncontained
in the dark of night

The pine snag in the pasture is one of the tallest objects in the area, second only to the living pine a few yards away. The snag has rotted branches jutting high in many directions. Its trunk is peppered with woodpecker holes. From the barn, you can see sky through some of them.

I was chasing down a kite I'd seen in the pecan tree in the front yard-a much grayer bird than the one I saw the other morning. After it flew to the pasture, I'd dug out my binoculars and two field guides. But instead of the kite, I found on the snag a yellow-shafted northern flicker, glowing like freckled bronze in the sun.

It wasn't until the flicker ducked out that I let my binoculars wander up the snag. I was startled to find the kite, blending in with the smooth barkless part of the trunk.

She wasn't very big-in fact I wondered if I hadn't mistaken a dove for a raptor. She was smoothly gray, grooming her breast feathers and behind the shoulder parts of her wings. But the dark fierce hooded eyes, the curved beak, the sense of intelligent self-awareness could not belong to a dove.

I consulted the guides to confirm identification-a Mississippi Kite for sure. I looked up to enjoy her beauty again. She was perched on a branch of the snag-the binoculars brought her close to me-and boom! Another kite had landed on her back. She didn't seem surprised. I was stunned.

The male spread the feathers of his wings, as though sheltering her. They remained rather still for some seconds, and he flew off.

This happened four times-each time a quietness, each time the pale white-headed male sheltering the female with his open-fingered wings. There was no sense of taking, or action versus passivity. Maybe there was union. If this was a mating, it was a very gentle mating.

'...where the tangible and the mythical become the same.'

Edward Abbey
quoted in National Geographic
March 2007
'Canyonlands'
by Mike Edwards

An old oak stretches over the corner of the field where I practice shintaido in the mornings. When I was 9 or 10, it was split and burned by lightning. Half the tree was torn onto the ground, beyond repair. The surviving half was patched with concrete. The tree looked awkward with the skinny shorn surviving half growing from the large solid trunk.

Decades later, that tree is my partner in practice, especially with bo like today, or sword. The scarred swath of trunk makes it seem more formidable and vulnerable both. I'm alone but not alone.

As I left the yard this morning, a white-tailed kite sailed out from over the adjacent woods, circled twice, and returned north. All white. I'd never seen one before.

Who knows why-the last days run so smoothly. To weave through rush hour with all your bags, and arrive via three English trains over an hour earlier than your printed schedule promises. To ride a free taxi to ferry due to service rendered to Australians. To wind up in a dock-area pub in Poole and hear an unlikely character sing a casually exquisite Mack the Knife. To eat cassoulet aux moules and drink local cidre near St-Laurent-sur-Mer. To find yourself lost within fields of yellow flowers lit by sun. To make your last circles in Pacy-sur-Eure and land in the room of your dreams, pen and paper on desk facing window open to fragrant air, open to nothing but yellow flowers. To meet at the end the person who bends a head toward yours, and even though you're one foot in the car toward airport and have not asked, tells you in a quiet mix of French and English where you must go, to Giverny, to Honfleur, not on weekend when it's filled with parisiens, tells you as though planting seeds, as though you are not really leaving, and tells you how to reach the airport most swiftly and safely-

You don't know until you travel alone how surprisingly connected you really are. If you can shed your disbelief, your conviction that you are a stranger, your defensive posture, it's a very beautiful experience.

This morning at breakfast it's suggested that we pay attention to who we are as individuals. When we find ourselves some place unexpected, ask: Why am I here? Why is it me in particular who is here?

After breakfast, I'm brought to the train station, helped with baggage, helped to research when and from where the next train to Reading will leave. I'm treated with tender consideration.

With all that kind assistance, I'd think I'd have an uneventful departure. But no. The departures for both Platforms 1 and 2 in Bristol are listed on the same monitor, but located on opposite sides of the track. I'm embarrassed to report how long it took me to notice I was on the wrong side of the track.

I finally get on a later train. I remember the words I've been told, but nothing seems remarkable about this train compared to how the planned train probably went. I finish reading the actor interviews in the back of A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There's discussion on "The Infinite Improbability Drive."

Then, I catch the equally later train from Reading to Ascot. No problem finding platform 4. Train moves along, everything on time. We arrive at Ascot. I wait behind a young man also exiting the train.

The train stops, the bell rings, the door doesn't open. He pushes the manual button to open the doors. It doesn't work. I cross to the other side in case we're supposed to exit on the center platform. That door doesn't open. We rush to another set of doors at the end of the car. They don't open on either side, and we tilt on our feet as the train continues on its journey, carrying us past the Ascot signs, past our destination.

I sit back down, kind of amused. I'm going some place new I haven't planned on an unplanned train. But the young man looks worried. He says, "I have an interview in Ascot at 1:30." Then he says, "How much will be a ticket to Ascot? I'm not sure I have enough pounds..." I tell him he won't have to pay more money to get back to Ascot.

The next stop, Sunnydale, the doors work, we exit, we get lost together, we find our way together, we find a rail worker who doesn't seem to understand why we think there's a problem at all, even though we no longer have valid tickets. We stand in the cool sunny breeze to wait 15 minutes to go back toward Ascot.

It's then I remember again what I've been told. I look at my fellow traveler, the only person trapped with me in a rail car I wasn't even supposed to have been in. He looks an age he could be my son. I ask a couple of questions about the job interview. He's very shy, a local grad student from India. But, he has nothing else to do, and finally looks up and notices me as a person.

The 'why me in particular' light bulb goes off in my head as he now talks with good eye contact about his studies.

At the least, I offer him mom-like reassurance about how easy it is to find a cab at the Ascot station, how he'll likely make it to the interview on time. He looks less stressed.

