There was a tree
I speak of many one
Of which variety I can’t remember
Some hardwood not an evergreen
When I was still young
And young too was my beautiful companion
With a yard full of boisterous kids
And this tree bore a wound never healing
At the base near the root
Where from time to time legions of ants
In their perfect pheromone file
Or seeming perfect this being the phenomenal world
Would line up to sup
And gather in their myriads
The bar is open I thought
Identifying with the myrmidons
But the tree to my knowledge
Had not transmuted its vascular fluid
Into alcohol and the ants one would infer
Were lining up for innocuous sugar I must suppose
And not beating their brains with liquor and drugs
Ah the thousand shocks that brain is heir to
Smacking the windshield
In the days before seatbelts
Or the seatbelts were there but we didn’t bother
Major surgeries with their general anesthesia
Earnest of the state outside personality
That excuses from pain but saps cognitive power
Novel virus that obliterates sense and fogs the intellect
The soothing rituals of fragrant smoke
The nicotinic and the cannabinoid
Booze and boogie til you puke and pass out
The self-mangling acts of insult
The self-mutilating acts of folly
That happen happen happen
Again again again
And oh the injury
To the beautiful companion
And to the yard full of kids
And you can display your shame
But you can’t really make amends
Not fully
For a thousand cuts
For wounds beyond healing
And many resort to mystical cult
That the mutilation of the redemptive body
Will somehow substitute for one’s own
And secure forgiveness
From an invisible tyrant
Who dwells beyond the flaming ramparts of the world
Imagined as somehow vertically superior
But earning forgiveness never from those
Whom one has truly injured
Here on the ground
Here where we stand and we fall and again fall
Each fall a unique iteration
And what does earn mean anyway
You can’t earn that which must be freely given
If at all
But in age we grow a little wiser
If we confess our fault
To the world and to ourselves
Even as our mental powers decay
For if I have done much harm
As surely I have done
I have done some service
My children grown to adulthood
And suffering their own painful shocks
From which I have not protected them
And who knows which traumas I might have prevented
Short of those that originated with me
But even those did not originate solely with me
Who am not creator of myself
Plentifully but not totally responsible
The precise contours of responsibility obscure
And the beautiful companion still lives with me
As difficult as that must be
Who am often angry depressed and loud
So she must have forgiven to some extent
Or tolerated the seemingly intolerable condition
Of the ineluctably social human situation
In which annoyances persist daily
Like the fuzzy drone of two- or four-stroke engine
I’m sorry for the wrong I’ve done
For the wrong I continue to do
Though I have nourished conscience and fortified will
But I’m not dead unlike so many of my friends
Who adopted like me the fashionable postures
Of living dangerously or worse
Or who lived unobjectionably but died anyway
Though I so long of the party of dissipation
Will dissipate merely and separate completely ere long
To rejoin the peace before flux
So I’ve been lucky and at least a little skillful
Or at least put my heart in the right place
Or nearly in the right place
This being the phenomenal world
For I have loved beauty
Especially the rapturous pleasures of music
And of the other sources of sensual enjoyment
The wonders of nature the ravishments of art
Gathered up in books and in galleries deep
The vistas of canyon and oceanic horizon
And especially of interaction
With those lovely earthly creatures the humans
Who seem most of them unaware how beautiful they are
With their hair their sweat their bodily functions
Which they attempt unaccountably to disguise
Their selfish cravings
Their noble aspirations
And I have felt the true feelings of others
Their suffering and delight
Their contentment and loss
Their fears and triumphs
Their aspirant striving to nourish and seek nourishment
Whom I am helpless to refrain from loving
Though a baneful voice within denies my worthiness
And yet in my age I have cultivated to some extent the healthy habit
Of responding to reasons
To the extent that I can know the facts
To the extent that the flame of youthful temerity has cooled
And to the extent that I can control myself
An obviously limited extent
But good is not a matter of quantity
Dignity not a matter of extent
And I have taken on the responsibilities of senseihood
Not having possessed all learning
A magus by no means
But merely to help the young to learn
Which they will do in any case
That I might serve to make the path a little smoother
Not too late I dare to hope
For there are moral facts
Indisputable as the facts of mathematics are indisputable
The facts of joy and pain
The facts of being and of situation and of event
And thus I have learned to lean into the good
Though conflict seemingly inevitable has sometimes arisen
And again and again I have fallen and again fallen
My father once said
If you have no regrets
You have no conscience
And thus stupid humans like me
The affiliation whose badge I proudly wear
Who stand upright and regrettably fall
Can learn what’s right
Human biology
Person morality
For they are as little children
We are as little children
Can
For all the persons we know
That is all the moral agents we know
Are human alas
But they are born into the overmuch world
And into the human part of the world
With the capacity for moral awareness
And if they learn the facts
While nobody knows all the facts
And they build the skills
Through long experience and many mistakes
For we must fall and again fall
And we do not learn everything all at once
Or ever
And life is short
They can respond to reasons
That derive from facts
If only once in their life
And thus they are good
And they feel bad when they hurt somebody
And they regret the harm they have done
With their seeming-inevitable mistakes
For they must fall and again fall
And they can try to make things right
Can
And thus they might grow into adulthood
And thus they are worthy of esteem even now
And thus they are lovable
As all real things are lovable
The more lovable for their incapacities
And imaginary things too are real
Alter eye to alter all
For all that we behold is full of blessings
For even when we suffer blessings obtain
As the beautiful companion
Endures the noisy retching of him who helplessly loves
As La Vie en Rose
Freely gives the voice of emotional understanding
As the lights visible on the ground
During a night flight
Even for one averse to flying
Stimulate and refresh
And one can take pleasure in high places
And exult in exaltation
But give me the serene horizon
The round ocean and the living air
The ground to stand and fall upon
And even that which is beyond beholding is full of blessings
The truths moral and mathematical
You don’t have be a mathematician
Just know that there is more
Than forces and particles in the greater world
And you can learn to know value
And learn what makes life worth living
And it isn’t wealth or status or power or getting high or even comfort
For everything that happens involves suffering
And we can feel the sufferings of our neighbor as of ourselves
And strive to nourish and attend
And share gentle companionship
With the lonely the sick the troubled
Let us forgive one another
Those who have loved us
And those who have shunned us
Let us aid the afflicted
Even unto our wounded selves
Let us think highly of ourselves
And let us love one another