I wrote this Sunday morning at Thatcher. Communing in nature has become one of my spiritual practices :

Koan #7

Frozen River

Silence in the glen
Winter stillness
The rare peep of an unseen bird
Clumps of snow drip
from bare gray branches,
soft thuds onto the ground.
Blue glitter,
a million prisms of light
bless the banks, decay of logs
the ground sculpted into rounds and slopes
by hours of wind and river tongue lashings.
The DesPlaines has frozen –
Time in hibernation,
Spring arrested and Summer’s bubbly frolic
soothed into a cold lullaby
beneath blankets of fleecy white powder.
Delicious hush, how healing you are!

I want to show my son
the land the way it really is,
naked beauty, precious pale sunlight,
the deep sacred silences
no hand-made temple or church can surpass –
this is the open sky, the vault of heaven
the original cathedral.
Too many cars drive past,
one every minute,
speeding to brunches or Sunday services,
rushing on the frozen crunch of road.
But I don’t mind –
more silence for me,
unashamed of my greed,
drinking beauty like a dying woman
as the feathered tips of treetops
brush the morning chill.

Koan # 8

Hint of egret wingspan flapping
behind the tangled jumble
of gray winter branches.

Koan #9

Rush

I hate the rush of days,
man-made hours,
boxes I am trapped inside.
I push against the walls
only to break through
to another box.
Schedules, deadlines,
start times, end times,
school bells, radio alarms,
buzzers, timers, beepers,
cell phones, online bids –
Enough!

Where is the deep time?
The sun moving westward in the sky?
Shadows of trees growing longer?
The moment suspended,
like a dust mote hanging in sunlight,
the slow growing of grass seedlings?
The halted flow of river
beneath the ice?

Where is the joy
of climbing snow heaps
falling, rolling, tumbling
until the laughter and ice streak
your face and there is nothing left
but the pleasure of returning
inside to a hot mug of cocoa
and damp socks drying on the radiator?

I rail against the boxes
we have made
and claw the pages of every schedule
and run, a free woman, to the frozen Palos hills
where time is kept in drips and ice crystals
forming in the winter sun.

- M.G.B.

-MGB

Look out your window. Better yet, GO OUTSIDE. Unplug. Live a little. Above all…Love.

Summer in Chicago is also a jazz riff, a pulse of throbbing beats, bodies crushed out onto the street block parties, in festivals, at parks, chowing down on smokey barbecue (or veggie skewers), hitting the Lake, scouting the dunes and just getting out there into thronging life. ‘Cause winter’s brutal. And when the Sun comes to stay, you party.

But this summer’s been markedly different. Cool. And I don’t mean in a hip lounge, sipping-absinthe-at-the-Violet-Hour kind of way. I mean cool. Cold. Chilly. The kind of chilly that’s like San Francisco in the summer. As in,”The coldest winter is a summer I spent in San Francisco.” (<– This, btw, was not said by Mark Twain.) It’s been cool enough that neighbors and friends and all sorts of folks in my community have asked off and on all summer, “Is it global warming?” Except, of course, that sounds lame, right? We don’t have a good catch-all for what’s happening because all these changes in weather patterns will be different in different parts of the world – cold in some, hot in others, drying, melting, rising…CHANGING. We’re a planet in transition, grappling for how to talk about it. The beautiful jazz rhythm of our Chicago summer is losing its beat. (Can the plants keep up? And the animals that depend on them? And we, the two-legged in our four-wheel-drives?)

Okay, not to be a summer bummer or anything. But you gotta wonder right? We Chicagaoans (and, yes, I’ve lived here long enough to count myself among the locals) love to talk about our weather. We practically own weather — the extreme balminess of summer, the frigid winters, the don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it falls, and the tender, dewy springs. Weather bonds us. Why else would we be so neighborly?

So this summer, I’m wondering. Was it summer for you? Was it Global Changing? Did your skin feel the summer the same way it always did?