The train arrives, and we reach Ascot at 1:10.

But by the time we part near the taxis, I also have his name and contact information in my little book, just in case some other 'why me in particular' reason comes to pass.

I don't want to be on stage. I don't want to play a role. I just want to be me, truthful as can be.

the cup a white ceramic bowl
warmed my hands
the tea the color of rosewood
hot, wet and fragrant
a burning sip, and then another, and another
I set the cup upon the table
offered my passport
and boarded the shuttle
packed with other travelers
ready to board the ferry

'The difference between you and me,' a visiting Chinese student told University of Michigan psychologist Richard Nisbett not long ago, 'is that I think the world is a circle, and you think it is a line.'

'The Age of U-Turns'
Bruce Grierson
Time Magazine
April 16, 2007

A year ago I was a band mom. The Dripping Springs High School Band. I handed out uniforms before performances. Tucked hat fezs into compartmentalized boxes. Rode in noisy, boxy yellow buses. Attended countless football games, barbecue dinners and concerts to hear and watch them perform. Gave band mom hugs.

I wasn't a big contributer in terms of time or leadership, but I showed up. I was reliable. The faces of the students, the teachers, the parents were familiar and very beautiful to me.

It wasn't about me, though I focus here on me to give the one bit of the picture I know. It was about my son and the hundred other kids who showed up excruciatingly early morning after morning to march in a parking lot carrying heavy or awkward instruments. It was about the teachers who gave beyond their limits to be there for their students, to open the right doors for them at just the right time. It was about the moms and dads who created space and resources within which the kids could develop. Who were physically present. It was about music. It was about competetive spirit, honor, comaraderie, endurance, passion and the development of good judgment. And it was very much about love.

I was pulling my baggage (one light the other heavy with only one wheel remaining) in circles outside of the ferry terminal in Poole, searching for the train station. A woman on the street below had sweetly given me precise, incorrect directions and then watched me struggle the wrong way. (I had already experienced some of the local Monty Pythonish antics toward Americans-but did not understand what was happening at the time.)

I followed her directions and then found I was back at the beginning. I stood and carefully removed my trench coat, folded it, and tucked it into a bag. I looked around at the same three choices I'd started with. I chose the one that seemed definitely wrong, the only one I had yet to try. Bumping the bags up over curbs into my already bruised ankle. No, an earnest gentleman told me. I must turn around.

Back to the circle. Once I realized I was going in circles I calmed. Hadn't I been practicing this since I arrived in Paris? Overwhelmed my first full day, I'd slowly repeated a circular route of an area that drew me, passing under the room where Chopin had died several times. I later did the same on small peninsulas on the beach, surrounded by running rivulets. Inside the Notre Dame Cathedrale in Bayeux.

I found you may also make the same circle, but change direction. Things look very different approached from the other perspective, though it's the very same path.

I did finally breakaway from the demoralizing circle in Poole. And though even it was not the last circle, I am now in Ascot, and quite content.

Ito is facing ocean--his arms down, his hands lightly flexed as though his hands are listening. He stands. We stand behind him.

He seems to be anchoring all discord into calm.

from Easter Monday
Taimyo meditation at Omaha Beach

I called it the Happy Bird. One faithfully awakened me every morning at 6:45 on the dot at Omaha Beach. Such a cheerful and complex vocalist.

I saw one singing high in a tree-speaking to another across the road who was always quick to respond. I described the bird today to the young cabbie-and he said without pause: Ah. C'est un Gorge Rouge.

The men are using their shields as dining tables.

A muzzled bear tied to a tree is about to receive the stroke of a sword.

A soldier tenderly washes another's facial wounds.

Horses gaze from the side of a boat. This brings tears to my eyes.

I'm moved to be here. The 'Tapisserie de Bayeux' brings to life the campaign of William the Conqueror. The building of ships, the transport of helmets and spears. The border of the tapestry is lined by snakes and fish and boar and goats and birds. I can hear the clapping of horses' hooves against cobblestone.

I also hear the laughter and conversation of those making the stitches. I see the pride that went into this horse, the thought that went into choice of color, whether to let the line of the haunch show through the tail. Hundreds of feet of embroidered story. Someone had a very large thought-to create a history book of thread. And then there is the final horse-that gallops right off the tapestry onto the border toward beyond...

perhaps toward us on this day, hundreds of years into future.

a turtle on its back
doesn't wait for rescue
it rocks softly
forward and back
side to side
back and forward
momentum and gravity
and maybe some spin
tip it back on path

Here I go
unprepared but jumping in...
I hope to make some sporadic entries
these next 2-3 weeks of travel...

'How do you like my new shoes?' I asked two women in apparel.

They had heard me squeaking and looked me in the face--as though I were squeaking from the vocal cords. Then they looked down and laughed.

I love my green disposable flip-flops, made of what looks like postal packing material.

Sometimes you have to make a fashion statement.

It’s not that it’s terribly complicated--but there are nuances in judging when the sauce is the right consistency, how to season it, what size to cut the vegetables, how much filling will be just the right amount for the crust.

I made a chicken pie tonight--leftover chicken, green beans, potatoes, onion, carrot, celery in a white sauce--but I can’t share how I make it. I make it differently every time. Results are not consistent--there’s some chance involved--but tonight, it came out quite good, the crust very tender, flaky, and evenly browned. The chicken melted in the mouth.

I’m happy to have someone to cook for. Good food has a certain magic. People expand and relax with each other under its influence--its aromas, its textures. We are physical beings who experience the spirit in physical ways.


04-02-07

She awoke,
an arrow on a pulled string

She became
the archer and aimed…

though it was now day
the arrow zeroed in

on one little light
calling through distant trees…