I memorized a poem as a schoolchild, about a boy walking through woods, who sees a deer suddenly flash past, pursued by dogs. “Life and death upon one tether,” the poet wrote, “and running beautiful together.” I thought of that poem yesterday as I enjoyed my yoga routine on the deck in the early fall sunshine. Unknowingly, I too was marked for death, although my thoughts were light, uplifted by exercise, meditation and blue sky.

 

I lay on my mat, eyes closed, stretching up first one leg and then the other, wriggling my toes, waggling my feet to loosen my ankles.

 

I lifted up my eyes to see four buzzards circling high above me, puzzled as to whether this hapless human below them—obviously writhing in her final death throes—would meet her demise sooner or disappointingly later.

 

The arrival of my aspiring buzzards reminded me of another time, when I found a dead doe strangled by baling wire on my father’s Texas ranchette. Her fawns and the other members of Dad’s wild, corn-fed herd kept respectful watch nearby—curious, accepting—as I raged, anguishing over what I judged to be her arbitrary, meaningless and cruel fate, aching that I hadn’t seen her in time to save her.

 

I called the sheriff’s office to pick up the corpse.

 

Next morning, although the sheriff hadn’t yet arrived, the buzzards had. Forty turkey buzzards quarrelsomely gorged themselves ‘til they couldn’t fly, putting on quite a show across the front lawn. At first I hated them, but soon watched with fascination this exotic display of life and death so beautifully tethered. The buzzards ate to live; they too had young to feed. They did their buzzardly parts that day, and eventually, my dad and I, and the deer herd, wandered off to do ours.

 

I used to create elaborate plots—deals, really—intended to deflect similarly horrible and pointless fates for myself and my loved ones, hoping to manipulate or trick my strange, unfriendly, exacting god into somehow liking me more than his other less-lucky, ill-starred creatures (poor bastards!) As if death and eternal suffering could plausibly be just punishments meted out by a loving god to all but a favorite few….

 

My poor doe had done nothing to deserve her unkind fate except to share equally in the impartial mortality that is part and parcel of the gracious gift of earthly territory all creatures are heir to.

 

Back on the deck yesterday, my four buzzards continued their high, slow cycles. Then there were five of them, and eventually a sixth who startled me by swooping down low over my roof to study me fixedly with a red, dispassionate eye. Evidently content that my time had not yet come, my ugly friend floated upwards to inform his companions grumpily—(“Nope, not yet!”)—and they wheeled lazily away, sparing me for yet another day in paradise.

 

This morning, swinging in my hammock, looking up through the trees, I see two more buzzards in the distance. The fact that I’m seeing more buzzards these days must mean something….

 

Perhaps it means that I’m sharing more time outdoors with them in peaceful awareness, seeing this world (and whatever may come after) through freshly accepting, non-judgmental eyes, a dreamy new lover discovering for the first time the everyday abundance of wishing-dandelions and shooting stars.

 

 

(I wrote this little essay a while back….. Here, copied off the net, is the crystallizing poem which inspired me…)  

 

Crystal Moment
by Robert Peter Tristram Coffin

 

Once or twice this side of death
Things can make one hold his breath.

From my boyhood I remember
A crystal moment of September.

A wooded island rang with sounds
Of church bells in the throats of hounds.

A buck leaped out and took the tide
With jewels flowing past each side.

With his head high like a tree
He swam within a yard of me.

I saw the golden drop of light
In his eyes turned dark with fright.

I saw the forest's holiness
On him like a fierce caress.

Fear made him lovely past belief,
My heart was trembling like a leaf.

He leans towards the land and life
With need above him like a knife.

In his wake the hot hounds churned
They stretched their muzzles out and yearned.

They bayed no more, but swam and throbbed
Hunger drove them till they sobbed.

Pursued, pursuers reached the shore
And vanished. I saw nothing more.

So they passed, a pageant such
As only gods could witness much,

Life and death upon one tether
And running beautiful together.