The Poetry of The Soul

You will never grow tired of the birds. My soul is also in the nest, conquering heights by instinct before the wings are even formed. How is this possible? Because instinct in the human being is constantly evolving out of one thing and into another. It is accompanied on the one hand by memory and on the other by aspiration. One contains depths, the other heights. This is the poetry of the soul - the spirit sings in a deep past and a high future. Instinct swells, joyously, rebelliously, in the nest of the present.

I ask myself, how do I know this? Well, it's visible when I stop looking. The energy and expenditure of life bring to the surface things which are apparent only when you are still. Thus youth and age both have their virtues. The one climbs mountains of aspiration before they are there, the other draws on deep reservoirs of memory. Instinct nourishes them both. But how can instinct elaborate these two things - as a bird elaborates its flight in the air - unless they are really there, unless they allude to realities? The deep glow of the past dawns on us in age because its truth grows closer - tipping us at last into the deepest reserve of memory, the spiritual light we emerged from at birth. Youth climbs in aspiration because it knows that the goal of flight is a real one - its very muscles tell it so.

Therefore, when I am still, the light of things past and things to be confirms itself in me. There is reassurance in this: in days of dullness and cloud the bird does not completely forget to sing. My friend the blackbird flies to the gable-end of the building opposite and pours out his heart - and mine - into the air. I know his meaning.

Jay


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