It’s hard to love you
when you shred me,
slice my skin on the sharp tips
of those needle teeth.
It’s hard to love you
when you track mud,
make puddles, and leave
stinking pellets behind you.
It’s hard to love you
but your eyes twinkle,
and your tail wags
and you keep trying to climb into my lap
It’s hard to love you
but the hard things are worthwhile.
I’m building a love story
with training and time.
I’m weary of tunnels.
Closing in around me,
narrowing the future
to a pinpoint of possibility
ahead of the foreboding train.
Will I choose you?
Or you?
Or will I choose at all?
Am I ready for this work
of nurturing potential?
My world is wound tightly
with possibility,
fighting emotionality with
rationality.
Tears appear;
truth pools in her eyes.
She looks out the window, scenery unseen,
one droplet, breaking free, tracks a slow progress across
cheek,
chin,
neck.
Another makes the parallel journey.
She turns her face, while she waits, wishes,
then slowly grows the knowledge
that what is
will be.
She weeps out the weakness.
While there may be grief,
acceptance brings resilience.
Resilience
is the power of belief
and relief.
Oh, her longings are loud
and she seizes opportunities,
reads the mysteries and leaps.
.
Oh, her caution curls her
into weeping domesticity,
because she never neglects responsibilities.
.
Oh, love leaps from the river
like a dolphin and tangles in
fishermen’s nets
and bridal veils.
.
.
A little homage to the theatrical presentation of the Brazilian folk tale The River Bride by Marisela Treviño Orta, enjoying its world premier at Oregon Shakespeare Festival at the moment (2016 season). We thoroughly enjoyed the complex tale with its stunning set and lighting!
Perhaps it is
some sort of survivor’s guilt
that the fractured fragments
the twisted tableaux of warped memories
those bêtes noires barely contained within your brain,
burst in sullen silence, tremulous terror, or
most disturbing, that zombie calm
of a human automaton.
Perhaps it is
just chemistry asserting its superiority:
neuro-biology exposing itself
as a short-circuiting electric conduit
for daily conduct.
Perhaps it is
an allegory for transformation
or
perhaps it is
futility that demonstrates fallibility
and ultimately, profound humility.
My nostrils are bitten
by the brisk scent of pine,
invigorating, enervating in the rain.
I follow my nose
to two freshly felled stumps
and marvel that death can smell
so very much alive.
I am overwhelmed
by my responsibilities
and the weight of my grief
that creeps up unexpectedly
to undermine my clarity
to bury me with memories
and underscore my sense of loss.
I’ll hide myself from Helios: find
some sand to stick my head beneath.
Each year a goose takes roost in
the osprey nest platform above the mill.
I suppose penthouse accommodations entice.
The view is lovely there,
and surely she feels superior to her kin
nesting waterfront (though their
recreational opportunities are greater).
Each year, after a month of goose occupancy,
the ospreys return.
I do not know the depth of the tragedy.
Do the evicted geese simply suffer homelessness,
or do they endure the grief of infanticide, as well?
Sometimes our lofty aspirations
are our undoing.
Our hubris is our hamartia,
but each year, in early spring, there’s a goose
in the osprey nest.
.
.
.
.
Remember your Shakespeare lessons? Hamartia is the ‘fatal flaw’ of your personality that leads to your downfall (most commonly in literary tragedies). Hubris is an excess of pride.
Shawn L. Bird 