no definitive why

NOT KNOWING WHY

Adolescent white pelicans squawk, rustle, flap their wings,
lift off in a ragged spiral at imaginary danger.
What danger on this island in the middle
of Marble Lake? They’re off to feel
the lift of wind under their iridescent wings,
because they were born to fly,
because they have nothing else to do,
because wind and water are their elements,
their Bach, their Homer, Shakespeare,
and Spielberg. They wheel over the lake,
the little farms, the tourist village with their camera eyes.

In autumn something urges
them toward Texas marshes. They follow
their appetites and instincts, unlike the small beetles
creeping along geometric roads, going toward small boxes,
toward lives as narrow or as wide as the pond,
as glistening or as gray as the sky.
They do not know why. They fly, they fly.

Ann Struthers
Copyright ©2009 by Ann Struthers

and so the question is why. everything, why? let us talk, then, of the seemingly knowable whys. why did i do that? why did he? why did she? why did they? perhaps even narrower than that; perhaps only i.

some answers are easy: i put on my gloves because my hands were cold. that's simple enough, isn't it? maybe this: i went to the store to buy milk because i had run out. (already for this i can think of a dozen other comments that would be necessary for you to fully understand my motivations, but i don't think they're important. yet who am i to judge?)

who am i to judge? that's the steam behind this train of thought. because as i thought about it i realized that the reasons for all motivation are unknowable. not by you, not by me, not by your mother who thinks she knows everything, not by that guy with all those books.

in psych 101 they teach about richard who, when he was in the school library, stretched his leg. it was cramped, what can i say? but martin, who was walking by, tripped on the out-stretched leg. both martin and marcy, who was watching, were sure richard had done it on purpose.

but what about the bigger things? alice marries lou. alice is sure it's because she's in love. lou isn't sure what love is but is delighted that now he will be able to fuck alice just about as frequently as he wants. both of their mothers think she married him for his money, and he married her for her looks.

her best friend credited it to his honesty and ability to hang shelves, and his best friend knew that he had finally found someone who actually thought he was smart. and her therapist knew that he was just like her father. or maybe pheromones.

when it came time to divorce, alice asked herself, why did i ever marry lou? she never even considered that possibly he smelled just like kindergarten. or that he looked like the salesman who sold her her lucky scarf. or chocolate.

we do this all the time, why did i.....? and we think we can figure it out. we can't.

i have spent my entire life, as, perhaps, have many of you, wondering why. this and that. and it suddenly just occurred to me that i would never find out. there would never be definitive answers; there was never a way to find an absolute, positive, unquestionable, undebatable why.

we don't know why. we fly. we fly.

come spring

COME SPRING

The first warm days of spring, give them to me,
a tepid rain, crocus poking through last year's leaves.

Give me the heart of it, pale yellow, sky blue,
trees bare but for the hard buds, the few birds.

To hear the screen door
slam again.
To shoo the flies
from the house,
the spoiled fruit.

I'll take all of it,
Mother of Summer,
the smell
of manure shoveled
over the potatoes,
diesel fumes

from the refuse truck,
scent of creek bottom,
feral,
lime-laced,
cracked open
effusion of rotting eggs.

Even sinus infections
and rusty rake tines
sunk in rank earth
near the shed,
mushroom spores,

the asthmatic crank of winter-bound bikes,
fevers,
flu,
cold sores,
loose ends.
Even the crows,
hawking

their dull black cloaks
for the shiny wings
of iridescent spring.
Let them ride
the rippled air

over the barren Sunday parking lots,

the farther fields,
where the weeds will grow thorny,
wild and tall.

Dorianne Laux
copyright 2008

(today is exactly forty years to the day since i moved to california. it's my anniversary. and because she has put a spell on me so that i cannot see a rabbit without thinking of her, this is for karla.)

Happiest Vernal Equinox to Each of You.

Thank you for visiting this blog.