Little Big Birds

There are few places on this earth where the names of towns carry the weight of abandonless hope.  Here in Montana, Wisdom, Opportunity, Sunburst and even Big Timber conjure up the sense of our internal West.  The idea that life is elsewhere and that elsewhere is where you have arrived.  There's even the main street of Helena, that illustrates this perfectly: Last Chance Gulch.  History claims four men from Georgia had travelled all over Western Montana in search of gold, finding nothing, they decided to take one last chance on a small stream which runs down the main street of this state's capitol.  And sure enough, they found gold.

On a late October day, I found myself in need of some hope too.  So I took myself on a one day road trip.  A solo road trip.  When the mountains aren't snow-ski ready and trails drench with cold mud, the warmth of a car seems almost like a vacation.  Rolodexing through my mind for things I enjoy, I decided to head to Helena to see the Holter Art Museum, but maybe also because Boulder Hot Springs is just a mere 30 more miles away.  The day was grey, washed out by intermittent rain squalls, but with sudden bursts of golden sun.  The larch gleamed.  My car played and re-played Cat Power's latest CD, Sun.  And when I arrived in Helena, all I wanted to do was take photos of sky, afternoon light on brick and get lost in the fact I could stand in front of a de Kooning brought out on a train from New York by a family who wanted to ranch.  It was titled Woman and full of the same muddled mustard of the late October larch I had passed for over a hundred miles.

I had not been on a solo road trip in over five years, the last being when I drove into Missoula with my car full, two bikes and a cat, late one Tuesday night just a week before Halloween.  Ironically, it had been almost five years to the date, so my solo road trip to see art and soak, was a bit of an anniversary.  But what was I celebrating, really?  Independence, which really wasn't what I wanted at 38.  Freedom, which is thrilling and all my married friends with toddlers tell me how lucky I am, but after a divorce, I've learned it pays a heavy price.  As I let my body float and watch the last of the light fade into the Continental Divide, I settled on a word to celebrate: hope.  

But hope is tricky.  Sure, we recall hope was also in Pandora's box, which according to myth contained all the evils of the world.  Despair, grief and anger to name a few seemed to have scrunched themselves tightly in the corner wrapped with hope until they were all released.  And here's the thing: When you go in search of hope, the odd part is, you have to have enough of it already to believe there is more.  As if hope is gold for the soul.  But furthermore, you cannot believe hope is only one-sided, either just evil or just good.  Again, tricky.  So why would I want to celebrate hope, if it isn't something to have or hold?

While I was floating in the pool, I watched the late autumn clouds move quickly across the sky.  A couple maybe in their 60's perhaps not married, but close, sat in the pool holding their bodies up in the water with neon colored noodles.  They spoke of the election.  They had different opinions.  But they listened to each other, carefully.  The spoke of music. Music they liked to play passionately.  They didn't interrupt each other and enough laughter surfaced between them to keep their conversation light, but intimate.  

I went and dressed and poured myself a cup of coffee from my thermos.  Still hot.  I sat in my car and kept waiting for some shade of loneliness to set in, a full day not talking to anyone, I thought some sense of dusk would rise to elude me.  But it didn't.  And I didn't want it.  I wanted to see the day in more than one shade.  Simply, I had hope that I could keep the darkness on the outside of the car while I headed west for Missoula.  And for the most part I did, until I merged along the same stretch of road I recalled coming back on late one June after eloping, so full of hope and future.  I let the memory pass.  Not with tears, nor with anger, or remorse, not even a whiff of judgement or a shadow of pure loss.  Nope.  I just let it pass.  Because hope, thankfully, isn't something to hold, but to understand as impermanent.  

As Emily Dickinson claimed, "Hope" is the thing with feathers/ That perches in the soul/ And sings the tune without the words/ and never stops--at all--.  As if hope can come and go, can fly to leave or arrive, but regardless of direction, the bird continually sings.  It is not the bird we need, but the knowing of the song.  And maybe, our hearts are the little big birds full of noise we can choose to hear as song.  Enjoy.  Another revised poem/ song

Hymn of the Pigeon

She finds a pigeon, dead

on her way home.  She's drunk,

swears the stars can lead her

to her front door.

Feet curled, taut with it's eyes gone, 

laying outside a drug store.

She picks up the still body

covered in gravel and warm.

Cupping the chest, she feels

an echo of a pulse, a pebble skipped

into a shallow pool.  Finds a box,

and nestles the blind bird with rosemary,

not knowing what to do with anything

born-again.  She feeds it oatmeal,

drops of water and waits

for it to do something.  Fly,

coo or shit, but it just rocks

back and forth like this boy

with dark glasses she watched

on a bus, who sang in perfect pitch.

Now she hears the song

of a meadowlark, far from her home

in fields of burnt grass, without

asking the world its name.