When I was a child,
for a time,
the bridge was out.
They were replacing the rusty
iron trestle bridge
with a thick-slab concrete
monstrosity.
I could go down to the river,
and I could see the
scarred and marred
construction site,
& the big yellow machines
that sat dormant on the weekends.
But one couldn't cross the river --
not unless one was willing to get wet,
and was a better swimmer than I
(and it was autumn & the water cold.)
It was a strong current that swept
along between two steep banks.
It was not a great distance,
nor were they violent waters.
But that brown water moved with
such smooth swiftness.
I dream about the time the bridge was out,
now & again,
and wonder what it was
about those weeks
that still has meaning to my mind.
A construction worker once told me -
for a building to last -
depends not so much on
its materials,
nor even on its foundations,
but rather on the building being
in balanced strain throughout.
A building stays up when its
parts press into each other firmly,
or pull at each other strongly,
but never too out of balance.
This web of unseen forces
allows the building stand solid
against any huffing, or puffing,
the world might throw its way.
A democratic society works the same.
It must have an establishment.
It must have a counterculture.
And these two elements must
constantly pull at each other
or mash into each other:
tension & compression,
compression & tension,
tug-of-war & sumo.
If one side is unopposed, or too weak,
the state will crumble into some kind of
authoritarianism by another name.
Destroy your enemies at your own peril.
You're my Analects,
my Gita,
my Dao De Jing,
my sutras,
my Meditations,
and my Republic
all rolled into one.
You are the scripture by which I live.
You present a path to that rare place:
extreme confidence
which tears no one down,
but, rather, lifts all.
You achieve this by crushing
the ordinary.
Nothing is common.
Everything is a miracle.
(Even those leaves of grass
you repeatedly reference.)
No one is so rough
or promiscuous
or simple
as to be lowly.
Your author's unbridled enthusiasm
glowed with the insane confidence
of an adolescent boy,
but his awesomeness was never gained
by subtracting from others.
Rather by seeing the bright, beautiful spark
in each body,
mind,
pair of hands,
& burdened shoulder.
You are America,
the America we want to be.
The America that labors,
but which takes time to see
its natural wonders.
The America that heard what Jesus said,
and became less excelled at stone-throwing,
and more at cheek-turning.
The America that could see beyond dogma
and hard-edged tribalism,
and could learn from all the
grand & glorious people
who reached its shores --
So that we could be the best version of ourselves
through the strengths of all of us,
and not be stymied by missing
the great beauty & knowledge
among us.
You pair away the extraneous burdens
which tax the mind,
and show us what the world looks like
unfiltered.
You teach one to see a beauty
that is so well hidden
that its own possessor doesn't
recognize it.
You are the song of a life well lived.
Gentle waves lap ashore,
circling into each other,
one riding over the other.
The lower sweep becomes
another shore for the higher.
Which side wins out changes
from one wave to the next.
She sat on the shore
and watched the sea.
She watched the sea
so intently, and for so long,
that she could see the tides rise.
She could discern
that gradual shift
from among the undulations
& sea state changes.
But she was seeking a ship
that would never return.
Bury the ordinary,
but make sure to
chop it out at the roots.
Nothing grows back more tenaciously
than the commonplace or the quotidian.
Sometimes what grows
back from those roots
looks entirely different,
but it's still mundane.
It has the same feel,
even when it has a
very different look.
Kill it.
Murder it.
Chop it up.
Bury it,
and let it die the death
of the forgotten.
Fast-forward to the end!
Turn to the last page.
People want to know
how it all turns out?
What lies in the
great beyond,
and what makes
it so great?
What will rise to the top
of one's soup of possibilities?
But some little animal,
crying in the darkness,
doesn't want to be jetted
to the end --
just so that it can know
that it all turns out okay.
It wants to slip into the now
and wear it like a snuggy.
Some speculate about
the edge of the universe,
and what exists beyond.
But that edge - if it exists -
is beyond another edge:
the farthest points
from which we can see light.
In a tower
on a mountain,
there's still an edge
of our eyesight --
like the others,
it's an edgeless edge,
signifying nothing
but our own limitations.
We are builders
of edgeless edges,
fashioning boundaries
that don't bound anything,
but by which we are bound.
He who would know freedom
must be ready for the fall,
ready to be untethered.
Freedom is not
floating on a cloud;
it's riding the rapids down,
trying to get one's feet first,
so that one breaks a leg --
and not a skull --
on the rocks.
It was a moment
of silent spaciousness.
In the midst of a fight,
there was no enemy --
just the effortless
dance of the thing.
That moment
expanded to the infinite,
& snapped back
to one tick after the tock.
Since then,
no catastrophe has felt
too great for a smile.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 