Birth Day
Birth Day
The day you arrived here
No longer there
Birthday
Another year here
Not there
for Kate
My niece wavers near the top of the rope
pyramid, an easy fifteen feet from the ground.
The final push to the top seems insurmountable.
“Do it!” I say. “If you make it all the way up,
you’ll be champion of the playground!”
A timid heel on a rope, a final pull, and she
turns around, miles above the earth, all
smiles. I take her picture. “Now touch the top!”
She smacks the top of the pole. “How do I
get down?” She asks. “Who cares?” I say.
We laugh.
Before my niece winds a path back
to the planet, a younger girl informs me that
“nobody can be champion of the playground.”
I leave it to life and poetry to sort it out for this
six-year-old stick-in-the-mud because clearly
there is a current champion, and it’s my niece.
Discipline is not getting up ten minutes
before class begins and praying you’ll
make it on time for once while you sprint
across campus. Discipline is getting up
four hours before class begins and cooking
breakfast before going to the gym and
working out and still managing to make it
to class ten minutes before it starts. It’s
waking up when your mind is screaming
at you to sleep in. It’s cooking a healthy
breakfast when it would be so much easier
to skip. It’s planning your day before it
even begins. It’s getting up in the morning
and setting crazy goals that you’ll reach
before noon. It’s pure discipline every day.
It’s the physics of the blade,
the way the sunlight glistens
from angled distances.
The grass is greener on the other side,
and some meadows require
space to be seen and loved properly.
Who gets to remember?
Who gets to forget?
Who gets to decide what
is or is not history?
What happens to us when
governments dictate what
we can and can’t remember?
We who are old enough
bear the imprint of what
we learned before knowledge
was forbidden, must speak.
The Middle Passage, the auction
of human souls. The Trail
of Tears, internment camps–
Japanese behind high wires.
No one will be taught about
any of these, or Stonewall,
or Me Too. We who came before
must teach those who came after.
Long ago when the English forbade
the teaching of Celtic languages,
native ways, families formed
hedge schools, to keep knowledge
alive. So must we now.
You are fading now, dear friend,
No longer able to do the simplest tasks.
Not so long ago you were grateful to have had
A life as extraordinary as yours has been.
I fear now the pain and lack of control
That keep you confined to your chair
Override your previous assessment.
Your mind refuses to hold words to let you
Digest their meaning, so you cannot read.
Understanding what you want to say has
Been difficult, and now, even speaking
May be beyond what you can manage.
So, we will sit together and watch the birds,
Letting the breeze do our talking,
Loving the movement of trees in the
Forest beyond and the promise of nourishment in
The garden below, watching how the sky above is
Suffused with clouds that let intermittent rays of
Light dapple the old wooden porch that has served
You for so long, remembering, each in our own way,
How once you built these walls and roof and floors,
Walked these hills for hours on end with your thoughts
Churning into phrases that joined and mingled into poems.
I often walk along a bright Midway creek on a path worn smooth by seasons and footsteps. It doesn’t brag about where it’s been or the loads it carried, but simply exists, accepting each step. Isn’t that like humility? This is not humiliation, being stepped on, but being part of a way that people follow on their journey. The virtue of humility, so often misunderstood in our noisy world, isn’t—as C. S. Lewis wrote—about shrinking yourself down, but about a gentle turning away from a focus on “myself,” a choice that leads to a clearer view of oneself and one’s place in the world.
One more leaf falls down,
its branch connection released,
to its servant home.
I recently gifted my daughter Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius, the emperor who wrote in his tent, carrying the weight of an empire while reminding himself repeatedly of his own small place. He saw himself, and all of us, as just a tiny blip in the vast, expansive cosmos. Our days, he knew, are but a breath; our grandest works, just sand slipping through fingers. To truly grasp this isn’t to feel small and hopeless, but to feel free. It means tending to the only real domain we can command, the one life we are given in our time.
Ancient stars above
my life is an exhaled sigh,
presence lights my step.
Imagine St. Benedict’s monastery, a place where lives were ordered in community, people learning their roles, practicing how to live together. He spoke of a ladder, a patient, slow climb down from self-importance. Each step, a surrender: of my way, opinions, thoughts, space. Becoming humble meant surrendering self to community, to something so much larger than oneself. That kind of quiet surrender, it turns out, inhabits a space for the spirit far grander than any ego could construct.
Monk’s self surrender,
choosing to find one’s right place,
giving up grants grace
Later, C. S. Lewis stated simply and elegantly that “humility isn’t thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” Like a mountain stream, rushing along, it doesn’t pause to admire its own reflection; it just flows, purely. This kind of freedom from constantly checking my own status, my own image, allows my eyes to finally see the world, and my heart to genuinely love, unburdened by the constant need to measure up or prove myself.
In stagnant water
Cool spring stream begins to flow
Dank water now clear
