I have been full of thoughts about the beauty and having so many
hummingbirds visit in my yard this Spring is a joyful sight. I've also been thinking about Dante's Divine Comedy, and poetry. It might sound like a strange combination, but it all makes sense to me today, and this big hairy ball of thought is what prompted me to write this post. The beauty of synchronicity or whatever you call it, can be life changing, regardless if we experience it as being positive or negative.
I never read Dante's Divine Comedy, but recently via the CBC Radio program Ideas, the featured poet Dante reading parts of his epic poem with commentary from Dante scholars. It was interesting to listen to but it did not exactly inspire me to read Dante, but I am interested in the fact that the poem is about the journey toward God. I am also interested in learning more about the man. The epic poem is a little pretty heady for me and I can't necessarily say I want to read it.
On the other hand learning about this poet,
Patrick Lane today, I am very enthusiastic about, because he shared a story that not only inspired me to read more of his poetry, but I was very motivated to learn more about the man and the poet. I was immediately impressed upon hearing the story he shared about a rare butterfly that landed on his hand in the middle of the Winter that changed his life. Here is his beautiful story, about beauty.
"Back in
early December of 1958, I was 19 years old, living with my wife and baby
boy in a two-room apple picker’s shack a few miles down the road from
here. I had a job driving dump truck for a two-bit outfit that was
working on a short stretch of highway just down the hill from where this
university was built so many years later. I remember leaving the shack
and walking out to stand by the highway in the wind and snow. I stood
there shivering in my canvas coat as I waited to be picked up by the
grader operator in his rusted pickup truck. The sky was hard and grey.
Its only gift that winter day was ice disguised as a fragile, bitter
snow.
As I stood there in the false
dawn, I looked up for a moment and as I did an iridescent blue butterfly
the size of my palm fluttered down and rested on the sleeve of my coat
just above my wrist. It was winter, it was cold and I knew the Okanagan
Valley where I had lived most of my young life did not harbour huge,
shiny blue butterflies, not even in summer. I remember stripping off my
gloves and cupping the insect in my hands, lifting that exquisite
creature to the warmth of my mouth in the hope I could save it from the
cold. I breathed upon the butterfly with the helplessness we all have
when we are faced with an impossible and inevitable death, be it a quail
or crow, gopher, hawk, child or dog. I cupped that delicate butterfly
in the hollow of my hands and ran back to the picker’s shack in the hope
that somehow the warmth from the morning fire in the woodstove might
save it, but when I reached the door and opened my hands, the butterfly
died.
I do not know what strange Santa
Anna, Squamish or Sirocco jet-stream wind blew that sapphire butterfly
from far off Mexico, Congo or the Philippines to this valley. I only
know the butterfly found its last moments in my hands. I have never
forgotten it and know the encounter changed me. There are mornings in
our lives when beauty falls into our hands and when that happens, we
must do what we can to nurture and protect it. That we sometimes fail
must never preclude our striving. The day the beautiful creature died in
my hands, I looked up into the dome of the hard, cold sky and I swore
to whatever great spirit resided there in the dark clouds that I would
live my life to the full and, above all, I would treasure beauty. I
swore, too, that I’d believe in honesty, faithfulness, love and truth.
The words I spoke were the huge abstractions the young sometimes use,
but I promised them to myself and, now, more than half a century later, I
stand here in front of your young minds, your creative spirits, your
beautiful lives, and I can tell you that I have tried.
I
told myself that year and in the subsequent years in the sawmill crews
and construction gangs I worked with that I would become a writer, a
poet, a man who would create an imagined world out of the world I lived
in, that I would witness my life and the lives of others with words. The
years went by filled with the tragedies and losses that all our lives
are filled with. My brother’s early death, my father’s murder, my
divorce and the loss of my children did not change the promises I made.
There were times I lived a dissolute, irresponsible and destructive
life. There were times, too, when I was depressed and wretched, but I
continued to believe in spite of my weaknesses and fears. I wandered the
world and as I did I wrote of the lives that shared my times. And I
wrote of this Okanagan Valley, its lakes and hills, its stones, cacti,
cutthroat trout, magpies, rattlesnakes and, yes, its butterflies.
What
I have told you is a story. It arose from my life for where else but
from a life can a story come? What I promise each of you is that there
will come a day or night, a morning or evening when something as rare
and fine as a blue sapphire butterfly will fall into your hands from a
cold sky, a fearful child will climb into your bed and cleave to you, a
woman or man will weep, will laugh, will sleep with you in the sure
belief that the one they abide with is governed by a good and honest
love. No matter the degrees you have earned and the knowledge you have
accumulated, remember to believe in yourselves, to believe in each
other. In a world as fearful as our present one, I ask that you not be
afraid. Today is merely an hour. Remember in the time ahead of you to
hold out your hands so that beauty may fall safely into them and find a
place – however briefly – to rest."
- Patrick Lane
