☀️ Staying Power #174: A Riff on "What Makes Us Human"
☀️ Here's a quick story, a poem, and a song
Today I’m offering another “riff”—an unrehearsed, quiet musing out loud. This one includes a brief but true story from the past week and the poem it inspired, plus an original song from way back when. (Scroll down for the texts of the poem and song.)
To watch my riff, click on the play button in the center of the video above.
I hope you’ll share your own musings in the comments. I enjoy getting to know you better.
DEER (a poem in progress) Phyllis Cole-Dai Your eyes in my high beams are shining and dazed, glazed by terror, wide with the instinct to stay alive. I’ve seen such eyes before: In the old mother, lost in the labyrinth of her mind without a saving ball of yarn. In the child crouched all alone in a bombed-out house, broken doll in the rubble. In the tender young man, sapling bent double by the bags of doubt hanging from his branches. In the hostage captured in a blurry photo, bound and gagged like a banned book. In the husband whose dying wife says Now I’m done. Go have fun. In the woman so twisted by anger she can’t unknot one kind word for the sister she loves. In the mad- man split open by spite and hate— yes, I believe, even in him, when the hour’s late and nobody’s around to see. My own mirror tells me: Your haunted eyes belong to us all. If you hesitate an instant more I won’t be able to spare you. So go! Fast as you can on wild legs! There is no innocence upon this earth that won’t be lost. The wildflowers will die. The grasses too. Every stone that skips across the water will sink to the bottom. Be swallowed by mud. Sometimes the best we can do is turn and run. Bolt straight into the dark. Not all light is meant for the living. WHAT MAKES US HUMAN Words and music by Phyllis Cole-Dai What makes us human, what makes us human is love . . . (4x) What makes us loving, what makes us loving is joy . . . (4x) What makes us joyful, what makes us joyful is peace . . . (4x) What makes us peaceful, what makes us peaceful is understanding . . . (4x) What makes us understand is compassion . . . (4x) What makes us compassionate is our spirit . . . (4x) What makes our spirit, what makes our spirit is mystery . . . (4x) What is the mystery, what is the mystery? It's here and now . . . (4x) Here and now . . . (2x) What is the mystery? What makes us human? . . . (repeat as desired) What is the mystery? (Love) What makes us human? (Love) . . . (repeated as desired)
The Gentle Nudge
No Poetry Pick-Me-Up this Thursday due to the Independence Day holiday.
Your are a wonderful, loving, creative human.
Thank you so much for your Riff, poem and song. I’ll only comment on your song as I have been spent for so long I’ve come to the conclusion that being truly human one must attempt to save oneself so that our compassionate nature may truly blossom. I guess the question is: Who cares for the caregiver as one’s family falls apart, the strangers we meet along the way are suffering and the world go to war except for the war we should all be fighting against climate change. I’m so very, very tired…. Unfortunately, love is not enough to save the world. It takes action….
Running on Fumes at the MacEwen’s Gas Station
in Riverside South Ottawa
Help someone’s soul heal.
Rumi
These days I’m often running on fumes, like the day at dusk in early March
when I pulled into MacEwen’s Gas Station. I was instantly aware
that the driver of the grey van in the adjacent fuelling lane
was staring at me. Her hands and pleading eyes
motioned me to come closer. It was only
then that I noticed the inside of her
van overflowing with her life—
her salvaged possessions,
her shattered dreams,
her broken life.
Looking directly into my eyes she said,
I live in this van. I need help.
I’m not a bad person.
I opened my wallet, but I was unable to fully acknowledge
her pain— perhaps share a meal, listen to her story.
I opened my wallet and my heart to her
suffering, but she was in need
of so much more than
I was capable
of giving.
These days it’s hard holding myself together, let alone the strangers I meet
along the way. Often I’m outta gas, running on fumes. It’s at times like
these when I know it's my soul that needs healing. Now is a time
when I want nothing more than to escape. In my reverie
I imagine myself soaring in sacred silence under
magnificent white cumulus clouds, rising
on thermals high above the suffering
and the shattered dreams of
our broken
world.
March 1, 2023