Image by Thomasburg Walks
The walking stick insect above is larger than the neophyte described in Mary Oliver's poem below but the fragility of this creature is clearly evident even in a more mature stage of development.
It seems to me that in the midst of all the shouting, the truth of this short poem has much to speak to us to whom God entrusted the care of the whole of creation. There's a truth in these words that is regularly ignored and trampled on, to our own and creation's peril.
The Gesture
On the dog’s ear, a scrap of filmy stuff
turns out to be
a walking stick, that jade insect, this one scarcely sprung
from the pod of the nest,
not an inch long, I could just see
the eyes, elbows, feet nimble under the long shanks.
I could not imagine it could live
in the brisk world, or where it would live, or how. But
I took it
outside and held it up to the red oak that rises
ninety feet into the air, and it lifted its forward-most
pair of arms
with what in anything worth thinking about would have seemed
a graceful and glad gesture; it caught
onto the bark, it hung on; it rested; it began to climb.
-Mary Oliver in New and Selected Poems, Volume II
-ConcordPastor
Just as the tiny embryo, clings to the walls of the uterus, with the intention of life and growth....
ReplyDelete...it's kind of like, well, as you said, 'a truth about life'... when life gets so hard, so painful, so... hopeless... but, somehow, we catch onto the bark, hang on, rest, and begin to climb...
ReplyDeleteLove your links! In yesterday's "G" there was a great article about Verrill Farm, which included recipes, one of which was for apple pie. Yum!
ReplyDeleteCompletely lost your train of thought on this post, anonymous....
ReplyDelete