Friday, December 24, 2010

The Other Kingdoms



Consider the other kingdoms.  The
trees, for example, with their mellow-sounding
titles: oak, aspen, willow.
Or the snow, for which the peoples of the north
have dozens of words to describe its
different arrivals.  Or the creatures, with their
thick fur, their shy and wordless gaze.  Their
infallible sense of what their lives
are meant to be.  Thus the world
grows rich, grows wild, and you too,
grow rich, grow sweetly wild, as you too
were born to be.



Ten months ago Mary had a poem, "The Other Kingdoms" where crows rebuke her for entering their kingdom.  I replied that "the crows in their calls test our resolve - do we or do we not belong to the family of things?  We do.  Love does not lie."

Not only do we belong to the family of things, we belong to our own human family.  We were born to fuss and to scrape, to murder and to grieve, to grow addicted and complacent, and to weep at a child's birth and a spouse's death.  This we were born to do,, and yet, so much more.

Each day we have the chance to grow richer and wilder. 

How shall you grow rich and wild today?

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