“O’er the land of the greed, and the home of depraved!” That’s the line that popped into my head as I surfed the headlines this morning. Is it original, or was it merely stored in the back of my brain from past reading? I don’t know. It’s clever. It’s pertinent. It’s unpatriotic. And I don’t believe it.

America (and I mean the United States of America) suffers now in the midst of infernal combustion: the combustion of ideas and forests and weapons. The combustion of one culture creating sparks against another. We are embroiled, as it were, in the troubles and perils of the entire planet.

Of course, it’s been this way ever since the Big Bang. Ours is a tiny planet, after all, in the scheme of the universe. Those of us who believe in evolution might sense the impossibly imperceptible changes occurring eon by eon that might eventuate in bacteria ruling the planet (again). Those tiny beasties already outweigh the people on the earth. Human life–or even human consciousness apart from “life as we know it”–might be getting ready to leave its earthly origins for some other form of existence as we find a way to leap off into space. Is this encouraging, or not??

From an evolutionary perspective, nothing can save us from self-inflicted destruction. Human beings have been pillaging nature ever since we picked up a stick with our grasping hands and learned how to stand up and run away from lions and tigers and bears. But we have yet to incorporate into our minds the wisdom of the ancients that says, without exception, “human and divine are one.” Our rituals and religions and familial connections have developed a capacity in us, with the facility of language, to shape us in that direction. But we have a long way to go to become one with each other, let alone the divine, before we literally burn ourselves up.

So, back to the quip that launched this essay. Americans are greedy. With our imagination, our innovation, our entrepreneurial spirit, we’ve been busy and productive, and we think we deserve to hang onto the stuff those efforts have created. To claim a share of the stuff is one reason people from other parts of the planet want to come here. They want to bring their own capabilities and to fish their own rewards out of this same pool of opportunity.

I say, what’s the problem with that? There’s room. In the lingo of today, this is not a Zero Sum Game. What you get does not diminish what I get. What I give does not diminish what I have. In fact, it probably increases it. Even the Bible is clear on this: “…give, and gifts will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap; for whatever measure you deal out to others will be dealt to you in return.” (Luke 6:38) Sounds like a very good deal to me!

As for depraved? Definitions of “depraved” may be subjective. Personally, I think football skirts the edge, judging by the violence, the brutality, and the facial contortions on and off the field. However, I do not make light of the human history of torture, slavery, murder, and wanton destruction. We can’t simply avert our eyes from the headlines and be done with it. For now, I leave the decision about what you are meant to do about it here and now right there in your own heart. For comfort and guidance, I offer another bit of semi-ancient wisdom, from a Biblical writer: “And now, my friends, all that is true, all that is noble, all that is just and pure, all that is lovable and gracious, whatever is excellent and admirable—fill your thoughts with these things.” (Philippians 4:8)

Find something like that every single day and fill your mind with it, if even for a few minutes. You’ll evolve well.

I’ve just read Carlo Rovelli’s little book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. He’s an Italian, one of the founders of the loop quantum gravity theory. His concluding chapter has to do with what we human beings actually are: that is, rather insignificant products of, and in, a universe we are gradually learning more and more about, thanks to consciousness, whatever that may be. We human beings are not, after all, so terribly special to the universe itself.

“I believe that our species will not last long,” he opines….”All of our cousins are already extinct.” Our closest cousins anyway. Chimpanzees and bonobos are still around.

Being individuals of a doomed species may look like a dismal prospect, even though you and I are not living in the final final stages of the process of human extinction–which actually looks inevitable to me, too.

So whether or not all the sick people get medical care, all the starving people get food, all the homeless people get shelter, all the good/bad people get what they deserve are rather short-term issues.

It might even be time that the shredded, outdated document we look to reverently (or irreverently) as our U. S. Constitution gets tossed in the dustbin. We have way too many laws, and they don’t seem to help much when it comes to standing in the way of the downhill evolution of the human species. I mean, even Moses didn’t accomplish all that much, and the laws he delivered have been around for thousands of years already.

When it comes to human life, the laws of physics matter far more than the laws of Congress or even of religion.

But here we are. Some of us have children to think of. Some of us even think of the whole species spread over the planet. Can we do something for ourselves? For them? Will it matter, from where we are now? Even time itself, according to physics, is only a “thing” as it falls within our ability to notice it and, in a limited way, measure it. Where are we “now”?

