Since
the Trayvon Martin tragedy in Florida, and in the current wave of vitriolic,
often senseless shrieking from folks on dang near EVERY side of this issue, the
bloom is coming off my rosy idealism. I’m so attracted to the Buddhist notion
of opening the mind (and heart) to compassion, but I’m beginning to wonder if
humans aren’t simply programmed to club each other.
At
times like this, it seems clear to me we didn’t flower in some sacred garden.
Surely we evolved from blind, bottom-feeding fish, because we’re still not much
smarter than, say, bird-brained peacocks. I mean, think about the parallels: even
though the big males in our flock have PLENTY to eat, seven gorgeous acres to
wander, safe nighttime roosts out of the elements, and roughly 1.3 hens each (try
not to picture a 1/3 hen), the males still chase each other around trees. And they still square off for sudden mid-air collisions, where
they try to stab each other with their sharp, bony leg-barbs. Sound like anyone you know?
We may
THINK we’re higher-order animals now, but we sure don’t act like it most of the
time. The arts, intellectual & technological advances, genteel patio
parties, laws, and peace-promoting (at least in theory) religions…they’re just
fancy skins over our tiny, hard muscles, wound tight by instinct, and ready to
spring. It seems the truth is, I want your cave, you want my woman, and we both
want Gluk’s dead squirrel. And his awesome dinosaur-bone xylophone.
I
hope I’m wrong. I hope there’s hope for us. Because Ray & I have had three sons
Trayvon’s age, and every time I see a picture of that child, it splits me right
down the middle. I don’t know what garden we started out in people, but I don’t
much like the one we’re in now…
WAR GARDEN
Another hot day in the
Garden.
Your people lean on
sawed-off hoes,
guard a flimsy pea line. Our
people
don’t eat peas, but we want
them
anyway. We hang back
from the line with blunt
spades
stolen from a
dig—prehistoric
settlement built of hoes and
spades.
Both sides have time to
kill.
We skim the same manual:
Verily I say unto
you,
Blood
won’t make it grow, etc. etc.
But who follows directions?
Yours and mine, we pour it
on,
plow it under, plow it
under,
two thousand layers deep,
a rich compost of elbows,
inner thighs, backs of
necks,
schoolboy ankles.
One of yours slips in the
muck.
In a clamor of implements
he’s pinned,
verdigris sundial nailed
through his ribs.
For a time he waters your
dead peas,
our dry seeds, until
he’s just another mud-hard
stepping stone
in our crooked Garden path.
We’re all just ticking
gardeners—
time and time and time
again.
