Monday June 15, 2009
Let Birds
By Linda Gregg
Eight deer on the slope
in the summer morning mist.
The night sky blue.
Me like a mare let out to pasture.
The Tao does not console me.
I was given the Way
in the milk of childhood.
Breathing it waking and sleeping.
But now there is no amazing smell
of sperm on my thighs,
no spreading it on my stomach
to show pleasure.
I will never give up longing.
I will let my hair stay long.
The rain proclaims these trees,
the trees tell of the sun.
Let birds, let birds.
Let leaf be passion.
Let jaw, let teeth, let tongue be
between us. Let joy.
Let entering. Let rage and calm join.
Let quail come.
Let winter impress you. Let spring.
Allow the ocean to wake in you.
Let the mare in the field
in the summer morning mist
make you whinny. Make you come
to the fence and whinny. Let birds.
***
I really like this poem. I like the sentiment of the poem. I like the gentleness of it, but the urgency. I like bossy poems that tell you what to do: ‘Wake up! Notice this! Feel this! Remember this! Get your priorities straight, already!’
I do, however, find ‘whinny’ to be an intrinsically comical word, so the effect of the poem falters a little for me there, because I giggle a bit at the idea of being told to whinny…
And yet, I am just the kind of nut-ball who would go up to a horse and ‘whinny’ for the fun of it. Trying to speak horse to the horse who doesn’t speak human.
*neigh!*