Lessons from Darkness

 

"I'm afraid of the darkness, and the hole in it;

and I see it sometime of every day!"

                                --Martin Luther, in Luther

Everything you love will perish.  Try saying this to yourself

at breakfast, matching the amber-colored tea

twirl in the teapot.  Try it on the tree, the clouds, the dog

asleep under the table, the sparrow taking a bath

in the neighbor's gutter.  A magician's act: Presto!

On a morning you feel open enough to embrace it

imagine it gone.  Then pack the child's lunch: smooth the thick

peanut butter, the jeweled raspberry preserves,

over the bread.  Tell yourself the world

must go on forever.  This is why

you feed her, imagining the day--orderly--

unfolding, imagining what you teach her

is true.  Is something she will use.  This is why, later, you will go out

into the garden, among the calendula, rosemary, hibiscus,

run your finger along the trunk of hawthorn

as though it were the body

of a lover, thinking of the child

on the steps of the schoolyard, eating her sandwich.  Think nothing.

transparent air, where her hands are.

--Anita Barrows

Afterwards

 

Mostly you look back and say, "Well, OK.  Things might have

been different, sure, and it's too bad, but look--

things happen like that, and you did what you could."

You go back and pick up the pieces.  There's tomorrow.

There's that long bend in the river on the way

home.  Fluffy bursts of milkweed are floating

through shafts of sunlight or disappearing where

trees reach out of their deep dark roots.

Maybe people have to go in and out of shadows

till they learn that floating, that immensity

waiting to receive whatever arrives with trust.

Maybe somebody has to explore what happens

when one of us wanders over near the edge

and falls for awhile.  Maybe it was your turn.

--William Stafford

[Photo from Polihale State Beach Park, Kauai]

Blessing for Carrying a Long Sorrow

When long sorrow.

When the endless

bearing of grief.

When sadness

has been waking

with you

for what seems like

forever

and going to bed with you

for what approximates

an eternity.

When your heart

has become

an ancient timepiece,

its beat measuring ages

and eons,

ticking the turning

of centuries,

and the stars

have nothing on you

for long enduring.

May there come

a moment

when time

falls away.

May there come

a space

between the beats

of your heart

when you know

your burden

carried.

May there come

a gap between

your painful breaths

when you sense

your own self

borne,

unalone in your

endless sorrowing,

no longer solitary—

as if you could

ever have been

left in your grief,

as if you could

ever have been

for one moment

abandoned to this weight,

unencompassed by the love

more ancient still

than the sorrow

you bear.

—Jan Richardson

[Photo of Ensley and Thea--two beautiful babies who will be forever loved/missed.]

Companion for Life

 

Our union is like this:  If you feel cold I would
reach for a blanket to cover our shivering feet.

If a hunger comes into your body I would run

to my garden and start digging potatoes.

If you asked for a few words of comfort and

guidance I would quickly kneel by your side

and offer you a whole book...as a gift.

If you ever ache with loneliness so much

you weep, I would say,

Here is a rope, tie it around me, Hafiz will be

your companion for life.

--Hafiz (trans. by Daniel Ladinsky)

[Photos of my companion for life to celebrate our anniversary.]

Deaths

 

First I forgot you in your voice.
If you were talking to me now,
here by my side,
I would ask, “Who’s there?”

Then your step became unfamiliar.
If a shadow—even one of flesh
and blood—escapes in the wind,
I can’t tell if it’s you.

You shed your leaves slowly
in the face of one winter: your smile,
your eyes, the color of your clothing, the size
of your shoes.

More leaves:
your flesh, your body fell away,
until all that was left was your name: seven letters.
And you went on living,
dying, hanging on
to those letters with body and soul.
Your skeleton, the remains of it,
your voice, your laughter, those seven letters.
And then your body alone uttered them.
Your name slipped away from me.
Now those seven letters drift unattached,
unknown to each other.
Advertisements go by on streetcars; your letters
light up the night with their colors,
they travel on envelopes spelling out
other names.

You will wander there,
dissolved, undone, irretrievable,
in the name that was you,
risen up
to some crazy heaven,
some abstract glory in the alphabet. 

Pedro Salinas y Serrano

[Photo of my dad and uncle with their best friends].

Trees

 

To be a giant and keep quiet about it,
To stay in one's own place;
To stand for the constant presence of process
And always to seem the same;
To be steady as a rock and always trembling,
Having the hard appearance of death
With the soft, fluent nature of growth,
One's Being deceptively armored,
One's Becoming deceptively vulnerable;
To be so tough, and take the light so well,
Freely providing forbidden knowledge
Of so many things about heaven and earth
For which we should otherwise have no word—
Poems or people are rarely so lovely,
And even when they have great qualities
They tend to tell you rather than exemplify
What they believe themselves to be about,
While from the moving silence of trees,
Whether in storm or calm, in leaf and naked,
Night or day, we draw conclusions of our own,
Sustaining and unnoticed as our breath,
And perilous also—though there has never been
A critical tree—about the nature of things.

--Howard Nemerov

[Photo taken in Union, WA]

The Word

 

Down near the bottom

of the crossed-out list

of things you have to do today,

between "green thread"

and "broccoli," you find

that you have penciled "sunlight."

Resting on the page, the word

is beautiful.  It touches you

as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present

he had sent from someplace distant

as this morning--to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,

among your duties, pleasure

is a thing

that also needs accomplishing.

Do you remember?

that time and light are kinds

of love, and love

is no less practical

than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?

Tomorrow you may be utterly

without a clue,

but today you get a telegram

from the heart in exile,

proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,

the king and queen alive,

still speaking to their children,

--to any one among them

who can find the time

to sit out in the sun and listen.

--Tony Hoagland

Sunday Afternoon

It's all so simple really. I stand

at the kitchen window peeling

potatoes. Red maple, white birch

border our patch, green and growing.

On the road, a John Deere tractor

sputters by, kicks up gravel and dust.

I can't see your eyes, shaded by

your Red Sox cap as you push

the mower in neat rows

across the lawn, seed the air

with the sweet scent of cut grass.

I dry my hands and cup a ladybug,

open the screen door to free her

outside on a bed of marigolds.

I hear the small birds

at the feeder. I hear song.

--Nancy Ann Schaefer

[Photo of Douglas and Killian mowing].