As we roll into 2020, a nice round number, perhaps we can all relax. Fear and panic won’t stand in the way of physics one little bit. On what laws shall we rest our daily decisions? To what ends apply our personal resources and energies? As a human being with a mysterious capacity called consciousness, we each get to choose.

Rovelli speaks of our being naturally curious about the nature of our humanity and our place in the universe. “We are made of the same stardust of which all things are made, and when we’re immersed in suffering or when we are experiencing intense joy, we are being nothing other than what we can’t help but be: part of our world.”

Be you. That’s it.

What is it? It is a Squirrel Feeder.

Y’see, the idea is this: You fill the hollow unicorn head with peanuts in the shell, along with a shmear of peanut butter to make them stick inside. Then you suspend the unicorn head over a suitable platform, like this picnic bench, and wait for a squirrel to show up.

When it does, it sticks its head inside the hollow unicorn head to raid the peanuts, and VOILA! The hilarious appearance of a unicorn-headed squirrel. That is what happens according to the photo on the box. Three hours in, and we have yet to see a squirrel rise to the occasion. There are hundreds of squirrels in our neighborhood. Where are they now? Are they actually savvy to being suckered? Are we?? The photos on the box are without doubt photoshop fantasies. Even squirrels are not this dumb.

Now you may ask…

Who feeds squirrels?? They seem to get fat and reproduce freely year-round on their own.
Why a unicorn head? The line on the box explains: “Watch Squirrels Become Magical”. That’ll be the day.
Whose nutty idea is this anyway?

We surmise that some opportunistic soul (country of origin not identified on the box) came by a truckload of surplus plastic unicorn heads at a really great price and snapped them up. Turns out these plastic heads are: Too small for a person to wear. Too large and clunky for cat toys (and cats wouldn’t cooperate anyway.) Out of fashion as hobbyhorses. Insufficiently diverse to populate a mini-carousel. Must have been thousands of ideas floated.

Finally–the Unicorn Squirrel Feeder! Yes!! That’ll capture the imagination of online shoppers everywhere! Especially shoppers with a family history of squirrel jokes.

Frankly, I don’t see this silliness being topped for a long, long time to come. Even so, we are grateful these days for anything that makes us laugh. Thank you to the thoughtful giver, who obviously appreciates creative enterprise.

P. S. If and when we catch a squirrel in flagrante as a unicorn, we’ll try to get the picture.

In the early morning, I sit for a while in quiet mindfulness (or good intentions anyway). After that, I spend time with poetry or inspirational reading, with my journal, and with Bob the Cat snoozing in my lap. Then I cue up the computer. Truth be told, it’s my time with the computer that makes me feel truly connected. That’s when my friendships and my feelings for the world get real.

For one thing, every day, I receive at least three “feeds” from poetry sites. Reading the many voices from around the world reminds me that poetry has many expressions, but humanity is one. Sometimes I recognize the names of the poets. Occasionally I know one of them personally. The stories they tell and the emotions they reveal make them all personal. And my own efforts at writing and publishing poetry fall into perspective.

My email often brings letters from friends. One in particular. In the olden days, this friend and I used to carry on an extended correspondence by snail mail. I have a bin full of her paper letters. I intend to donate these to her alma mater as The Personal Correspondence of Two Twentieth Century Poets. Some future graduate student researcher (if there are any English majors left) writing a thesis paper may have to guess at the other half of the exchange, that is, my letters to her. But never mind. My friend’s letters alone are a goldmine of cultural and literary perspective. Now we talk by email. That’s great, but I haven’t yet created a reliable archive to keep the comments accessible. Perhaps that future researcher can dig it all up, like a digital archaeologist.

I discover other connections, too, as I click the Delete button down the list of advertising, informational sites, newsfeeds, and junk mail. Opening my email is a surprise gift every day. As a favorite poet, Gary Miranda, once wrote:

Who knows what spiked image
you plan to drive into our
hearts today? What happy
things wait like familiar coats
on the backs of so many chairs?

Gary Miranda
from “The Small Owl of Complaint” in Listeners at the Breathing Place

Finally, I click on the websites or, yes, Facebook pages of people I appreciate having in my life.

