April 17, 1992 - April 17, 2022. Thirty long years. I love you.

 I do want more street protest... more bodies, more noise, more planning, more power.

And also, this...

 

To the fig tree on 9th and Christian

Tumbling through

the city in my

mind without once

looking up

the racket in

the lugwork probably

rehearsing some

stupid thing I

said or did

some crime or

other the city they

say is a lonely 

place until yes

the sound of sweeping 

and a woman

yes with a 

broom beneath

which you are now

too the canopy

of a fig

its arms pulling the

September sun to it

and she

has a hose too

and so works hard

rinsing and scrubbing

the walk

lest some poor sod

slip on the

silk of a fig

and break his hip

and not probably

reach over to gobble up

the perpetrator

the light catches

the veins in her hands

when I ask about

the tree they

flutter in the air

and she says take

as much as

you can

help me

so I load my

pockets and mouth

and she points

to the step-ladder against 

the wall to

mean more

but I was without a

sack so my meager

plunder would have to

suffice and an old woman

whom gravity

was pulling into

the earth loosed one

from a low slung

branch and its eye

wept like hers

which she dabbed

with a kerchief as she

cleaved the fig with

what remained of her

teeth and soon there were

eight or nine

people gathered beneath

the tree looking into

it like a

constellation pointing

do you see it

and I am tall and so

good for these things

and a bald man even

told me so

when I grabbed three 

or four for

him reaching into the

giddy throngs of

yellow-jackets sugar

stoned which he only

pointed to smiling and

rubbing his stomach

I mean he was really rubbing his stomach

like there was a baby

in there

it was hot his

head shone while he

offered recipes to the

group using words which

I couldn't understand and besides

I was a little 

tipsy on the dance

of the velvety heart rolling

in my mouth

pulling me down

and down into the

oldest countries of my

body where I ate my first fig

from the hand of a man who escaped his country

by swimming through the night

and maybe

never said more than

five words to me

at once but gave me

figs and a man on his way

to work hops twice

to reach at last his

fig which he smiles at and calls

baby, c'mere baby,

he says and blows a kiss

to the tree which everyone knows

cannot grow this far north

being Mediterranean

and favoring the rocky, sun-baked soils

of Jordan and Sicily

but no one told the fig tree

or the immigrants

there is a way

the fig tree grows

in groves it wants,

it seems, to hold us,

yes I am anthropomorphizing

goddammit I have twice

in the last thirty seconds

rubbed my sweaty

forearms into someone else's

sweaty shoulder

gleeful eating out of each other's hands

on Christian St.

in Philadelphia a city like most

which has murdered its own

people

this is true

we are feeding each other

from a tree

at the corner of Christian and 9th

strangers maybe

never again.

~ Ross Gay

 

Skunk Cabbage

And now as the iron rinds over,

the ponds start dissolving,

you come, dreaming of ferns and flowers 

and new leaves unfolding

upon the brash

turnip-hearted skunk cabbage

slinging its bunches leaves up

through the chilling mud.

You kneel beside it. The smell

is lurid and flows out in the most

unabashed way, attracting 

into itself a continual spattering

of protein. Appalling its rough

green caves, and the thought

of the thick root nested below, stubborn

and powerful as instinct!

But these are the woods you love,

where the secret name

of every death is life again - a miracle

wrought surely not of mere turning

but of dense and scalding reenactment. Not

tenderness, not longing, but daring and brawn

pull down the frozen waterfall, the past.

Ferns, leaves, flowers, the last subtle

refinements, elegant and easeful, wait

to rise and flourish.

What blazes the trail is not necessarily pretty.

~ Mary Oliver

 

I Go Down to the Shore

I go down to the shore in the morning

and depending on the hour the waves

are rolling in or moving out

And I say, oh, I am miserable

what shall--

what should I do? And the sea says,

in its lovely voice:

Excuse me, I have work to do.

~ Mary Oliver, from A Thousand Mornings

 

Wild Geese

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear 

in the ancient faith: what we need

is here. And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye

clear. What we need is here.

~ Wendell Berry

 

Trauma. Multiplied by war and conflict worldwide.

 

Noor's cubs, Ranthambhore 

(Photo: Aditya Singh)

 

Tenzin Norbu

 

 

 

In a lifetime of fine photos of this god, this is one of your finer ones, Aditya.

(Photo: Aditya Singh, Ranthambhore)

 

 

(Photo: Aditya Singh)