13 - very Whitman incantations ("and I am the hunter.. and I am the fox... and I am the pawprint in the dust" etc) p. 24 - direct questions "do you have a question that can't be answered, (list continues). more whitman on 35 "bless the fingers, for they are as darting as fires. Bless the little hairs on the body... (etc)
19 - And I am thinking: maybe just looking and listening/ is the real work./ / Maybe the real world, without us,/ is the real poem
27 then the robins sings. // Then the bulb of the lily becomes the stalk,/ the stalk opens into a handkerchief of white light./..... O, what is beauty/ that I feel it to be so hot-blooded and suggestive,/ so filled with imperative// beneath the ease of its changes, /between the leaves and the clouds of its thousand// and again a thousand opportunities?
29 I know what is wonderful --/ I know what to hoard in my heart more than the value of pearls and seeds./ There was the day you first spoke my name./ There was a white house at the edge of the harbor./ There was the swan, and the hummingbird./There was music, and paper, and the tirelessly pursued work./There were a thousand and again a thousand unforgettable days. {a lovley section of a poem that is a love poem}
29 And, anyway, what is thought/ but elaborating, and organizing?/What is thought/but doubting, and crying out?
30 When the praying mantis opens its wings/it becomes a flower/When the egg breaks/it becomes a bird./ When the river is finished, its avenues of light/ fold and drop and fall into/and become the sea./
38 The vast, writhing/ worms of the sea/ are in their places// The white gulls/on the wet rocks/ are in their places.//All is certainty.
41 It is the nature of stone/to be satisfied./It is the nature of water/ to want to be somewhere else.// Everywhere we look:/the sweet guttural swill fo the water/tumbling./Everywhere we look:/the stone, basking in the sun.
49. * Evening Star...section 9 of God poem... which I'll make 9/1/26 poem in here.
69. similar theme in poem "Black Snake" .. "But tell me, if you would praise the world, what is it you would leave out? Besides, he is only hoping that you will let him live his life."
72 The Hummingbird - make this 9/11 poem
92 Crows - make this 9/21 poem
111 from Blue Iris: the fly and and the wind ask her what she's doing inside; she says writing... and it take stime.....
"It doesn't happen all of a sudden, you know.//"Doesn't it" says the wind, and breaks open, releasing/distillation of blue iris.//And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be,/ the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle."
121 Tree Sparrows - make this 9/11 poem?
140 All through our gliding journey, on this day as on so many others, a little song runs through my mind. I say a song because it passes musically, but it is really just words, a thought that is neither strange nor complex. In fact, how strange it would be not to think it -- not to have such music inside one's head and body, on such an afternoon. What does it mean, say the words, that the earth is so beautiful? And what shall I do about it? What is the gift that I should bring to the world? What is the life that I should live?
142 The different and the novel are sweet, but regularity and repetition are also teachers. Divine attentiveness cannot be kept casually, or visited only in season.
I would like to be like the fox, earnest in devotion and humor both, or the brave, compliant pond shutting its heavy door for the long winter. But, not yet have I reached that bright life or that white happiness -- not yet.
143 But, anyway, I make little use of the schoolhouse; it is the natural world that has always offered the hint of our single and immense divinity -- a million unopened fountains. In such a modd then, not of understanding but of knowing I am blessed even as moving from shade to sunlight we feel the engendering heat, I live my life... Once I saw the freshly built dam of two beaver, a half moon of mud and slender branches, the leaves still fresh upon them; then, as I watched, the water shoved with its silver gloves and it broken, it left the world forever. Hurry, hurry, open every door! say my heart. The blnak ants, running up and down their organized hill, are an opportunity. The soft toad in the hot sand is an opportunity. One hour at the edge of the waving sea is a feast of opportunities. Every morning, tumult and quietude marry each other and create light. The sun rises like a rosy plum. Birds, floating in the water, turn to watch. Sometimes, also, or so it seems, does the wind.
145 - poem - can you imagine - poem for 9/21?
156 And we might, in our lives, have many thresholds, many houses to walk out from and view the stars, or to turn and go back to for warmth and company. But the real one -- the actual house not of warmth and company. But the real one -- the actual house not of beams and nails but of existence itself -- is all of earth, with no door, no address separate from oceans or stars, or from pleasure or wretchedness either, or hope, or weakness, or greed. ("Wordsworth's Mountain")
162 And we are caught by the old affinity, a joyfulness -- his great and seemly pleasure in the physical world. Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift.
164 Once, years ago, I emerged from the woods in the early morning at the end of a walk and -- it was the most casual of moments -- as I stepped from under the trees into the mild, pouring-down sunlight I experienced a sudden impact, a seizure of happiness. It was not the drowning sort of happiness, rather the floating sort. I made no struggle toward it; it was given. Time seemed to vanish. Urgency vanished. Any important difference between myself and all other things vanished. I knew that I belonged to the world , and felt comfortably my own containment in the totality. I did not feel that I understood any mystery, not at all. rather that I could be happy and feel lessed within the perplexity -- the summer morning, its gentleness, the sense of the great work being done through the grass where I stood scarcely trembled. As I say, it was the most casual of moments, not mystical as the world is usually meant, for there was no vision, or anything extraordinary at all, but only a sudden awareness of the citizenry of all things within one world : leaves, dust, thrushes and finches, men and women. And it it was a moment I have never forgotten, and upon which I have based many decision in the years since. ("The Perfect Days")
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