Word Nerds, Synergy, and the Opening and Closing of Wings
I've watched you now a full half-hour;
Self-poised upon that yellow flower
And, little Butterfly! indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed.
How motionless!--not frozen seas
More motionless! and then
What joy awaits you, when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees,
And calls you forth again! (William Wordsworth, "To A Butterfly" 1801)
I have been surrounded this week. Completely surrounded. Butterfly wings, opening and closing, opening and closing, opening and closing. Generally stupefying. Mesmerizing. Captivating.
I could not stop watching this beauty, a Hackberry Emperor opening and closing, opening and closing on a hot August morning. My breathing attuned to the rhythm. Why was this butterfly opening and closing, opening and closing? Dorsal basking or shivering, readying for flight, resting, maybe. Predatory defense? Communicating? Wooing? Perhaps. A generally bio-robust observation. And thoroughly unsatisfying.
I can learn from clinical observation, yes. Regulation, moderation, rest, rhythm, patterns of communication. All valuable. But the description didn't quite capture my experience of the opening and closing that spoke to my soul.
I required the art of a poet. Like the great Wendell Berry (1934-2026):
Let us say there is no life after death
and you know for sure there is not.
Let us say you are dying and you know for sure
that you are, and you are seeing for the last time
this green pasture enclosed in the woods
and the sky of shape-shifting clouds,
a hawk crossing, a buzzard circling
high up and slow, the sheep flock
grazing at ease in the cool of the day,
the yellow flowers of summer’s end
lighting around them, and the air alive
with the newest passages of small birds,
dragonflies, butterflies,
the hunting wasp flying home
with its prey. And you, now seeing all this
for the last time, as if for the first,
knowing as you always have known that you see it
only once, once for all,
in its one moment of ending and coming
to be, in its moment of shrugging off
the thought of ending, of becoming—you
see that you are no longer counting,
but have passed across into a place
you have never been, have always been:
new, a new earth, forever new.
(Untitled, from Wendell Berry, Another Day, Sabbath Poems 2013-2023)
Word nerds are my favorite kind of people, the mavens of metaphor who can magic a phrase into mystery. Poetry is the alchemical elixir for the withering soul. I need it. Romantic poets like Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats who knew what to do with a generic blade of grass, a stately old oak, a trickle of water, or a path meandering through the woods got it. Oh, how my heart leaps when the likes of Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry are nearby for quiet meditation, soaking in and celebrating the opening and closing of wings.
I'm enraptured, reliving my own unique experience wrapped in poetic imagery, a silky cocoon of soulful contemplation helping me savor all that is good, "everything that is natural, that is infinite, that is 'yes!'" (ee cummings, "I Thank You God for Most This Amazing Day") Together we wander through the infinite, the unutterably holy of the created world.
There is a certain synergy of spiritual depth, soul-saturation, and profligate love that arcs to and from a poet and the natural world. We are forever caught in a gossamer that is binding and releasing us. An ethereal communion. Opening and closing.
Today, I celebrate the life of one who embraced the liminal between openings and closings. Wendell Berry, farmer, author, and poet extraordinaire was a consummate word nerd who understood what it means to dance among the field flowers, bathing in the mystery of Nature's embrace: "in its one moment of ending and coming to be, in its moment of shrugging off the thought of ending, of becoming - you see that you are no longer counting, but have passed into a place you have never been, have always been: new, a new earth, forever new."
Wendell, like my Hackberry Emperor, like my huskies and my Beloved, like my pines and my puddles of unknowing, you live deep within, opening and closing, opening and closing. Forever new.
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