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Read a Friend’s Heart
June 2nd, 2008
Today is the birthday of George Hitchcock (1914),
poet, mentor, actor, playwright, novelist, professor, landscape
gardener, and editor and publisher of the legendary Kayak
Books and Kayak magazine (1964—1984); tomorrow is the
birthday of Allen Ginsberg, the poetry left arm of
saintly Jack Kerouac and author of Howl, Kaddish, and other
poems that succeeded in doing what few poems do, entering
our collective consciousness.On June 4th we honor the birthday
of Mae Brennan, and three days from now, June 5th,
we celebrate the birthday of Mark Jarman, poet, critic,
editor, reaper, Centennial Professor of English at Vanderbilt
University, and one of my oldest, dearest saddle pals in poetry,
if not in life itself.
Long ago, when naturalist John Muir, the father of our national
parks, was a hungry, active boy in Scotland, his aunt was
given a parcel in the family garden. Rather than planting
potatoes or turnips, she filled her allotted segment with
lilies. One can imagine her fellow family elders regarding
her work with astonishment, and her with the indulgence one
reserves for the challenged and abnormal.
But young Muir adored his aunt’s lily garden. Destined
to become the first chronicler of the gorgeous wild lilies
of the Sierras in California, he had never seen anything as
beautiful as those dazzling lilies in the family garden. He
spent hours gazing at them, studying each plant until he knew
them as well as one might know a dear friend.
Sustenance comes in at the mouth, but also through our spiritual
portals, the senses. All we need to do is slow down, listen,
and observe. Here is a poem by George Hitchcock that says
it better:
Records
Another
Russian
has returned
after
2,000,000
miles
in orbit.
Today I sat
motionless
for
28
minutes
while a
butterfly
folded its
trembling
wings
and rested
on my knee.
Deep Peace of the Light of the World To You!
Robert McDowell
www.robertmcdowell.net
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