Lake Life: borrow or lend the love of a friend...

Stripping and Putting On

I always felt like a bird blown through the world.
I never felt like a tree.

I never wanted a patch of this earth to stand in,
that would stick to me.

I wanted to move by whatever throb my muscles
sent to me.

I never cared for cars that crawled on land or
air or sea.

If I rode, I'd rather another animal: horse, camel,
or shrewd donkey.

Never needed a nest, unless for the night,
or when winter overtook me.

Never wanted an extra skin between mine and the sun,
for vanity or modesty.

Would rather not have parents, had no yen for a child,
and never felt brotherly.

But I'd borrow or lend love of a friend. Let friend be
not stronger or weaker than me.

Never hankered for heaven, or shield from a Hell,
or played with the puppets Devil and Deity.

I never felt proud as one of the crowd under
the flag of a country.

Or felt that my genes were worth more or less than beans,
by accident of ancestry.

Never wished to buy or sell. Would just as well
not touch money.

Never wanted to own a thing that wasn't I born with,
Or to act by a fact not discovered by me.

I always felt like a bird blown through the world.
But I would like to lay

the egg of a world in a nest of calm beyond
this world's storm and decay.

I would like to own such wings as light speeds on,
far from this globule of night and day.

I would like to be able to put on, like clothes,
the bodies of all of those

creatures and things hatched under the wings
of that world.

May Swenson

Nina and Patricia and I hiked up Little Mountain one nearly spring-y Sunday afternoon...

Looking southwest towards the Skagit Flats, with the Olympic Mountain Range waaaaay out there! (above)

Looking north towards Oh, Canada! (above) and Skagit Valley Hospital (below) where I never intended to work for 20+ years! but here I still am... It is one of the things that link me with peope I love, though, and, my, it's been swell...