The Silence of the Stars

When Laurens van der Post one night
In the Kalihari Desert told the Bushmen
He couldn’t hear the stars
Singing, they didn’t believe him.  They looked at him,
Half-smiling.  They examined his face
To see whether he was joking
Or deceiving them.  Then two of those small men
Who plant nothing, who have almost
Nothing to hunt, who live
On almost nothing, and with no one
But themselves, led him away
From the crackling thorn-scrub fire
And stood with him under the night sky
And listened.  One of them whispered,
Do you not hear them now?
And van der Post listened, not wanting
To disbelieve, but had to answer,
No.  They walked him slowly
Like a sick man to the small dim
Circle of firelight and told him
They were terribly sorry,
And he felt even sorrier
For himself and blamed his ancestors
For their strange loss of hearing,
Which was his loss now.  On some clear nights
When nearby houses have turned off their televisions,
When the traffic dwindles, when through streets
Are between sirens and the jets overhead
Are between crossings, when the wind
Is hanging fire in the fir trees,
And the long-eared owl in the neighboring grove
Between calls is regarding his own darkness,
I look at the stars again as I first did
To school myself in the names of constellations
And remember my first sense of their terrible distance,
I can still hear what I thought
At the edge of silence where the inside jokes
Of my heartbeat, my arterial traffic,
The C above high C of my inner ear, myself
Tunelessly humming, but now I know what they are:
My fair share of the music of the spheres
And clusters of ripening stars,
Of the songs from the throats of the old gods
Still tending even tone-deaf creatures
Through their exiles in the desert.

~ (c) David Wagoner ~

•  After dark, step outside and look up at the stars. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you sense?
• In what ways do you distract yourself from hearing what is really important?
• How often do you allow yourself to sit in silence? What do you think might await you in that silence?
• Please write (and share) a poem, beginning with the words, “I can still hear…”

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water,
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

© Wendell Berry

• When you despair for the world, where do you seek comfort?
• What is the place in nature that brings you the most peace?
• Where would you like to rest in the beauty of the world? Write a piece in prose or poetry describing that place with loving attention to detail. What grows there? What creatures live there?

when i was a child
i was a squirrel a bluejay a fox
and spoke with them in their tongues
climbed their trees dug their dens
and knew the taste
of every grass and stone
the meaning of the sun
the message of the night

now i am old and past
both work and battle
and know no shame
to go alone into the forest
to speak again to squirrel fox and bird
to taste the world
to find the meaning of the wind
the message of the rain.

© Norman H. Russell
Cherokee

• Do you remember a time when it was natural to speak with animals and other beings? Describe that time in your journal.
• What is the message of the rain? The wind? The fox and the bluejay? Write a description of an encounter with a wild being or element and include what it has to teach you.
• Go alone into the forest (or to visit a grove of trees or a favorite tree) and simply bend your inner ear to the tree. What thoughts appear? What feelings? Allow the wisdom of the tree or trees to permeate your consciousness.

I have this mountain to climb
and no one to stop me,
this dangerous mountain
of glaciers and gaunt cliffs,
and I will climb it
for the sake of the living.
Climb, then, they call out,

and die. Climb, then, I answer,
softly, and live. I am
about to begin.

I am reaching for possession.
Climb, then, they whisper, and live.

My joy is in the trees and grass,
the rocks and glacial face
of the mountain. My joy is skyward,
my life is the opening of heaven.
I have placed my foot on the mountain
that I have discovered is my own.

© David Ignatow
from New and Collected Poems, 1970-1985

What is the mountain you are climbing right now? Take a few moments to describe it in your journal.

• In what way is this mountain important to you and the way you live your life?
• What are the mountains –metaphoric and real–that you have climbed in your life?
• Begin a piece, poetry or prose, with the words, “I am reaching for…”

Somewhere, there are people
To whom we can speak with passion
Without having the words catch in our throats.

Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us,

Eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us,

Whenever we come into its power.

Community means strength that joins our strength

To do the work that needs to be done.
Arms to hold us when we falter.
A circle of healing. A circle of friends.
Someplace where we can be free.

© Starhawk

• With whom can you speak with passion?
• What communities do you belong to that strengthen you?
• Where –and with whom–do you feel free?

