when the smell of the oven holds up the walls
wet leaves tape sky to earth
I crawl inside music
its afghan knit
fringes to cover the backs of my hands.
I go underground
past the roots
the fertile soil
the wellsprings to
where rock sweats
but stays bound.
You think it’s easy
to choose health.
Yoga, sleep, a crisp afternoon run.
A matter of discipline.
A bit of prioritizing.
It should be easy
I can see that
with her smile from those footie pajamas
his Love you, mama.
Think of all the good things in your life, mama.
You could teach for me, mama—
I would pay you
four dollars a week.
You want to be connected to nature.
I’m straining against Saturn.
When sun sinks each autumn
I go with it.
Love you, Mama.
Think good, Mama.
For me, Mama.
How can melancholy
be moldable
and not respond to that?
Tag Archives: nature
Create ~ “If our environment is such…”
“We are what our environment makes us,” said Rudolph Schindler in 1936, “and if our environment is such as to produce excellent health, beauty, joy and comfort, it will reflect immediately in our lives.”
Schindler was an architect– a contemporary of Frank Lloyd Wright. Last month, I spent two weeks living in a FLW house on twenty wooded acres around a small lake. Living there was something beyond the experience of getting out of the city. The quiet had a substance beyond a simple lack of sirens.
For some time now, a particular thought has been haunting me: If it matters if you do it, it matters if you don’t. Since returning from our FLW time, the specter has shifted hue: If it matters if you have it, it matters if you don’t. The ‘it’ in this case being trees, silence, a daily rhythm clocked by the sun’s rise and set.
At the 2.5 million dollar price tag, I can’t afford to have this particular ‘it’. The relationship that access to nature has to class and privilege is not lost on me.
But again, If it matters if you have it, it matters if you don’t. We are part of the natural world. We were created– by whatever means you may believe in– as part of nature.
“If our environment is such as to produce…” Schindler says, “It will reflect in our lives.”
What’s reflecting from the pond of your life? What is your environment producing? In your body? In your spirit? Do you like it? Do you like it enough to bequeath it to your children?
April Vinding 