One night it rained.
I put on boots and left the house.
I walked until morning.
On a hill I sat in wet grass.
I heard a people of strange tongue.
My heart became a dove and flew toward the valley.
My feet became a deer and raced to the water.
My skin stretched over the brook and I became a drum.
My head became strings that my hands played.
They played the move of sun across my back.
I sang sparrow songs into the evening.
The dark came and I stood.
Grass pulled at my feet.
My boots were worn.
My house was very old.
The rain stopped. 

The occasion: One early morning in Kokura, Japan, while my son Michael was still asleep, I got up and walked downtown. The streets were still quiet and the alleys with all the markets were empty. There was only this old lady (above) bundled against and amidst the fading canopies, bright paper lanterns and patches of colour. I took the picture quickly, not wanting to upset her. She is blurred. When the coffee shop opened I sat down to a Psalm about change and impermanence. Things that are eternally with us. Things that fetch sadness, and things that allow flourishing. The crooked mercies of life.

Kokura, Japan, in the middle of April,
there are cherry blossoms, like faces,
eddying in alleys, swirling on pavement
and in tight spiral trails behind bicycle tires.

The faces fall sad, their time, too soon.
The wind, greedy, plucks them off branches,
and sails them out over the water.
The Purple river is covered, calmed by blossoms,

You can walk on this river,
your small face held above the current,
until you reach the delta,
and your thin time of standing ends.

Blossoms part, undone by wide water.
Then a day comes when all the faces,
gathered in by moons of tides,
are thrown up by waves that break and slide.

And the sea’s purple rivers run backward,
in the secret fullness of night, carrying thoughts
that roll up roots and are pressed out, pearled
and bright, waiting, and made for the sun.

Which comes in time, stronger than wind,
to all the resurrected faces, not one missed.

I don’t know when the cherry trees were planted.

I have a notion these trees are forgotten for 51 weeks of the year. Then suddenly, they explode onto schedules—and into the Kokura dawn, steeping the air with their delicate perfume. In a few days a garland of white-pink blossoms wraps the castle.

Cherry florescence (sakura) drapes the motes and bejewels the slant rock base of the castle. They sprawl above the worn grass and blue tarps and drunken business parties. They look down upon pink-faced children and parents who point and point.

There is a young woman on a plywood stage in front of dusty rows of chairs. Couples and groups of teenage girls stroll by, a few people sit and listen. She croons American pop tunes—Billy Joel is added to the blooms.

And my camera is at my wrist. Everyone takes pictures. And in case there weren’t enough pixels spent on the efflorescence, the castle gift shop will sell you postcards of cherry-bloom close-ups…along with brown bottles of rice wine, Shogun figurines and plastic samurai swords.

But this effulgence, this cherry tree promiscuity, will not be downgraded. I brought my eyes here, but many pause with their hearts. Especially at the Zen temple down a stone path, a short walk away. And especially the old ones—whose ranks I’m joining. They pause wordless under the sakura, between castle and temple.

Poplars, aspen or balsam, like monks at compline, will stand dying for decades. Self-pruning themselves always until 30 feet up, weakened by borers or longhorn beetles, or age and disease, the top will suddenly come horizontal in a wind, fall to the understory and rot into the leaf-layer. The remainder may stay another decade or more. These tall stumps are always on the rot, alive with ants, or hollowed by weather and weevils, or flickers and squirrels, until they too, fall.

The poplar standing 70 or more feet above the roof of our cabin, its barrel trunk almost grazing the eave, had lived its life well enough. Drawing water from as far as the fen until it had its fill of seasons. And like Virginia Woolf’s moth, it seemed to say, oh yes, death is stronger than I am. A slow, struggling down death. In the end, two years ago, a few top branches leafed out, then it was done—the leaves dying on their own petioles lacking the vigour to release themselves.

It was a bright January morning, in the middle of an unusual week of mild days when I made the decision. A few inches of snow covered the fen and lay in circles around the spruce trees. Mild temperatures had given the open areas a skin of ice—it was a false spring but the feel was there and I was awake to the deed.

I had watched the poplar for a decade knowing a time would come. The thing was inches from the gambrel-roof and I had studied it often for a way to bring it down without wrecking the entire end of the cabin. I settled on a route: after passing the overhang it would hit a broad limb on another biggish poplar, but if the angle was right it would maintain direction and thread itself between the trees with little damage.

The old tree was straight, balanced, with no discernable lean. This was good. I climbed the ladder pulling up one end of a cable, threw it around the trunk and fastened a u-clamp creating slip knot around 15 feet up the tree. I walked the other end of the cable a hundred feet out and hooked it to a hand-winch that was fastened to a heavy chain around the base of a strategic willow.

I had put a new chain on my saw and it sank into the bark sending a stream of wood chips past my hip. Checking my work, I cut a large notch on the tree; the centre of the notch pointed to where I wanted tree to fall. I walked to the willow and winched the cable tight. I went back to the poplar and on the opposite side made a cut six-inches above the opposing notch. The tree shuttered. I could hear the clicking, like a combination lock, deep at the core. Wood fibre bending then breaking, strands straining but holding. I walked back to the winch and pumped it twice. The cable sang, then went slack. And the tree came to me.

