“Now I go wherever / birds are everywhere; / now I go anywhere / birds go, / having gone nowhere / they could not go.”
– from Marvin Bell’s “The Giving In”
There is a small stretch of sidewalk that leads from the East Gym to the Fine Arts building on the Binghamton University campus, and it doesn’t see much foot traffic. It’s wider than a city sidewalk though, and the trees on either side of it are thick with yellow leaves in September. There is a dirty bronze plaque squatting in the brush that describes the area as a preserve.
Last October, on a day when I had miraculously budgeted too much time between my workout and the office, I hunched over and read the entire plaque for the first time. It seemed a little presumptuous, calling the area a “preserve” when I could see a parking garage through one side of it and Fine Arts through the other. The nature preserve on the south end of campus might be more worthy of the title at 182 acres, its resident black bears occasionally roaming just beyond its fringes and onto campus before being shooed back into the wilderness.
I learned, however, that the trees here are truly preserved even in their decay: if they fall, the plaque told me, these trees are not to be touched. They are not to be removed, chipped up, rolled out of the way or repositioned. I looked into the tiny preserve with new eyes and saw that several trees have indeed fallen and are left in various positions of glorious failure. Some are split near the stumps, their twisted ends cracked like broken pencils. Some are upturned by the roots, pulled down in a storm maybe, the soil underneath them wincing in daylight. But most of the trees stand naturally, holding their leaves up near their heads as if not trusting pedestrians with their fiery colors.
This stretch of sidewalk is my favorite part of campus. It is my favorite part of upstate New York. I do my walking meditation here now, on my way to work each day. Behind me, I’ve spent an hour at the gym every morning, running or cranking the arms of an elliptical, and ahead of me, my offices wait: the one where I study and write about WWII poets and contemporary American soldiers’ poetry, the one where I edit poems for Harpur Palate, and the one where I coordinate workshops and instructors in the community for the Binghamton Poetry Project. In these offices, my work is entirely concerned with the future rather than the present moment – what will be published, what needs revision, the grants that need writing and workshops that need scheduling.
Walking meditation is fairly simple: just walk with awareness in the here and now. Bring that awareness to your feet, and accept how they feel as they hold your body up on the earth. Be aware of your shoulders, weighed down by the straps of heavy book bags. Send kindness to your shoulders. Thank them for working. Thank your feet for moving. Breathe deeply. The air is not perfect. There is a road nearby and someone outside the theatre just finished a cigarette. But most of the air is cold and filled with clean space for you. Send kindness to your lungs for working even when you do not think of them.
Notice where your eyes go as you walk. For me, I look every day at the fallen trees in my tiny preserve and admire our restraint in not tampering with them, even as they disappear. These trees are, to me, beautiful because they are not beautiful. And I very much need what is not beautiful in this world: what is present and open but not perfect.
The stumps in this preserve say they could have done better, they could have been stronger, but they didn’t and aren’t. They remind us of the impermanence of the body, and how thankful we are for impermanence! If nothing ended, poetry would not exist. The emotional responses we experience when reading poetry would never crescendo the way they do; there would be no heartbreak and no passion, no tragedy or birth or reunion or discovery. What would drive us forward? Surely not survival, not the legacy of our thoughts and actions.
Without the fallen trees in this preserve, I would not be reminded that anything whole is made up of many parts. Poetry is whole. Poetry is made up of many parts. Poetry is communication. It is an escape, a disguise, a confession, a history. It holds violence and compassion, strength and surrender. And I’m talking about poetry and the practice of poetry, the profession.
There will always be douchebags in poetry, friend, and sometimes, you will be one of them. But most of the time, you will strive to be what is good, what is kind, and you will hold your prettiest leaves up high where the birds go.