Adolfo Caso Dedicates Poem, The Empty Nest, For Me -- Cool!

Glenda, I am dedicating the attached poem to you, because you have been a wonderful friend throughout my life. No poet has enjoyed a solidarity that you have given me

THE EMPTY NEST

 (Dedicated to Glenda)

Guided by its own internal clock,
The brown finch

Silently and covertly

Flies by different routes

With grass blades in beak

Into the thickest branch

Of my evergreen arborvitae,

Looming strong and impenetrable

In the corner of my backyard

As though it were holding up

The house walls on each side

And protecting against

Would-be intruders or predators

From the outside.

Through my kitchen window 
I follow each flight of the finch,

From many directions,

Carrying its precious cargo into the tree

To build its nest.

And I feel miserable

Not knowing

Whether it is only the mother finch

Building that nest

Or with the father too

As I wished it would be,

With my other wish.

For her to pause And,

To sing me A love-song.

(Adolfo doesn't see him but This is the male finch singing to his female)

II

The nest completed,

Evidence for a successful clutch

Was in the reduced number of flights

Into the arborvitae,

Now a surrogate

For new life-forms in the making.

I moved to my deck chair

Inconspicuously,

My back to the tree

To avoid perceived threats

To the emerging brood,

My heart in full wonderment

To see the fledglings--

As when I first saw

The beautiful face of each

Newly-born chick

And all the grandchildren

Together with

An indescribable expectation

Of the great-grandchildren

Yet to come;

My emotions are overwhelming

Over this deeply-felt

Non-duplicative joy!

III

Suddenly,

A tumultuous crowing

With abrupt churning in the branches

Brought me to the outside;

Two crows dove down,

Obstreperously,

From the edge of the roof

Into the branch containing the nest.

Before I could take any action,

They flew away with as much clamor,

My mouth wide open

As my eyes caught sight of the finch

In the nearby tree,

Going from one branch to another

Desperately waiting

For destiny

To reveal itself.

My eyes glaring

Between the finch

And the branch,

I ran to the tree.

In bringing the twigs down gently,

I saw the empty nest,

Its destiny fulfilled

To my consternation

Knowing that no amount of despair

Could mitigate my affliction

And the loss to the finch,

Already poised to depart

Without

Perhaps

Knowing

The ramifications of the crows’ action,

Except for me,

A member of my species

With eyes

To see more,

And ears

To hear more,

And a heart

To pump more blood

Through these weather-beaten veins,

Needing only

A small amount of brain

To perceive the pain

Of the mother finch

And to feel that pain

Deep inside my heart.

IV

With little comfort in knowing

That neither crow nor finch

Acted with the conscience of humans,

I am left alone in my solitary thoughts

To contemplate

That no action is without consequence,

That there is little

Counterintuitive

In the existentialism of Jean Paul Sartre

Except the utter nonsense of concluding

That after having done something,

What remains is nothing,

He being an avowed Marxist

A non-party affiliate,

Whose Soviet purges

Both within the party

And through its Gulags

Pitilessly

Executed countless people

And even used each victim’s soul

To define its wanton nihilism

Within the scope of their programmed nothingness.

After having killed the body

And wiped out the God

Of more than 100 million people--

Their souls turned to nothing

According to Jean-Paul’s existentialism--

Now emboldened by the collaboration 

Of Bertrand Russell--

English patriot,

Who demonstrated against an easy America

Not to side with England

Against Hitler’s World War II--

A champion of anti-Americanism

Bertrand also excoriated America

Over the victims of the Vietnam War

While saying nothing,

Not one word

Against the perpetrators

Of the on-going Pol Pot genocides

Within

The various sects of his United Nations’ body

And without one word of protest

From the followers

Of Confucius, or Mohammad,

Gandhi or Buddha.

Russell and Sartre:

Two Marxist would-be warriors

Joined together

On behalf of peace

Conditioned by their ideology

At the expense of millions

Of innocent victims

To grease the wheels of their un-feeling

Human-made killing machines.