- MGB

onto the seams of my field pants,

hiking boots splattered with mud,

hair in pleasant disarray.

The scent of freedom

still clings to me.

Just an hour before,

by watch-time,

by two-legged time,

by analog hands or digital face,

I stood in a place

14,000 years in-the-making,

a glacier’s passing,

strewn with dolomite and limestone

crumbling, soft-edged rocks,

and the whimsy of a universe

where lands stretch, wrinkle,

move in slow motion.

Barbara gave me her tour

of this prairie she nurtures

which belongs to all Chicagoans.

(But really isn’t it clear by now -

all wild places

are God’s first?)

Gray praying mantis cocoon,

pasture rose topped by

a berry-looking ovary,

drooping little blue stem grass;

we met on sacred ground

where she pointed out

how females recreate nature,

how life goes on

through our tenacity.

~ MGB

Inspired by a morning at Ted Stone Preserve and an interview with Barbara Birmingham,

site steward there with her husband George for 14 years.

It’s been a long, good week, very productive — and I’m here again parked in the rain at a bend in the Des Plaines River. The ice on the riverbend is a soft, translucent white. The thawed parts of the riverbend are a flat brown tinged with green, gray on the surface. The bare-limbed trees are reflected in the sheen at the river’s edge and the rain is plopping, like water fountains sounding beneath a rumble of thunder. The roots of the old oaks along the north bank are submerged. Two mallards and a stray goose glide smoothly among the trunks, unperturbed by the showers. I am here again, in the pelting rain, in the drumming, thrumming rain, in the winter-turning-to-spring, in this hidden pocket of Chicago. I am here, again, because where else can I go (so co close to home), away from the productive bustle and noise of the week? Where else can I turn but to the riverbend, in the rain, to catch my breath and slow the racing of my pulse and the pace of my hours? Where else can I simply be?

It’s storming full-force now. And so many fat raindrops hit the river, between the tree trunks that the river is splashed white. Puddles and rivulets deepen on the softening banks, returning rainwater to the bend.

It smells like old road salt and boots and winter’s last cough in my van. But I don’t care because when I roll down my window, I smell the natural richness of the bank, the fresh rain, and the wet bark while the storm drums on my windshield.

- MGB

“The oil spill has been contained,”

an official-sounding man from Caterpillar

chirped brightly on NPR’s morning newscast.

No more wildlife will be affected –

beyond the ones already touched.

6,000 gallons of oil

sludged into the Des Plaines River.

How many blue gills?

How many herons?

How many egrets?

How many frogs?

How many salamanders and newts?

How many beavers, raccoons, button bushes?

No need to worry, officials assure us.

It was already an Industrial Zone anyway.

Flat white Great Lakes sky,

Distant frozen fog,

Yet warm enough

for hammers

to sound on rooftops.

Men work in hooded sweatshirts,

jeans, thin tennis shoes

upon brick bungalows

that kept us warm

in the bleak months.

But the trees

stand haggard,

bare-limbed and stoic.

Maple and oak and Kentucky buckeyes -

indistinguishable to my eyes.

All stand equally stripped,

naked, vulnerable

in the diminishing chill.

Oh, how they stretch

their feathery twig tips

towards the hiding sun!

How can I not cheer

for their survival?

No one calls Chicago trees heroes,

but they are.

Even we hearty people,

blood winter-thickened,

cozy up inside our walled homes.

Our windows may rattle

beside the El tracks,

but still, we are warm.

Chicago’s winter trees

brave ice storms,

branches snapped

by unflinching winds,

endure the bitter bite

of Below Zero.

Water-stained, whorled, gnarled

gray on brown bark -

they stand and endure.

In 40 degree air,

my hands gloveless,

the skin on my fingers redden,

knuckles chafed and aggravated.

Nowhere near Below Zero.

Perched securely on a branch

above my car,

the Cooper’s hawk

munched on young pigeon.

Starlings scattered,

downy feathers

drifted like summertime snow

upon my head.