What a busy social life I have before nine o’clock in the morning!
Takes me at least three cups of coffee to enjoy it all.

“The secret to success,” chirps the fitness instructor on the video, “is getting started.” As I plant my feet in position for the first set and hoist my hand weights for the warm-up, I mentally pat myself on the back. “Forgive me,” I confess to the forever lithe and muscular priestess on the tv screen in the Church of Procrastination. “It has been seven months since my last workout. I’m sorry.” But here I am. Getting started. Again.

The message about getting started comes to me in many ways. The Tao says, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Nike (the shoe, not the goddess) says, “Just do it.” “Never put off until tomorrow…” declares the old adage. One of my favorite messages is the poem below from the literary magazine Plains Poetry Journal (no longer published.) Over the years since I first ran across it, I’ve tried to track down the author to say how much it has meant to me—to help me understand how life actually works, and to smile at myself.

NOT DOING IT

You’re supposed to do it.
You’ve been supposed to do it for weeks
But now you’re really supposed to do it
But it’s going to hurt to do it
So you’re sitting there not doing it
And you’re so guilty that
Not doing it hurts almost as much as doing it.
When it hurts more than doing it
You’ll do it.

George Randall Griffin

Perhaps guilt isn’t the best motivation for doing the right thing. But I take heart in the idea that the moment will come eventually. The moment to get started. With good intentions held in my mind, with or without guilt, I can usually expect to recognize the moment when it finally arrives, the moment when I can “just do it.” Sometimes, truth be told, the intentions and the actions simply evaporate. That’s all right, too. “Not doing it” means letting go of whatever result the action might have produced, and that’s another story about priorities and perhaps ultimate purpose. Still, the “secret to success” of any sort is…getting started.

For now, thank you, George Randall Griffin, and Jari Love (my perky video workout pal), and my Inner Mom, and whoever shows up occasionally as my poetic Muse. You inspire me and encourage me toward every hopeful moment of getting started.

P. S. Could you please just stop keeping me awake at night???

A phenomenon familiar to investigators engaged in domestic inquiry, the evaporation of solid objects occurs with increasing frequency in households with residents over the age of seventy. Objects most likely to evaporate include reading glasses, car keys, wallets, and (a new category since these have come into common use) cellular communication devices.

Evaporation occurs at random, and usually with maximum importunity in respect to need and/or spousal urgency. Evaporation occurs independently of the last remembered location of the object, as the object is, in every case, not found there.

Evaporated objects often reconstitute at any time, and in any location, following the termination of research or the substitution of alternate objects of similar utility. However, factors of inconvenience, irritation, and spousal disaffection may increase the time between evaporation and reconstitution or substitution. Permanent evaporation may occur, but this cannot be determined until the previous factors have multiplied to the nth degree.

The cause is unknown.

Study Verified and Submitted by Barbara Loots
10/29/19

I’m tired of Old White Men Everything. Old White Men talking. Old White Men posturing. Old White Men slithering. Old White Men….

There. Got that off my chest. The fact is, I grew up with the words and even wisdom of Old White Men burned into my brain cells. Some of it still matters to me. But ever since I woke up and smelled the coffee as a young woman struggling to be herself, I’ve realized that making the coffee wasn’t my lifelong vocation. I’ve spent a lifetime—a pretty long one by now—exploring other paths and listening for other voices. My deepest goal has always been to connect with the nature of the universe in which I live and move and have my being, to reach for a relationship with whatever unnameable “that” (to grab a word from an ancient text) put all of “this” within reach of my human senses.

From childhood, I’ve been taught the names, and assured by the presence, of a Spirit, if you will, which I believe is common to all humanity. My earliest theology still pertains: God is Love. And, furthermore, I know it because Jesus loves me. This fundamental pathway to personal and universal meaning provides more than enough wonder and work for a lifetime. I’m on it. But there are a great many Old White Men words (in English, my native language) to sort through.

Setting aside for the moment the word “God,” the word “love” holds a barrel-full of meanings. Lately, I’ve come to appreciate a different word used more often in ancient wisdom which has an even bigger embrace. The word is Compassion. Let me try this out:

“I may speak in tongues of [humans] or of angels, but if I am without [Compassion], I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” Read the rest of this if you will in the New Testament scripture called First Corinthians chapter 13, with the substitute word. The guy who presumably wrote this passage wasn’t exactly an old “white” man. He did well writing this. I like it even better with the word change.

