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Soft Wild

/ boz bozeman / 2 Comments

The other day on my hike I started taking pictures of wildflowers. Most of them had tiny blooms. I love how beauty can range from miniscule to cosmic. 

But I really started thinking about the word “wild”. Wild and wildlife conjure images of tigers, hyenas, coyotes and bears. Roaming, hungry, savage and untamed.  

Wildflowers? They don’t reflect any of those adjectives. This side of the wild is delicate, beautiful, intricate and small. 

Yet they are wild. They grow in meadows and along woodland paths.  Yet they also grow on highway verges, rocky cliffsides, even cracks in the sidewalk. 

The soft side of wild is defined by beauty, peace and persistence. The same strength and resilience that an animal needs to survive in the wild is represented by these fragile, lovely flowers.  

Spirit Animal for #tankstuesday

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The challenge this week is to find your spirit animal and write a poem about it. The quiz is fun, and can be found here.

I got a butterfly! I was just thinking about how they fly in unusual patterns, so I came up with this poem:

Like the butterfly
I move in a spiral flight
Repetitious growth

Find the challenge here.

Simplicity, patience, compassion

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One of my favorite passages from Tao te Ching is: 

I have just three things to teach: 
simplicity, patience, compassion. 
These three are your greatest treasures. 
Simple in actions and in thoughts, 
you return to the source of being. 
Patient with both friends and enemies, 
you accord with the way things are. 
Compassionate toward yourself, 
you reconcile all beings in the world

(Translation by Stephen Mitchell, 1995) 

This passage is such an incredible guide, as is the whole of that remarkable, ancient book. These words constantly return me to the lessons they teach, which are both straightforward and difficult to practice continuously.  

Simplicity is something I do attempt to practice, and it has helped me control my desires and work on my dreams without being let down when they don’t work out exactly the way I want them to. 

Patience is probably my strongest attribute: after all, I am a 7th grade teacher! I have learned to be more patient with my dreams, understanding that I must continue to put in the work as they grow and come true.  

I have worked on being compassionate with myself. I used to have a lot of negative self-talk. This came from a period when I was unreliable and irresponsible. It has been a long time since I was like that, but the negative thoughts were powerful, because they were once necessary. Since I have changed, I have worked on replacing them with positive words, and it has helped me to stay on track and learn lessons without beating myself up.  

Simplicity, patience, compassion: three powerful words that taken together form a path for a healthy life.

Anna! For #sundaystills

/ boz bozeman / 5 Comments

The photo challenge this week is pets and playgrounds. So here is a picture of my little love Anna.

She is chilling on the back deck living her best dog life! Anna is a nearly perfect dog in my opinion. She his not too big, has a very sweet nature, loves to hike, but is totally chill when we are relaxing. She has done maybe two “bad” things in her 13 years. We love her so much, and of course she returns the favor.

Check out the photo challenge here and post your pet!

Playing Crows

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A few years ago, I was sitting in my backyard. It was summertime, and I noticed the four neighborhood crows wheeling around in the sky. Then the largest one cawed, and they all flew into a single tree.  

Crows aren’t usually that interesting, so I was about to turn away when one launched from a high branch. It flew straight toward a powerline pole. It dove, then banked an extreme turn around the pole. Churning its wings, it flew back up to the branch, greeted by a cacophony from its fellows. 

Then, one by one, each did the same. They continued this for a while, and I was enraptured. Their cawing, usually grating, became the sounds of encouragement and enthusiasm.  

They must be playing, I thought at first. And I think they were. But I also think that they were doing drills, practicing difficult maneuvers that would be useful in tight forest spaces.  

I gained a great respect for crows that day, and the experience stripped away the biases often associated with these sophisticated carrion birds.  

Opposites for #tankatuesday

/ boz bozeman / 16 Comments

This Tuesday’s challenge is to find synonyms for “work” and “play”, and then write about these two potential opposites.

Labor
Can be playful
Though sometimes it's painful.
A serious gamer
Forgets the fun
For wins

Mine is a “Badger’s Hexastitch” which makes me think of a very smart badger writing poems and crocheting. It does not rhyme, and the syllables are 2-4-6-6-4-2.

Join the fun here. You have all week to make your poem.

Happy, not sad, Mother’s Day

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I didn’t submit a pitch for a Mother’s Day storytelling show because too many memories of my mom are from near the end of her life, and I thought that they were all sad. I didn’t want to tell a sad story. 

But when we went to the show yesterday, one of the stories really touched me. The teller related how he had read to his mother in the last months of her life, and how they were able to connect through the stories.  

It brought me back to when my mother was recovering from strokes. Her ability to come back was astounding; her will to get out of assisted living and back home profoundly impacted my family and I. It still inspires me. 

When she got back home, she needed help with her reading and writing. I would visit after school, and for a while Mom was my student. We worked on reading brief passages, and I would have her answer questions about them. Learning to write again was arduous for her, but she was committed and showed great improvement.  

For fun, we would play cards. We had played Rummy here and there throughout the years, so that’s the game we chose. We had to play with the cards face up; Mom couldn’t consistently remember how to group the cards to score points. Over time she got better at this. Finally, one day she beat me without my help! I was so proud of her, and it was even fun to lose! 

I guess what I learned is that even within the often difficult and painful times of those years, there were also meaningful and happy moments of connection between mother and son.  I hope that those types of memories will continue to emerge as the years go on. 

Who Knows

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You don’t know who was a baller 
A dancer
Hip hop trip dancing  
On stages  
Synchronous with teammates 

Grown 
In grown up clothes: 
Workpants, 
Dresses, 
Neckties, 
Orange vests 
Bright green labor shirts. 

Grown. 
Identified by jobs, 
Families, 
Pastimes and hobbies, 
Passions and problems. 

Grown. 
But who knows what is in there still? 
The dancer, 
Hours of practice after hours of school 
Hip hop dancing  
That skip stop swaying 
With a synchronous stomping 
With the tuff dressed team.  

The baller,  
Lane shifting spinning swisher 
Grunting sweating D in your face 
Floor slapper, chest bumper 
Feels teammates all around 
Without seeing them 
Connected by the ball 
Courageous for the ball 
Getting rejected by the ball 
Then craving it more 

It’s still inside them 
You will see it 
When he grabs the cup 
Just as it starts to fall
without seeming to look; 

When the ball dribbles 
off the court, 
And she scoops it up 
But instead of tossing it 
Back to the players 
She takes a shot 
Her dress swishing with the net.

Nature’s POWer

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The emphasis on “POW” in the title is a bit of a joke, but also reveals what I want to say about Nature’s profound strength.

This picture shows that so effectively. Yes, this sprout did not shoot up with a comic book “POW!!!” Instead, what is revealed is the slow, implacable ability for this single green plant to break through a layer of asphalt. What a profound example of how persistently following the path of growth makes a being nearly irresistible.

Thoreau and the Taoists both talk about this strength. Thoreau wanted “to travel the only path I can, and that on which no power can resist me.” Asphalt is poured so its elements melt together and harden. They should stop a mere plant from sprouting. But that plant is doing what it must, what Nature demands of it, and no mere human concoction is going to stop its growth.

Today I am going to think with my sprout mind, and I am going to find the barriers that are stopping my growth. Then I’m going to find the natural path to overcome them.