How close do we live to nature or the natural world? For urban dwellers, unless we live with pets (or dare I say, children), not very. Yesterday when I got a haircut I came home with a feather attached to my hair, a chicken feather, dyed in different shades of ginger (hairdresser's description). beige, and black, but a humanely obtained, chicken feather. The feather makes me happy as if I had earned a feather in a traditional culture. The earliest forms of adornment were objects such as these and these objects made us feel part of the world around. Years ago, in the middle of a rolfing session, I saw a flash of a polar bear along with my grandmother and I thought, this is my totem animal, if such a thing is possible. So in honor of all life, and for the baby chicks that are coming to Cold Springs Urban Farm, I am wearing a feather proudly.
Here's a poem about a beautiful place in Colombia:
Santa Fe de Antioquia
The smell of decaying fruit hangs
in the hot sun,
A green as strong
I´d never seen
in years of temperate moderation.
Ceilings beyond reach
in a room very old,
matching the inhabitants
busily fashioning
caskets out of wood,
the family trade.
Neatly stacking them
just beyond the bedroom
where I sleep in coolness,
for babies, tiny and white,
for adults several wait.
This night double church bells
announce another loss.
Bats flutter, then
rest flat
blotting out
paradise in palm trees.
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