Pine Trees Sleep Standing Up--Blog Entry #4

Sunday, February 17, 2013

3:00pm

21˚F

"They slept standing"

Everyone collapses into sleep differently. The living let their bodies bend into crescent moons. Let their eyes shutter and sway until they close into the dark and flooded basins of their wilted moon bodies. The living let themselves shine through the black swells of their bedrooms, let themselves lay still and static among the stars. The living let their bodies lose control, let them be limp, be vulnerable to all that is still awake. The living sleep when their bodies are too tired to hold the weight, to hold the happiness, the pain. The living sleep to escape, to dream, to not feel the burden of the world’s dark.  

"their throats curved against the other's rump"

Pine trees in this cemetery sleep standing up. Day or night their bodies are built for it. The girth of them, the immense weight they hold would never survive curved or bent. Their barked throats need to be open, to feel the wind rush at their hollowed chests like a bird careening into a window. They need to know their power, to be alert, to never give in like humans to the world’s dark. These pine trees are good at disguising their rest. Right when you think you have caught them in a deep sleep, when you think you could capture their lifelessness in your delicate eyes, they rustle their stout limbs into the sky. They whine and howl as if their russet hearts were to break right through their timber bodies.

"They breathed against each other,

whinnied and stomped"

Pine trees in this cemetery are the protectors; the giant spirit warriors that spread their green branch over the dead like the sky veils the living with her one blue limb. They are here to shadow the dead, to be a second skin to their grave. On this cold day, my living body needs protecting. I choose to sit under an eastern white pine. He is a big body compared to my small body and he knows it. As our forms touch, his bark rubbing against mine, I feel a part of the protecting, that our bodies are one tall warrior timber. I feel my spirit, my moon, leap from my chest and reach through him like an unstoppable vein until I reach his eyes.

From this height I see everything. I see myself so far below fragile and beaten. I see the other pines in a deep earthly concentration. I see them surveying the cemetery for something I cannot see or hear or understand. I see my uncle’s grave and the shadow that penetrates him from the limb of a young pine. I wonder if he can feel her, if he can feel her one limb protecting him. At this height I cannot see what the pines are shielding the dead from. I wonder if they are guarding them from the living. I wonder if the dead do not want visitors, do want to hear or feel their love ones mourning over their bodies. From this height my own presence below seems like a burden, seems like the dark spot that the living try to escape from through sleep.

I pull my spirit back into my chest and see again from my human level. The pines are pretending to sleep, but I know their games. I can feel the thumping of the big body eastern white behind me. He is tired, but awake and alert. The cemetery is also awake. Families of deer are all around and I can hear the mallard ducks singing and splashing in the pond. I cannot see or talk to the dead, but I know they are not sleeping. It is not that they are trapped or that they are unable to close their eyes, but that if they give in to sleep they know they will lose it all, that the earth will somehow disappear. I want to stay awake for them; I don’t want to miss anything.  

"There are things they did that I do not know"

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Pine Trees Sleep Standing Up--Blog Entry #4 Inspired By:

"The Weight"

by Linda Gregg

Two horses were put together in the same paddock.

Night and day. In the night and in the day

wet from heat and the chill of the wind

on it. Muzzle to water, snorting, head swinging

and the taste of bay in the shadowed air.

The dignity of being. They slept that way,

knowing each other always.

Withers quivering for a moment,

fetlock and the proud rise at the base of the tail,

width of back. The volume of them, and each other's weight.

Fences were nothing compared to that.

People were nothing. They slept standing,

their throats curved against the other's rump.

They breathed against each other,

whinnied and stomped.

There are things they did that I do not know.

The privacy of them had a river in it.

Had our universe in it. And the way

its border looks back at us with its light.

This was finally their freedom.

The freedom an oak tree knows.

That is built at night by stars.

Visiting the Small Bodies--Blog Entry #3

Sunday, February 3, 2013

2:45pm

26˚F

"It is hard sometimes, oh Lord,
to be faithful."

There is a pond at the center of this cemetery where mallard ducks wash themselves in the water’s cold and lucid skin. The men’s green marbled heads dip into the earth’s frigid belly like a baby into sleep, harsh and deliberate. The women watch with their streaked brown silhouettes bold against the water. The mallards are the only flowers of winter still in full bloom with their emerald and dark bodies waving in the snow. I wonder if they see me here at the water’s hem, if they recognize me as something human or as just another still pine. I see them; see how they exceed my human limits every time they lower themselves into the olive rust of the water. I want to believe they are free, that if they wanted they could dive full under the pond and rub their bones against her frozen glass hide. I want to believe that they could leave; slip quietly and float like an ethereal beacon, all oily and feathered, all spilled out in the sky. That they could disappear into a wilder wetland, into a place their gleaming heads, gray flanks, and black tail-curls could be silently striking. I want to believe they know they are beautiful, that when their bodies come together on the ice, so close, almost touching, they are more real, more constant than the cold running through my veins. I want to believe they see me too, feel my presence like I feel theirs, deep and filling.

"I am more boldly made
than the little ducks, paddling and laughing."

It is not so hard to be faithful here when these mallard ducks, these small bodies, comfort the water, warm the water from itself. It is not so hard when I see them playing like school children, splashing and carrying on, their yellow and dull orange and black wired beaks pressing against the other. It is not so hard when I think they could be in love, could be mothers, could be fathers, sisters and brothers. It is not so hard when I witness these winter suns, these winter stars lead each other through the day, through the melting puddles of the pond, into night. It is not so hard to be faithful when offered faith, but these mallard ducks do not know what I know. These mallard ducks do not know they are put here to not only comfort the water, but the man who visits his brother, the brother who waits for the man, the woman who visits her uncle, the uncle that waits for the woman. These mallard ducks are some-what of commodities and although their wings are still able, they are tied by an invisible rope—the human rope of mourning.

"I know you know everything –"

I wonder if this cemetery, this thin place, forces the natural to be used like a drug. Each thick pine a needle inserted into the vein, each fleck of snow strong or stronger than cocaine, each mallard duck a bruise left as a reminder of the high. Is that what happens when we see nature in a place full with death? Does nature know it is a part of this ritual of suffering? That often the people that visit self-medicate with its bare and trusting body?

"I rely on this."

It is snowing hard from the east and my human body feels like it could give under this white weight. I concentrate on the ice and the way the mallard men chase after the mallard women whose blue patches shine in the quilted light. I watch two mallards appear out of the blue and circle the pond before they land as light as the snow on their beaks. I am still as I can be under these conditions. Nature never seems to be cold. It moves all around me like a carousel. I cannot concentrate on the mallards or the sky or the rustling of the pines. Nature just keeps circling and circling until I am in the center of a singing ring of gold.

"Still, there are so many small bodies in the world,
for which I am afraid."

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Visiting the Small Bodies--Blog Entry #3 Inspired By:

“Small Bodies”

by Mary Oliver

It is almost summer. In the pond
the pickerel leap, and the delicate teal have brought forth
their many charming young,
and the turtle is ravenous.
It is hard sometimes, oh Lord,
to be faithful.
I am more boldly made
than the little ducks, paddling and laughing.
But not so bold
as the turtle
with his greasy mouth.
I know you know everything –
I rely on this.
Still, there are so many small bodies in the world,
for which I am afraid.