Rewilding Heartbreak

(Heartbreak and Rewilding)

Notes from the Top

This newsletter has been on a weekly cadence for a little while, but writing a singular poem every week is not as interesting as writing thematically. It also feels like it is time to mature things a little and tackle more serious topics through poetry as art.

We are switching to a monthly cadence (the first Tuesday of each month) with a few poems around the same theme. This month’s poems are below: Don’t Feed the Pigeons;
The Elephant and the Whale; and Rewilding Heartbreak.

We need to feed the wild places in ourselves again, so we can take care of the wild places in the world.

Enjoy and feel free to share and subscribe as you wish!

Thank you.

---

Don't Feed the Pigeons

In Brooklyn there are signs, 
pinned to the Maples and Oaks. 
They make a compelling case. 
An appeal, to your communal grace. 

Don't feed the pigeons, for you're 
feeding the rats too you see. 
Feeding the wild life makes it 
harder to keep the city rat free. 

A curious tourist I take a photo. 
It's two lefts to the subway. 
People scurry past me.
Overburdened with take away cups,
and fast food. 

I need to get to Manhattan by noon. 
This feels uncomfortable. 

---

Notes About: Don’t Feed the Pigeons

This poem came to me after a trip to NYC: The city is amazing, but we still don’t have space for the wild. It’s a working city, expensive, busy, stratified. The sign made me stop and think! I was pretty uncomfortable for most of the trip: Life in Africa has a totally different rhythm. We still have some wild open space which is being eroded as we get more “developed” and dumped in, as the world ships it’s things here. Still, contrast, isn’t that what life is about?

When we live for contrast, diversity, complexity and texture, we are more alive.

---

The Elephant and the Whale

On an airplane, somewhere, 
an elephant is being transported.
There is a field of yellow chicks, 
to ease the loneliness. 
The elephant is still, careful, 
not to step on the fragile. 
The airplane remains balanced, 
stable between self and other. 
It takes another eight hours,
to reach the last refuge of a zoo. 

In the Mediterranean, the cargo
ships move goods through to the ports. 
Winding through the narrow 
straits tween the Pillars. 
A magnificent sperm whale 
wild and free,  moves along side. 
For want of space, 
there is a rupturing collision. 
The propellor stops for no body. 
In a red tide, the sharks begin to circle. 

---

Notes About: The Elephant and the Whale

This poem comes from some posts that were circulating on LinkedIn a few weeks ago. Two different stories, garnering for attention: One highlighting the precious empathy of an elephant and the other the tragedy of what happens in the sea when our inventions don’t make space for nature.

It’s a terrible thing to lose whales: Whales are vocal, they speak, they have families, they choose to die in wonderfully noble ways by sinking themselves to the bottom of the sea after they take their last breath. And, they completely alter the food dynamics in the ocean with their bulk and their movement. Losing a whale is losing a key component in the web-of-life; and it’s this web-of-life that has such deep value.

Perhaps a reflection here is that our collective empathy has to come out of the Zoo that we’ve sent it to: So, that after we have grieved, we can rewild from our heartbreak…

---

Rewilding Heartbreak

It is easy to know when your 
soul is growing: Either you 
are in complete delight or 
complete agony. 

Heartbreak puts you into 
agony after delight, but
here is the thing, you didn't 
lose yourself. 

Allow the delight to seep in like
water on parched soil. Let the 
pain erupt like a volcano in Iceland, 
waking the world up from the 
numbing cold. 

Open yourself to the beauty and 
the suffering, so that the seeds 
of new beginnings can take root 
deep within. 

Tendrils of magic connecting
together your disparate parts, 
knitting together the foundation. 

Let it happen, one day unexpected
flowers will bloom. There is everything
to discover. 

---