September 28, 2013: Post first written: August 26, 2013: I like quiet time to contemplate ideas and put things into some sort of order. But, even after quiet thought, the thrill of discovery still blows my mind. For instance, the grandeur of the Bad Lands in South Dakota. I know it is made up of unconsolidated/loose earth that was laid down and through processes of erosion, make up the beautiful and almost unnatural landscape I saw a couple of years ago. They are impressive in such a way that is absolutely amazing. And to experience them is made even more precious with the knowledge that they will someday be gone, completely eroded away. We get a glimpse into the past while enjoying the absolute present.
Badlands in South Dakota, I took this picture about three years ago while traveling through South Dakota during the winter.
It is at just such formations we have learned more about our former earth partners, the dinosaurs. Reminding us we weren’t the first to trod here. With life being finite, time seems limitless to such creature as myself.
But even with knowing all this there is a large gap in my understanding of things were. There is more than one thought that birds have evolved from dinosaurs. What that means, I don’t know, but I like to think what that might mean. Just such thoughts had occurred to me, when I was reading a book of poetry that my friend Becky had sent to me through the mail. “On Wings of Song, poems about birds”. Various poets are featured in the book, but one poem in particular by D. H. Lawrence got me thinking.
I can imagine, in some otherworld
Primeval-dumb, far back
In that most awful stillness, that only gasped
Humming-birds raced down the avenues.
Before anything had a soul,
While life was a heave of Matter, half inanimate,
This little bit chipped off in brilliance
And went whizzing through the slow, vast,
I believe there were no flowers then,
In the world where the humming-bird flashed
ahead of creation.
I believe he pierced the slow vegetable veins with
His long beak.
Probably he was big
As mosses, and little lizards, they say were once big.
Probably he was a jabbing, terrifying monster.
We look at him through the wrong end of the long
telescope of Time,
Luckily for us.
D. H. Lawrence
Unlike the musings in the poem, the humming bird in life is not a formidable creature. Small in size and hardly a threat. The poem sets us up for some fancy and wonder, separating ourselves from the here and now. Perhaps it is possible to have such a world where it is possible to have such a hummer? How impressive it would be. I like how the poem is filled with wonder and yet grounded in how we all have our place and time.