Open

November 8, 2014
by Michael
comments 34
Poetry

A lawn
bordered by backlit trees,
and a sun pouring forth
on the matters of this age.
Such consistency in the face
of my impromptu madness.

The smattering of robins
working through the yard
understand exactly what
the sun is saying.
Their curious heads
turn in silent clicks
from one world to the next.
Some have scruffy necks
and perform shutter-speed calculations.
They all have Open, upturned eyes.

Open.

I’m catching on.
The quality of light at this hour
suggests something about
how all this madness might end.
That’s how it feels, anyway.
Even if I can’t put my finger on it,
something is obvious in
the scuffling hops and knowing faces.
In the worm dangling from a skilled beak.
In the warning signals
that send them scattering
into the cover of trees.
The sun is dreaming out loud all the time,
a spectacle of voices all at once,
beaming Andromeda pointers gleaned
from becoming an age of dinosaurs,
dreaming into the robins:
Forty sunsets.
Then winter.
Keep moving.

My heart is a sun
much like I have described, but
from inside a tank of thoughts
certain plots echo off the walls
and bang together
with no way out,
shattering,
duplicating,
colliding to form a mob
of haunting proportions.
A false magnitude.

Receiving instructions,
one robin’s beak
punctures the side of the tank.
He peers through with one Open eye,
head twisted between worlds.
It is the moment of my dissolution.
My boundary pierced,
my shell become a pinhole camera,
the Messages sneak inside.
I realize:
this space is for silent dancing,
for whirling on stocking’d feet.
One hint of the beyond
changes everything.
Our heart.
Our sun.
This spectacle of voices.
Such consistency in the face
of my impromptu madness.

* * * * *

34 Comments

  1. Hariod Brawn says

    I cannot quite recall whether we’ve engaged on this here before Michael, though there are some interesting studies now being made in the field of quantum biology. Specifically, fascinating suggestions have been made regarding Robins and how they navigate from Northern to Southern Europe, a distance of some 2,000 miles:

    ‘[Robins] do not rely on landmarks, ocean currents, the position of the sun or a built-in star map. Instead, they are among a select group of animals that use a remarkable navigation sense – remarkable for two reasons. The first is that they are able to detect tiny variations in the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field – astonishing in itself, given that this magnetic field is 100 times weaker than even that of a measly fridge magnet. The second is that robins seem to be able to “see” the Earth’s magnetic field via a process that even Albert Einstein referred to as “spooky”. The birds’ in-built compass appears to make use of one of the strangest features of quantum mechanics.

    Over the past few years, the European robin, and its quantum “sixth sense”, has emerged as the pin-up for a new field of research, one that brings together the wonderfully complex and messy living world and the counterintuitive, ethereal but strangely orderly world of atoms and elementary particles in a collision of disciplines that is as astonishing and unexpected as it is exciting. Welcome to the new science of quantum biology.

    Studies of the European robin suggest that it has an internal chemical compass that utilises an astonishing quantum concept called entanglement, which Einstein dismissed as “spooky action at a distance”. This phenomenon describes how two separated particles can remain instantaneously connected via a weird quantum link. The current best guess is that this takes place inside a protein in the bird’s eye, where quantum entanglement makes a pair of electrons highly sensitive to the angle of orientation of the Earth’s magnetic field, allowing the bird to “see” which way it needs to fly.’

    Extracted from:
    http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/26/youre-powered-by-quantum-mechanics-biology

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    • Michael says

      Hi Hariod,

      I don’t recall either, but I have long been fascinated by the links between quantum physics research and “living matter”, which all of our bodies are as living organisms. One of my all time favorite books on the subject is The Rainbow and the Worm, by British scientist Mae-Wan Ho. Water as well has a bevy of pretty amazing quantum-energetic properties that differentiate it from many other “chemical compounds” of comparable scale. In the Rainbow and the Worm (and it has been awhile so I may not get this precisely correct), Mae-Wan describes the way the motors within our muscles are enabled to spin orders of magnitude “faster” than the chemical reactions which break down ATP to supply them the electrons they need. The energy balance accounting works out in the end, but through effects similar to those described in the article you quoted, the muscles start firing before the motive energy arrives. Our own eyes can detect a single photon, but a single photon could never be a sufficiently strong signal to overcome all the bioelectric paths between our retina and our visual processing centers in the brain. Instead, many receptors are bound into similarly coherent states, such that they all “receive” the photon at once and fire up the molecular processes that amplify and transmit the signal to the brain. At the end of the day, just one receptor can probably claim to have “caught” the photon, but everybody near by got to watch…

      I find this stuff fascinating. Our bodies are hardly the material entities we have taken them to be. They are more like quantum electronic information management systems!