I watched it travel past the roof and nearby poplar, grazing the stout limb that never gave it a thought. It moved between the spruce trees taking a few green bows; the base came free, the crown became a blur, and it exploded on the ground. And then the smell evergreen and sour pulp. 

The fall was perfect. I cheered and clapped. It even missed, by an inch, the frozen-to-the-ground planter I had considered expendable.

The large trunk broke in two places; here its core was brown and cork-rotten. But the base of the tree still held a year’s worth of sap. I counted 70 or 80 rings. With its memory for flowers borne in catkins it was hanging on for another ring, unaware of its own death.

The evening came, the fire died in the pit and I looked over the cabin to the hole in the horizon, and for a moment, missed it. But in a gale, while I lay awake to the freight train in the tops of the trees, I would no longer worry over 30 feet of trunk opening a hole in the hip-roof and driving me through the bed and chip-board floor to where the squirrels live.

In a canoe, late June, and Phil has broken out into one of his old Morris songs as we paddle the Pembina.
Along the banks are coal seams. Exposed, punky, bituminous coal.
We find a camp spot—a clearing with a bleached log that suits to anchor a tarp.
Gear put away, canoe pulled up on a gravel shore, a fire, and garlic sausage on willow sticks.
We watch stars come out.
The air is crisp and we bank the fire up with river coal; it burns pale yellow, spits and smokes acrid in our faces.
We crawl into sleeping bags and fade, hear beavers in the dark, not remembering they are nocturnal creatures.
Phil is sleeping. Then an explosion. 
Coal flies past my head—bits bright with heat and smoke trailing like comets.
Phil had been under but the blast brought him out flaying like a Cornish wrestler.
We settle back, discuss whether to use coal for tomorrow night’s campfire.
The beavers go back to their work.

“Orion’s mission is to inform, inspire, and engage individuals and grassroots organizations in becoming a significant cultural force for healing nature and community.” Orion also understands that “cultural transformation cannot happen without personal transformation.” (Although, I would add that transformation and change is not as linear as this suggests—there is still mystery here.)

Why do I tell you all this? Well, because Orion is an advertising free, beautifully crafted, literary magazine devoted to bringing people and nature closer together—and therefore dedicated to bringing people closer together with people—and so worthy of support. This year, Orion is also celebrating its 30th anniversary. And at the bottom of the list is the happy fact that I had a small piece published in the January/February edition. Pick up a copy at your newsstand, or better, purchase a subscription.

Time, love, quarks, discrete math, other minds, healing touch, the efficacy of hugs;
that words, as Elie Wiesel says, in moments of grace can attain the quality of deeds;
that our deepest desire is to be each others joy;
that an inner void must not be leaped over but into;
that both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were necessary;
that you can love the earth and not love God, but you can’t love God without loving the earth;
that God with a cherry-bomb equals a big bang;
that mycelium will always remain mysterious;

 
that there is life on Gliese 581 C, and Harvey Pekar and Peter Popoff live there;
that the mind is not separate from the body, except perhaps for Benny Hinn, augurs and certain certified psychics;
that a sock prefers the single life;
that if scientists were mere sceptics we still wouldn’t know about the Copernican system of planetary movement;
that extraordinary claims do not immediately need extraordinary evidence;
that beauty is its own proof;
that if everything was verifiable life would cease to be;
that doubt is necessary and healthy but that the spirit of scepticism is a sickness;
that most things we hold as true are by way of other authorities;
that it was exalted certainty that sent the boxcars to Birkenau and not iffy disconsolate minds;
that to live without faith is impossible and to attempt it is a castration of life;
that there are more than a few fish swimming around with coins in their mouths;
that desire is triangular, and its nature is mimicry;
that a cultural obsession with sex is not a sign of social depravity but an indication of deep loneliness;
that if and when we humans become fully real we will no longer impose ourselves upon creation but see ourselves as one aspect;
that Gary Larson and Al Purdy are pure tellurians—and each in their own way;
that science is humble in theory but not so much in practise and that this is what it has in common with religion;
that faith needs a frame, and reason needs a trellis;
that we are not born with an existential void but develop it over time;
that the non-existence of God can be proven by symbolic logic;
that a formally valid argument can nevertheless be false; 
that the argument of infinite regression is absurd;
that the earth rests on the back of a turtle…and that there are turtles all the way down;
that positive universal claims and negative existential claims are not testable in all possible worlds;
that all ravens are black, except for one or two, maybe; 
that presuppositions are held viscerally and emotionally and half-consciously;
that God is a verb and not a noun and that existence is not a property;
that the word piffle can be appropriately applied to a plethora of propositions;
that when the Mayan Calendar is up, we’ll just switch to the Dan Brown Calendar;
that our deepest and dearest beliefs are not logically verifiable;
that miracle is still the best term to describe life’s origin;
that hope and mercy are stronger than hate and violence;
that Holderlin was shining in his wooden tower when he said, “But where danger is, grows the saving power also.”
That at the end, heralding a true beginning,
comes not the apocalypse but apocatastasis;
that instead of escalation toward extremes,
the possibility of universal hope, reconciliation and restoration.