The Power of Invisible People

~ By Steve Roberts*

This Easter Sunday, April 16, 2006, is the 40th birthday of my younger son, whom I've never met. And it's more than possible that I never will. Yet, he is one of many people whose invisible presence continually encourages me to pay attention to who I am.

There are a number of old cellar holes on our farm. They date back well over a century and represent lives I can only imagine. I daydream of walking across America without a nickel. It's an expression of my heart's calling to give myself completely to the moment, moving through every fear of lack and need. Obviously I
needn't wear out a dozen pair of boots to achieve that goal. Still, I'm aware that if I actually did embark on such a pilgrimage, demanding as it might be, it wouldn't compare to the challenges faced by those who, 200 years ago, attempted to survive on a Vermont mountainside.

The most conspicuous of these early settler foundations—the remnants of a home and barn—is part of a several acre sweep of pasture and orchard in which, over the past few years, I have built an ever- growing family of sculptures out of stone. Among my motivations, I've discovered as I go, is honoring all who were stewards of this
land before I and my family took on the job. I know the names of virtually none of those who precede me, just as I don't know the name of my younger son, since at birth he was given up for adoption. However, what I feel in relationship to both them and him is gratitude for their part in deepening my connection to the entire
human family.

Please don't confuse my stone whatchamacallits with the creative expressions of artists like Vermont's Dan Snow, a master at building in stone without mortar. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras called a stone frozen music. That makes Dan Snow a composer of symphonies so jaw droppingly beautiful, if I were 30 not 60 I'd pester him like a drunken mosquito to let me be his apprentice. Fortunately, like just
about everything else in life, I don't have to know a whole lot about stones to experience the joy of playing with them.

As it is, Dan and I have never met, though that doesn't prevent me from feeling his influence. Patience, attunement, playfulness—these are but a few of the qualities his creations evoke in me as I dabble in my own frozen music.

Being an author draws to me the responses of untold numbers of people I'll never meet in person, every one of them a gift, believe it or not—even those who think I'm nuts.

Through these many so-called strangers, the universe showers me with kindness, one form of which is an occasional fat wink that sends a chill up my spine.

My younger biological son was born in a New York State village located about half way between Rochester and Syracuse. Some 20 years later in a Rochester restaurant, a waiter of college age approached me and said, "Boy, I've got a friend in Syracuse who looks just like you."

Then, about five years ago two friends of mine were having lunch in Amherst, Massachusetts (the home of my beloved alma mater, it so happens), when they became transfixed by another patron who was a youthful clone of me down to the way he walked, sat, gestured and ran his fingers through his hair.

I wish many things for this man whose invisible presence graces my life, including that he too hears the universe whispering: "Hello, playmate."


* Steve Roberts is the author of Cool Mind Warm Heart, a collection of essays, stories, and photographs of stone sculptures he builds on his Vermont farm. He can be found on the web at CoolMindWarmHeart.com and at TheHeartOfTheEarth.com.

Consolation for Tamar

~ By A. E. Stallings*

(on the occasion of her breaking an ancient pot)

You know I am no archeologist, Tamar,
And that to me it is all one dust or another.
Still, it must mean something to survive the weather
Of the Ages-earthquake, flood, and war-

Only to shatter in your very hands.
Perhaps it was gravity, or maybe fated-
Although I wonder if it had not waited
Those years in drawers, aeons in distant lands,

And in your fingers' music, just a little
Was emboldened by your blood, and so forgot
That it was not a rosebud, but a pot,
And, trying to unfold for you, was brittle.


* More on this accomplished young poet at:
http://www.geocities.com/aestallings/

When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be

~ By John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Happiness

~ By Epictetus (55-135)*

"There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will."

* Even though he was born a slave in Hierapolis and endured a permanent physical disability, Epictetus held that all human beings are perfectly free to control their lives and to live in harmony with nature. After intense study of the traditional Stoic curriculum (established by Zeno of Citium and Chrysippus) of logic, physics, and ethics, Epictetus spent his entire career teaching philosophy and promoting a daily regime of rigorous self-examination. He eventually gained his freedom, but was exiled from Rome by Domitian in 89.(http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/epit.htm)

Planting a Sequoia

~ By Dana Gioia

All afternoon my brothers and I have worked in the orchard,
Digging this hole, laying you into it, carefully packing the soil.
Rain blackened the horizon, but cold winds kept it over the Pacific,
And the sky above us stayed the dull gray
Of an old year coming to an end.

In Sicily a father plants a tree to celebrate his first son's birth-
An olive or a fig tree-a sign that the earth has one more life to bear.
I would have done the same, proudly laying new stock into my father'sorchard,
A green sapling rising among the twisted apple boughs,A promise of new fruit in other autumns.

But today we kneel in the cold planting you, our native giant,
Defying the practical custom of our fathers,Wrapping in your roots a lock of hair, a piece of an infant's birth cord,
All that remains above earth of a first-born son,
A few stray atoms brought back to the elements.

We will give you what we can-our labor and our soil,
Water drawn from the earth when the skies fail,
Nights scented with the ocean fog, days softened by the circuit of bees.
We plant you in the corner of the grove, bathed in western light,
A slender shoot against the sunset.

And when our family is no more, all of his unborn brothers dead,
Every niece and nephew scattered, the house torn down,
His mother's beauty ashes in the air,
I want you to stand among strangers, all young and ephemeral to you,
Silently keeping the secret of your birth.