Come to me
let's play
little sparrow orphan!
Issa
I am seventy-eight. I walk to my twice-weekly Tai Chi class for seniors. I am learning how to build a new life. I have gone from living in the Eastern Hemisphere of the world for eighteen years to being reassigned to the Western Hemisphere, to the country of my birth, America—it is foreign to me. I walk through neighborhoods of small houses, cross streets without cows and congested vehicle traffic—(but nonetheless have posts with a button I push, then wait for a flashing white hand that signals I can safely cross). This day, by an upward glance on one of the routes I take, I see a lone sparrow on a bare branch of a small and fully bare tree. I have observed few birds here, whereas in India I was an avid bird watcher, and even had a Greater Coucal appear regularly in unusual locations in metaphysical relationship. I stop in wonder . . . thankful, delighted . . . and speak to it. I keep watching it without movement. I have recognized another who I perceive as alone—as how I find myself at times, even with family and the few kindred souls that I have met. But the strongly empowering patterns of my life before my departure on May 20 are gone. I share minutes with this sparrow. By its head movements, I am aware that I am noticed. It is comforting.
Back home, I intuitively open my haiku book* in search of a one about a sparrow. I am rewarded. Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa and I meet across the almost two centuries since the time of his writing. From his description in 'The Poets" section I learn that Issa "had particular affinity with children and vulnerable creatures of the natural world."*
My realization is, "Between humans and nature there is a fine line that by inner and outer vibrations can have fluent and fluid boundaries."
* Tom Lowenstein with Victoria James, Haiku Inspirations: Poems and Meditations on Nature and Beauty, (London: Duncan Baird Publishers, 2006), 154. "From as early as the tenth century, many Japanese poets became preoccupied by two contrasting experiences: the demands of social life versus the pleasures of solitude. . . . * Poetry, like meditation, could be a medium of spiritual experience, and haiku poets' writing often emerged from a solitary, meditative poetic mood that they actively cultivated. . . . But detachment from society could also lead to loneliness." Ibid. p 49.