      Michael

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  3. Writing to Freedom says

    Wonderful post Michael. 🙂 Hariod’s science additions add a spooky weight to your intuitive perceptions and lovely wordplay. I love how the Robins become our helpers poking holes in our dense thought field to open the veil between worlds. Let’s dance!

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    • Michael says

      Thanks, Brad. Everything about us is spooky. We’re up to the impossible, within every cell, in every moment, but upstairs we’re still struggling mightily to give reality it’s due. The mind’s reaction to being told it’s own vehicle is very likely a superposition of quantum states is like this: This is madness, I tell you!

      Reality’s response: Well, if it isn’t working for you, I could stop all this tomfoolery, and we could go back to being rocks. Your call… 🙂

      Michael

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  4. megdekorne says

    Michael , this is one of the most beautifully written poems I have ever read and I’m reading Pablo Neruda right now . I am awed by its splendor and grateful to the robins of which is the Michigan ( my home ) state bird . Blessings and Thankyou xx

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    • Michael says

      Thank you, Meg! I appreciate and embrace your enthusiasm, but fear your kindness may have outrun the mark…! Perhaps the real beauty is what we discover living in one another, and so it is the willingness found in the eye of the beholder that infuses such little words with meaning. Thank you for looking with such generosity…

      Michael

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  5. marga t. says

    40 sunsets, 40 eons, your sun heart invites me for a spell of unburdening, at the gathering, of Our Heart, Our shared Sun. Spooky how much is going on that we know nothing about for so long, such stunning brilliance unfurled in the eye of a Robin, while we march by with grocery lists and imagined conversations. stopping here, I am, for M’s beak piercing invisible shells at the end of this Truman Show set.

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    • Michael says

      It is spooky indeed how much is going on we know nothing about! Spooky in a good way, though. Once you understand it’s unfolding in ways superior to any you could have imagined on your own, you can sink into it. Or try, anyway. I’ve been sinking in and out a bit lately. It takes the inspiration of a little quantum navigator sometimes to pop me over to another track, to another way of seeing and understanding, to the track where we’re all meeting all the time in the province of our Shared Heart. 40 million Truman Shows superimposed…

      Truman Show… I wrote this just last night over at Sarah’s place: “It is as if everyone in the whole world is playing a character in my play, like the Truman Show or something (and I’m Truman), and doing so completely selflessly to allow me to have a particular experience or path to wholeness, or path to creative expression, etc. But simultaneously, myself and everyone else are doing the same for you, being precisely who you need to offer you the experience you desire. It boggles the mind, but it is so beautiful to contemplate…”

      This was in response to some quantum multi-verse type themes Sarah was exploring, which have cropped up here suddenly of late. It amazes me sometimes how various threads weaving through the WP tapestry seem to be one thread with countless endings… We’re all pulling on the same One.

      Michael

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      • lorriebowden says

        Wow! Yes…I believe that you have captured our human experience perfectly!! We all act in simultaneous plays, being exactly what the other needs in the instant they need it!

        I really loved this poem. Every once in a while I read something that hits me in the solar plexus and rings of such truth…your words did this for me. Thank you 🙂

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        • Michael says

          Thank you, Lorrie. I know what you mean. Sometimes we encounter something and it sets us buzzing. There’s no telling what it will be– what little series of notes or turns of phrase will spark the rushing in of grace and recognition. It’s such a joy to be part of it, to discover this beauty where it resides in one another… Thank you for reading…

          Michael

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  7. sayyestoeverything says

    Beautiful. The birds started talking this morning here as well. It had been awhile. I love your words. “One hint of the beyond changes everything.” Thank you for this beautiful jump start.

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    • Michael says

      My pleasure, Sarah! Thanks for being here. My wife handles the bird feeders mostly, having long ago discovered what I have since discovered: how much grace and love those little beings bring to the neighborhood.

      Michael

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    • Michael says

      Thank you, Colleen. Trying to stay in the sacred heart of such possibility here… You capture the essence so well with your words. It is indeed fleeting, and I like to think of it as a playful child flitting through the trees– fleeting, flitting, leaving a full sensation of presence even when only the faintest trace of a shadow may be seen whipping past… 🙂

      Michael

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