23.11.13

red-tails, rain dogs & a barbaric yawp - or two ...


















“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”

[Mary Oliver - Wild Geese]



While Oliver's Wild Geese do not frequent my little pocket of the world, there is a cry 'harsh and exciting' that awakens my senses whenever I have the fortune and mindfulness to hear.  Red-tailed Black Cockatoos oft decorate the sky above with their distinctive black silhouettes; filling the air with a primordial cawing, so distinctive I cannot help but divert them my attention and gratitude. 

Today these impossibly slow moving forms [that somehow maintain flight; contradicting their lackadaisical  wing speed], were striking against a sky that spoke of storms.   Soon the 'clear pebbles of rain' arrived in abundance and I delighted in immersing myself in a landscape transformed by moisture, as sky merged with land, and forms dissolved, shifted, and reformed, as thunder echoed from every available surface...

Struck by the beauty of it all - and after such a harsh time, so welcome a contrast... I found myself not just delighting, but dancing in the rain to the sounds of an imaginary piano accordian, vaudeville style, as the poets splashed in puddles;  
Rain Dogs all... 



I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, 
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world...

[Walt Whitman - Songs Of Myself  v.52]



... and speaking of 'barbaric yawps' - here is Tom Waits 'announcing his place' through an inspired live performance of the aforementioned song:







Rain Dogs
[Tom Waits]

Inside a broken clock
Splashing the wine
With all the Rain Dogs
Taxi, we'd rather walk.
Huddle a doorway 
with the Rain Dogs
For I am a Rain Dog, too

Oh, how we danced 
and we swallowed the night
For it was all ripe for dreaming
Oh, how we danced away
All of the lights
We've always been out of our minds.

The Rum pours strong and thin
Beat out the dustman
With the Rain Dogs
Aboard a shipwreck train
Give my umbrella to the Rain Dogs
For I am a Rain Dog, too.

Oh, how we danced 
with theRose of Tralee
Her long hair black as a raven
Oh, how we danced and you
Whispered to me
You'll never be going back home
You'll never be going back home