I found myself pleading with her.
A dark-haired woman, young, twenty-or-so—and how
could anyone so beautiful appear to understand so little?
I know the beauty I’m referring to here is superficial,
but what if she was also intelligent, and what if her intelligence
was warmed by generosity? I acknowledged, this might be hard to bear.

She stood a little to the president’s left, among the vetted backdrop
of frothy exuberance, “ALL SO BEAUTIFUL!” said the president,
interrupting his speech which was about more bans of this
and more freezes of the other, at every pause the young woman clapped
with enthusiasm, joined the throng of approval for ending the liberty
of trans-folk—an abject community now extinct—implied the president.
And she clapped at separating abuelas and madres from their niños.
Clear-eyed and happy with the president’s proof that violence done
in his name is patriotism, she clapped at the pardoning of those “warriors,”
and clapped for the clearing of a small sovereign state to build something
“unbelievably grand,” as though no millennia-old society
with two million people was involved, and at every pause,
my chest hurt, and I begged her
to stop clapping, to shout,
          NO!
to glare at the president,
then weep in front of the camera, pull out of her long dark hair
something that unfolds into a banner and says,
Shame on you Mr. President!
…and still my pleas bounced off the screen.

Didn’t she know that mercy has been barred at the gate,
that the end of civility stood in the room,
that monstrous unravelings were at the door?

Yet, I could not bring myself to condemnation, and in the end
I held no contempt for her and her considerable privilege,
and consoled myself with a quavering hope: yes, she was attractive,
perhaps intelligent, possibly generous,
but she had not yet aged into beauty.

 

 

Wildwood Ecoforest, near Ladysmith, BC, is an 83-acre patch of old-growth Douglas-firs. These original coastal giants now stand among western red-cedar, bigleaf maple, arbutus, and a profusion of dogwood, on the traditional territories of the Coast Salish First Nations. I was a volunteer caretaker of this parcel of woodland, and on my work days I’d always hear woodpeckers. I began trying to identify them by their drumming, and by sight when possible. I only managed a few, so here’s my (divergent) research on the lot.

§

i
To find a Northern Flicker, look under a picnic table, or better, a spreading elm; watch for a yellow shaft of sun, hammering at the ground.

ii
Hairy Woodpeckers are mercenaries gone AWOL. Wary and needy, and like all of us, a little traumatized. Their therapy is taking down rotting utility poles—watch for curative chips of light flying up.

iii
The Downy Woodpecker? A bit of a hipster. Likes Bebop but favours fusion. Jams like Buddy Rich and Ginger Baker but doesn’t mind some downtime with Charlie Pride.

iv
Check out the plumage of Pileated Woodpeckers, wouldn’t they make fine pirates?  Of course that’d make them qualified for Parliament.

v
Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers are champions of misdirection; they’ve been documented drilling into the brains of over 1,000 species of lobbyists.

vi
Lewis’s Woodpeckers love a Pride Parade: splendiferous with green back, pink body, silver collar, and a red face patch, ready to mock any orange-faced insult.

vii
The Red-naped Sapsucker has a taste for sugar, likes life in the Bay Area; remembers you as a flower child and later in that disreputable bar dancing a credible Bump and Hustle.

viii
Williamson’s Sapsuckers are endangered. They are losing their veteran larch habitat to chainsaws, ironically, through ‘conservative’ policies.

ix
American Three-toed Woodpecker is a stand-up with a quick tongue, able to speak the monosyllabic sap of a Dictator Tot and his sycophantic senators.

x
Red-breasted Sapsuckers are allies of trans-hummingbirds. Their call is a pleasing “mew,” or a harsh, slurred “whee-ur”—they do no harm, they take no shit.

xi
You’ll find the Black-backed Woodpecker among the embers of extravagant burns. Praise this dearest rehabilitator of our blackened valleys and fire-scarred hills.

xii
White-headed Woodpeckers appear to be tiny Cistercians. They are lovers of all they survey: squirrel middens, sap wells, sugar-pine mountains—even you and me, failing their old-growth ponderosa home.

 

§

 

 

    is not a new insight.
Still, don’t we hold on like granite to visions of the perfect,
the prospect of our celebrated fulfillment, our plans for pleasure,
our precise house, set like a gem in a princely neighbourhood,
with neighbours to match, and a carousel of days
with just the right amount of thrill and tranquility,
in a city, in a country, ruled by fairness and mercy?
But when the root of that fantastic flower hits the shale of reality,
the ideal dies quickly, petal upon petal.
So let’s give up on our Eden (which was an apparition),
and accept the wilderness of the world outside our door.
It’s the wilderness of the real we must work with, or,
be forever drowning in waves of disappointment,
consumed by rivers of bitterness.
Let’s brace ourselves with the bones of resolve,
scaffold ourselves with scraps of hope.
Do little things: walk into a crowd of trees,
grandly vent to those trusted ears;
collect a few rocks and build a fountain, make an icon
to drive the mind’s cynical swine over the cliff,
then cast a loving little spell on our trampled bouquet, and say,
I choose gratitude over hatred,
       honest, abridged anger over venom and violence.
Pray too (no harm in it), pray to the universal Unnameable,
to help withstand the death of our dreams,
the rigor mortis of our faith, and wait, — O stabilitas —
like one of the Theresas, or the desert mothers.
Such waiting is like loving, like trusting.
It’s risky, it’s bloody foolhardy — unscientific? certainly,
to believe, to trust, that what’s being built within,
and beyond, will be better than what would have been.
And so, my lovely friend, may I be bold to say,
nothing is what it seems, really means:
that the darkness we’re in, is of a kind that helps us see.

 

 

The nations are in an uproar; the kingdoms totter; the earth melts. – Psalm 46

and may we recall: the earth has no political party, the winds have no government, the oceans have no left or right, the tectonic plates have no allegiance to kingdoms, the planet’s mantle has no thought of empire;

the nations are echoes in smoke, the great cities are incinerating their names, the silver statues and gilded plaques in palatial plazas and oxygenated patios are sinking in ash;

life is not bought—there are no stocks that uplift the spirit, no bonds that enhance the soul, no banks that augment the heart—no security in celebrity;

once, well, occasionally, we made movies about the fleeting gleam of diamonds, the hidden treasure of charity, the morning dew of truth, the kiss of justice and peace in the garden of community;

today, our outsized liars are leaders; and our bets are on the greed of plutocrats and a supporting cast of jesters, fawning senators, and limp diplomats;

today, our money’s on the amygdalas of Superheroes—the religion of revenge with its benediction of battling to end;

Where’s Daddy, Lavender, and The Gospel, are actual names for AI algorithms—field-tested and bundled for resale—to assist in the elimination of a people and their past;

and now it’s midnight, and the only dawn left to us, should we find the vision for it, is humility—the superpower to change one’s mind: teshuvah, come to our senses—become poor-in-spirit, become mourners, and comforters, and rain-bringers.