Everything is made from the same 118 known elements. What if all those elements were once one, just one giant Something. Let’s say That Something was an enormous sheet of glass but It was lonely because It was all that Was. So it shattered, broke into trillions upon billions of little pieces so it could experience itself as infinite possibility; as a solar wind, a ponderosa pine, a human being. And we’re all just jagged pieces of broken glass with our sharp parts that can cut deep, but we can also laugh and love and bump into each other; find the pieces that fit and hold onto those as best as we know how. And with the fault line of experience, something shattered becoming solid again can reflect the gift of light more brilliantly than without, we need contrast to see, a shadow to rise from, we are more beautiful broken.

© Brianna Martray

• What has shattered you in your life? How has this made your light shine more brilliantly?
• What are the people, places, and beings that fit you? How do you hold on to them?
• Write a poem on a large piece of paper, and then tear each of the lines or phrases into separate pieces. Mix them around. Make of them something new, and lovely, and whole.

My worst nightmare is to tell you
I wake up and there is no rain,
days, weeks;
the fields pour heat. My wells, dry.
Mornings I blame God for lack of ground water,

not the big boys at Monsanto
who give us Roundup beans, herbicides,
synthetic hearts and cells,

but God who hides behind dry clouds,
and only watches.

You would not recognize me, God,
a damp shirttail, boots clinging
to sand and hope.
A woman who owns her own farm and doesn’t pay bills.

My farmhands drive broken down combines,
smoking, watch the earth sour in the hot wind.
Hoping a woman fails, but still wanting a job.

A snake crawled on my boot
on row 43 and died.

My corn a cracked lair.
Bollweevils in cotton.

This is my farm, my irrigation ditches.
A woman understands why the birds no longer gather,
the seasons shift beyond recognition.

I look out my window on the evening,
The ghosts of cattle egrets float across the moon,
the stars fold on each other
and lose memory.
I am thin now. These crops were our masonry.
And still I pray.

© Ann Robinson

• In the poem, drought is the problem. What other symptoms of climate change have you witnessed? Make a list.
• The woman in the poem "understands why birds no longer gather, / the seasons shift beyond recognition." What is it that you understand about the changes you are witnessing?
• Allowing space for your fears, begin a poem with the words, "My worst nightmare is to tell you…"

Let us, when swimming with the stream,
become the stream…
Let us, when moving with the music,
become the music…
Let us, when rocking the wounded,
become the suffering…

Let us live for the grace beneath all we want,
let us see it in everything and everyone,
till we admit to the mystery
that when I look deep enough into you,
I find me, and when you dare to hear my fear
in the recess of your heart, you recognize it
as your secret which you thought
no one else knew…

O Let us have the courage
to hold each other when we break
and worship what unfolds…
Let us embrace
that unexpected moment of unity
as the atom of God…

O nameless spirit that is not done with us,
let us love without a net
beyond the fear of death
until the speck of peace
we guard so well
becomes the world…

© Mark Nepo
– (The Book of Awakening)

• What would happen if we began to see that everything and everyone contained "me"?
• Write a poem beginning with, "When I swim with the stream, I become the stream…"
• How are moments of unity expressions of the divine?
• How can we nurture "the speck of peace" until it becomes the world?

This morning
two mockingbirds
in the green field
were spinning and tossing

the white ribbons
of their songs
into the air.
I had nothing

better to do
than listen.
I mean this
seriously.

In Greece,
a long time ago,
an old couple
opened their door

to two strangers
who were,
it soon appeared,
not men at all,

but gods.
It is my favorite story–
how the old couple
had almost nothing to give

but their willingness
to be attentive–
but for this alone
the gods loved them

and blessed them–
when they rose
out of their mortal bodies,
like a million particles of water

from a fountain,
the light
swept into all the corners
of the cottage,

and the old couple,
shaken with understanding,
bowed down–
but still they asked for nothing

but the difficult life
which they had already.
And the gods smiled, as they vanished,
clapping their great wings.

Wherever it was
I was supposed to be
this morning–
whatever it was I said

I would be doing–
I was standing
at the edge of the field–
I was hurrying

through my own soul,
opening its dark doors–
I was leaning out;
I was listening.

© Mary Oliver

• What do you think you might notice if you really learned to be attentive?
• When did you last play hooky and take the day off just to enjoy being in nature? Write a piece imagining what a day like that might look like.
• Begin a poem with the words, "I am hurrying / through my own soul, / opening its dark doors…"