Dependent on One's Point of View
A poem and a recording of the poem.
Article voiceover
Dependent on One’s Point of View
Where do we go When all is said? What continues on When we no longer continue? What is past this? I work in the yard a lot or, rather, I walk around the yard. Picking up pieces, moving them to places side tracked by other pieces moving them to other places. I get distracted given this tendency I have to spend time ruminating about the life in the dirt It’s miracle world all of the pieces and parts the seeds I don’t see the bugs I do the slowly shimmying drops that fall from the sky the ones from just the other morning And how eventually they are no longer drops no longer bugs no longer seeds How all nestles itself back toward a calm and relieving, collective, reprieve. This is what we are talking about when we are talking about soil. I live in a river city Hundreds of tiny veins of creek and stream flowing toward one main artery the Spokane that traverses through town. I think often of all these branches that pool into it so many little lives, so much variance. Tie-dyed clear water of endless distinction, place, personality Webbed together somehow and beautifully in one. No soil is without its parts, No watershed without pieces of place. All that has past is carried on by what it has loved by how it loved through what it wove itself into. Being is color unabashed vitality Multiplicity Soaring song Laughter Joy. Being is struggle again Heartache pain and tired resilience A conquering through love. Being is a face A sibling A lover A friend. Being, is a web. My wife has planted a garden simple tomatoes, snap peas and kale. All built from those little pieces that meld and mesh and arrive from and become Soil. Within me, the loved who have since past have flowed and found confluence. Their love, what they loved, how they loved, who it all carries forth. When we die we move from category to theme. From raindrop, seed, and bug to soil. From creek, stream, and river, to watershed. Scientist Merlin Sheldrake was quoted, “The individual is not an actual fact but a category that depends on one’s point of view.” The individual is not an actual fact but a category that depends on one's point of view. The indiivudal is not an actual fact but a category that depends on ones point of view. In the way that no tree is independent of other trees. In the way that the snap peas, tomatoes, and kale are uniquely, wonderfully them but webbed by soil and water, sun. In the way that the river is also the ocean. Memory is not a look back but a carrying forth with pride and gratitude A sustained existence An undercurrent of each piece being no mere individual but one strand of the web. Past, present and future Sustaining and celebrating and occupying All, Now.