Compassion. Any voice in the world which does not carry with its every utterance a heartfelt compassion for the whole universe of people, plants, animals, thoughts, and things must be drowned out. Not silenced, just overwhelmed. I think it’s happening, Old White Men.

A woman in a bright blue suit is pointing a finger of truth and accountability at you. Women in space suits are breaking into the pure light of space and science (not to mention the one in—don’t you love it!—Mission Control). Women are stepping up to defend and support the importance of children, their health and education, and the communities they grow up in, all over the world. Women are answering to the cries of Compassion.

Old White Men, better start listening. I think your day is over.
 

 
JUST MAKE THE COFFEE
 
for Jodi
 

You have to get over it, being a woman and all,
that history turns on the sayings and doings of men.
The tears and the trials of women, we cannot recall.
The trail of her story will never be traveled again.
 
Even the Marys were speechless for most of the book.
Mother and friend and the lover anointing his head
had little to say. But consider the courage it took,
giving birth, being loyal, reporting the words of the dead.
 
We just have to be there, intelligent, practical, mute,
while men with their pencils are busily spinning the tale.
But dogma and ritual, bluster and bloody dispute
will not–over listening and touching and loving–prevail.
 
Barbara Loots

Published in Windshift
 

Near my home there’s a beautiful park where I love to walk.  Actually, it’s a parkway—part of an extensive park and boulevard greenway through the heart of midtown Kansas City.  Created beginning in 1895 by distinguished landscape designer George E. Kessler, this preserve of natural beauty was promoted by local visionaries like August Meyer and William Rockhill Nelson.  Today it holds secure a breathing space for busy urban dwellers.

What I love most about my park, besides the comfy rubberized walking path, is the trees.  I can imagine that a few of these sycamore giants might have hung over wagon trains that used to stop at a spring (now directed underground) not far from my house.  Gnarled and leaning, old trees line the path I walk, and call me to reflections on time and timelessness.

At the cottage, I enjoyed a book of meditations by Richard Wagamese, a Canadian of Ojibway heritage writing out of his everyday practice of traditional spirituality.  The book is Embers.  I commend it to you for the thoughts as well as the beautiful photography.

As suggested by the dab of information in the poem below, perhaps the trees in my neighborhood speak to each other, under the ground.  For certain they speak to me as I observe their changing seasons and living and dying.  A fascinating book I’m in the middle of is The Overstory by Richard Powers.  Trees figure pretty big in his stories, too.

I’m not yet satisfied with the poem, with its abrupt and perhaps puzzling ending.  It waits in my notebook for revision.  Your comments are welcome.  But I do imagine and even believe that trees and people and all creation interconnect in both physical and mystical ways. Taking time to be quiet in my green breathing space puts me in touch.

The photograph: an old oak tree in Ohio where I walked awhile ago.

INTERCONNECTED
 
Tree talk, tree people, as my own people say.

                        Richard Wagamese, Embers

 

We hear a siren screaming through the trees.

We thought we’d left behind emergencies

that startle our sleep so often back in town

where gritty things are always coming down.

 

Will help come soon enough for something dire?

A heart attack? An injury? A fire?

Or God forbid there might have been a crime

out here in our retreat to the sublime.

 

I’ve read that fungus spreading underground

connects the roots of trees for miles around

with tree talk that Ojibway people know

helps all tree people harmonize and grow.

 

But what about the cedars we can see

dying around us, one by one, one tree

sick at the root?  Whatever the paradigm,

that siren stops at someplace else this time.

 

 

Barbara Loots
 
 

I’m persuaded that some people are born to write.  No one “becomes” a poet or novelist or journalist: one merely follows the spirit and learns the craft that comes naturally.  Some people write successfully in several genres.  I marvel at famous writers whose skill embraces novel, memoir, essay, poetry. Whenever I pick up a copy of, say, National Geographic or Smithsonian Magazine, I’m altogether impressed with the research, scholarship, and adventuring spirit that produce this avalanche of intriguing information. At our house, these are coffee table magazines: here today, gone tomorrow.  For that matter, every article in the morning papers or weekly news magazines has been produced by a writer putting his or her talent and integrity to work. How casually I toss them in the recycle bin.