But,

Luckily,

The survivors continue to seek salvation

Through their religion

And a God

That can be temporarily denied but not suppressed,

Like the souls of men!

This kind of philosophy

Has always given me pause--

A bewilderment deepened

By my inability to understand

The behavior of the crow and of the finch

Let alone that of my fellow men

Bent on manipulating everything

Including our dreams

Be they a presage of happiness or anguish

Life or death

Or whether dreams are generated

Biologically or chemically

Without answering the basic question

Of why we dream in the first place!

V

Oh, Freud, such a misguided prophet

Using Eros and Thanatos to explain man-made wars

Or repressed sexual drives to explain our dreams

Or drugging his patients and self

In search of convenient man-made personal truths

Not found in nature

Without the scrutiny

Into his self-inflicted enslavement

And to that of his patients

Without ever a word on Hitler’s ultimate solutions

Or of Stalin’s raging the land,

Or of Mao’s ubiquitous purges,

Or on Einstein making decisions against Hitler--

No!

Not one word

To preserve his people and fellow man!

Dying from self-administered drugs

Freud never knew he was discovering the means

To assure his and his patients’ bondage,

And not knowing, when he should have known,

He was void of either Eros or Thanatos.

He was sexually barren!

What am I to think and feel about a philosophy of life

That misses the point on every crucial issue

Of human behavior and solidarity?

Is it not possible that dreaming

Is a physiological necessity that keeps us alive

Each dream reflecting a phase

Of our physiological evolvement

As biological and social entities?

We respond to the stimuli

Of our pre-existing floating formulae,

As did all three men

Coming from the same area,

From the same people,

And from the same time:

Why did Hitler inherit his irreversible DNA?

And Einstein a different one?

And Freud still another?

Why mine!

Why your DNA?

Why the crow’s!

A perfect example of Sartre’s existentialism

Is in Freud’s irreversible behavior of self-destruction:

Which,

Neither ended in nothing

Nor filled the nothingness of phenomenology

Nor alleviated the suicidal pain

From life-afflicting drugs

Administered as wonder drugs

From Eros to Thanatos

As though life-forms could be explained
Through convenient formulae

As in Sartre’s existentialism.

Dreaming and dreaming are two different things,

The one,

A desire of what should be and is not

The other,

A chemical reaction

Of endless single or morphing frames

Without relevance to each other,

But interpreted

By Freud’s self-imposing personal relevance.

VI

I sit in a triangle on my deck

Directly opposite the house

Whose walls enclose the arborvitae.

I look into my own mental images

Of  waves smashing ashore

Scattering untold and countless drops of water

In every direction and just as quickly disappearing.

Which drops are carrying the DNA for new life-forms?

Which drops are destined to enhance those now living?

Which drops are rushing back

To recycle the remnants

Of those of us who have just died?

In my dreaming,

I see the Spring of next year,

The branches greener, more full and vibrant

And as an ever-inviting tree

Waiting for the finch

To make its first pass

To renovate and renew its nest,

To bring its hatchling to their first flight

And to perch on the extreme end

Of an undulating branch,

To sing the love song

Of my life.

Wow! Extraordinary poem which include the greatest twist of all! Life then Death!

We are all so involved as we grow older with how long...will it be... And, yet, that is not something that normally would be on my mind. For the first time, physical problems have affected my daily life...and yet, it is something that shall pass, I believe... The stark movement from watching birth happen almost immediately followed by death is more real than most of us want to see or even contemplate. Yet it happens.

Death has become a predominant issue in today's world, as so much is happening at the government level that forces us to contemplate whether death shall come naturally, as intended, or because of the maddening issues that arise almost daily, sometimes hourly. I have no answers... Just as, perhaps, others are facing the same feelings. Questions seem to become larger, more important when chaos occurs. 

Yet, for many of us, there is a certainty of life after death, when we shall all meet again... Until then, my friend, Adolfo, thank you for dedicating your thoughts, your hopes, your internal, endless questioning... That we two do share...

And then I shall give you a love song... Agape, philia...the greatest loves of all!

Glenda