The Falling Leaf and the Long Hug
Just why; don't know and so much seems baffling these days,
That it is worth it to process this phenomenon As well as the attachments and detachments, the hellos and goodbyes, the falling of the 'la vida qual un hoja seca…" https://youtu.be/5j9u1hrkL8M. A waltz.
If you share a very long kiss, then you know that when to stop is a good question; is sooo long that it defies imagination and takes on a character and life unto itself wherein one feels,truly a part of the other person and sensitivity and exploration of the genre becomes part and parcel of the activity. Not just a kiss but away and on a
brink, cusp, edge, point, verge.
And the very very long hug on the threshold" "I came to give you a hug." As it turned out, I knocked on the door and he came to the door looking sad and I said ‘ “ I came to give you a hug”. So we embraced for, perhaps, an hour or more right there on the threshold, straddling it.. The poetry does not escape me, as there were great questions being pursued non verbally at this precise location of the house: and the questions include: is this hug actually doing something important to make things better, in search of the wisdom of goodness; here is a hug as a kind and good way to pursue questions, enact safety as a care; as a way to break through; cross a threshold into something new and better. The length of the hug also involves a rather complicated question: when to stop hugging! This is similar to love and when to start kissing. In conversation, when to start or stop talking. When to go or stop anything. The poetry of the door, whose highest energy component from the perspective of a builder, is: Where is the threshold to be put; how high above the interior and exterior floors, how to connect these two major surfaces of the indoors and the outdoors, the inside and the outside ; how to connect with the actual door and make a good seal and sweep; to connect with the jamb and the screen, to be tough enough to withstand years of being tread upon, to be level and to stop wind and water from entering and to signify the very beginning of the home, in this case, where visitors cross over into a special space, not tripping, not slipping and smoothly as possible. This is the threshold that a groom carries a bride across. At my first wedding, I remember being drunk and trying to bring the bride and a large flowering plant gift, like a bougainvilla, into the house and tripping over the threshold with my new wife; both tumbling into the house, drunk and foolish and clumsy and fallen. Hmmm; not the best beginning, but there it all was; on the threshold.
*Today*; the two men clasped each others trunks and held on tightly for a very very long time; making a bond and connection that defies simple friendship and the one friend is purported to be very disturbed; so much that perhaps only a hug might be the activity of the day after an hour’s drive one way. A pregnant moment right there on the threshold of hope of some soothing of some deep sadness, anxiety. We were on the: brink, verge, cusp, edge, point,
The detachment from the hug and the next thing to do and/or say.
The falling leaf and Nicholaus’ casket:
Nicholaus died a large man and his dear large brother perhaps ordered up a large wooden dovetailed or finger jointed box coffin and after tapping down the lid with nails and with a little hammer. And the burial with the many mourners that seemed quintessentially black and the rain started pouring and the lightning was perceived to strike the freshly carved deep hole; deep enought for two (him and the woman he divorced!)
People were milling around the fake grass, the large pile of dirt, the fountain nearby and something was amiss and extreme specificity was called for; the very large coffin may not fit! Fractions of inches and perhaps afoot to the east, perhaps a quarter inch to the north,, perhaps if a large man (even me...but that is not my place here) to just stand on the coffin for ballast; and then the undertaker and the youngest son did just that.
And sweet sweet sister Lydia from Alaska emerged from the crowd to muse with me about this falling leaf production and see the poetry and the humor of the situation, like from Dostoevsky...and the merriment of this penultimate denouement stage and sweet Nick, kind, good, otherworldly, a personality that was wafted into life as a master of 'philo-kalia'...the search for and the study of the 'good'; his father's suggestion for a branch ot academic and spiritual pursuit..should be a branch paralleling philo-sophy!
See what I mean by baffling!
The falling leaf is it in on the threshold of another dimension; like a leaf carried downstream in a flashflood after wafting down after having detached from the tree.
The other bit is about what Ben asked me, breaking the ice by speaking, "have you been taking the ducks to the river? This relates to a piece I wrote, a poem of sorts that describes how taking the ducks to the creek can open up the heart and turn things around:.
Ducks On Creek
Sometimes;
I have a tightness in my throat, a slight vaguely debilitating
Queasiness in my gut; A dry feeling like something is missing
That I want to find to be whole,
Like hunger, like thirst, like boredom or dis-ease or fear and itchy clothes,
I sort of live with it.
Then:
When I take our ducks to the water, to the creek,
First out of their little prison home,
Where they have been saying “HA, HA, HA, HA, HA”
And we go wending, waddling our way, down the road, me prodding them
In the late afternoon sun, usually,
And I watch them immediately begin to play upon the bed, the creek bed
Splash, dive, splish, duck, tail wiggle, like happy dogs with bobs,
With utter abandon and no self-consciousness, busy at once, immediately,
Doing what they most certainly do best,
And I watch the water beads roll off their backs mercurially,
(and I think of all those “duck” expressions, thinking how great that
Words and reality can be so right on).
I watch them float and bob downstream between the rocks
Perfect little boatlets.
Then rapidly bill- poke the drink to garner little evasive edibles
And clean themselves all over, fluffing feathers, shaking, bill nipping and adjust,
Spreading riots of wetness all around them,
Great splashes and wing-flappings. Busy, totally busy,
And skimming over the Galisteo with breeding force.
And all the while the creek seems to like the ducks, too,
Bubbling, free spilling, ponding; eddy and susurrus rill,
And I want to be a part of it; I prompt them with my stick, light and long,
To deeper climes and funner spots, them happy as clams about it all,
And, in that whole time as I watch, the tightness goes away,
And my own joie de vivre returns, like an answered, unspoken prayer.
And we, as the sun sets, walk home, them needing no direction, calmly, Cleanly.
I am thankful for the river and the ducks, for the time,
For this time, this special time when all’s right, somehow,
Things are just as they should be, everything is in its right place.
And I want others to know this feeling tooAnd take their ducks to their creek for a spell.
Something that pure is…. something worth saving.
( my grandmother told me that 'we' can be traced back to Alfred the Great, and somehow I thought he was French, but I was being given a tour of the Stonehenge area some years ago and Uncle Michael was pointing out the barely visible spectre of the ancient Roman road to Bath from the car and then we drove a few more yards and he said , "this ditch is where Alfred the Great fought off the Danes and I said, "put on the brakes" . This falling leaf thing, the longest kiss, the longest hug and the biggest coffin all just baffles me.
I wonder if ducks wander and splish and trompse around, perhaps overly circumspect in the water like me on land or in a guy hug or a gal kiss, wonder if they are baffled too, at times. Ha, HA, ha,HA,, ha.