So it seems especially ridiculous at this time in my life to realize that I once wanted to be “known” as a serious poet.  Known by whom?  What for?  Well, for one thing, if you’re a writer by calling, you hope to have readers.  Finding readers for poetry has always been a bit of a mystery, ever since popular magazines mostly stopped publishing verse.  You won’t find a Dorothy Parker or an Ogden Nash, a Phyllis McGinley or a Robert Frost drawing national attention anymore.  A few poets today are well-known.  Mary Oliver and Billy Collins come to mind.  But can you name the current U. S. Poet Laureate?

So when I first began trying to publish my poems back in the 70s, I aimed for a literary audience, with the hope of piling up some credibility, or merely some credits.  I discerned that a long list of literary publications was essential in the climb to compile a body of work, perhaps a book, and to gain recognition among peers. Literary journals had a ranking of prestige.  So, naturally, I always submitted my poems first to The New Yorker and to Poetry Magazine.  I mean, why not?   You never know what an editor will do.  Rejection piled upon rejection.

Eventually, I found a kind of niche with my poems appearing in so-called little magazines where the poets—who were also the main readers and subscribers—were people I thought I’d like to be friends with.  Indeed, I did become friends with many, most marvelously with Gail White, a Louisiana poet who has by now been my friend for more than forty years, thanks to our meeting up in the pages of The Lyric.

Most of my education as a poet came through books.  No university had yet invented an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) degree in “creative writing.” I was on my own and adopted my own teachers, some of whom I met in person at workshops and conferences.  Gradually, I came to balance with my abilities and aspirations.

I have long since realized that the poems I made through the years were not so much about the audience out there as the audience within:  my spirit speaking to the deepest values and beliefs of my own self, and bringing out the words.  That body of work reaching back to my 20s reveals things I knew before I knew that I knew them.  The poems, published or not, are the philosophical journal of my life.  Turns out that’s all the reason I need for having written them. (But publication is still very satisfying.)

There are thousands of poets out there, writing in thousands of voices.  I read poems every day.

My favorite feeds (you can find your own way to the URLs):

Garrison Keillor’s Writers’ Almanac

Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry

Enjoyable online literary magazines:

LightPoetryMagazine.com

Better Than Starbucks

So…dip in.  Poetry needs readers like you.

P. S. Early on, I aimed to be a “serious” poet—or at least to be taken seriously. It was tough enough being a professional writer for Hallmark, that notorious vendor of lugubrious sentiment.  Happily for me, I fell into the coterie of serious poets who realize that it takes brute cleverness to write humorous, light, and lively verse.  So-called light verse can serve up profound insight.  Who knew?

Pictured: Serious poet at work in the early morning hours at the cottage.  Not exactly by candlelight, but close.

You’ve probably heard that the worldwide population of bats has been in serious decline, owing to disease and habitat destruction. Bats hold a significant place in a healthy ecosystem, and the loss of them holds consequences yet to unfold. So Bill took on the task of furnishing a home for bats on Dickinson Island, just in case.

From an approved bat-friendly pattern on the internet, he designed the bat house, cut the parts, and added a finish according to specifications. On the island, he put it together and placed the Bat Mansion in a superb location under a southern eave of the cottage. Now…we have only to wait for the bats to arrive in the spring when they are seeking their summer homes.

There are a lot of “ifs.”
…if there are any vagrant bats in the vicinity
…if any of them happen to be passing by a small island in the middle of a small lake
…if they happen to notice a likely accommodation
…if the bat house meets with their approval

We have our own interests in mind. Bats are known to eat their weight in mosquitoes every night. Have we got a feast for them! The dragonflies can’t do it all. Perhaps a little bat guano would be good for an herb garden? We hope to welcome such helpful neighbors.

INVOCATION FOR THE INSTALLATION
OF A BAT HOUSE

1
Built to specs we hope you will approve,
the bat house sheltered underneath an eave
on the south side of the cottage near the peak
awaits you on the island at the lake.

We lift this invitation on the wind
that you, our furry flying cousins find
a home here in the spring, your ample food
mosquitoes surfeited on human blood.

2
O Bats
flying fur
brothers and sisters,
come by here.

Here’s home and haven
under the eave,
warm room for you and
your children to come.

Come by here.
Some April
sometime to come.

 

Barbara Loots