Escape, Manufactured Calls, and Patience

Occasionally, (to quote Wendell Berry)

"When despair grows in me

and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

Except, for my part, the peace of wild things is a larger vision encompassing many things, a farm in the Pacific Northwest, a coffee shop near a university teeming with ideas, wool, and color, and dreams streaming around the tastes and flavors of the rich earth of the the tropics, mountains and dark, moist, hot climes, perhaps, climbing the stairs in the back of this mapleoakbirchchestnut paneled breathing space, one would come to a different beeswaxy kind of stretch, soaked in sweet smelling sweat, the sweat that streams from the heads of lofty mountains at the birthing of the world, flying bodies twined in search of peace, flow and primal waters, chanting ancient words of power at the lowering skies, opening to the world in ways forbidden of the animals, the animals, the animals of mythos, nay of science, or running through fantastic forests feeling the mould of life that is slowly reincarnating into stone, not stone but powerconqueringconcretedeath, run, run, run away through the vanishing dream, it isn't gone, it hasn't left yet, remember, remember, wait, don't confuse life with speed and rush, rush, rush of productivity 'CAUSE IT ISN'T don't live the lie.

What, what, what else can it be than escape when, when, when it is all so interconnected and demanding of time, mind, body, full of hate, hate, hate and spite spitting spat in the face of love in the name of love. Ah, love, maimed beyond (beyond?) repair in this which was once its realm, province, feeling, breath of hope, breathe... breathe... slow... where, why, when NOW see, watch listen it is behind all that is, just look, hope is in what you don't know, do you know? Now live now peace now love because it is not in the future it is a memory in the past now now now is all you have enriched with dreams of what could be and what was. Dance dance dance, trip the light fantastic for whatelse is there to keep you you you going in the wild wild wild world of beings immortal naked, spandex, hair saliva eyes flashing eyes tread, tread, tread the wandering earth and the drip of sweat. 

Never give up is the cry of the postsuicide the one who, when all else fails looks and death and laughs in his overbearing sense of wild, wooly fantastic freedom that can say no even to the grim (grim?) reaper, don't give up, don't ever give up this is only the beginning of the the the dancing, tripping, dirty, wishing, licked, sucked life you lead on the edge of the prophetic knife of this world and the next, don't you see them wear through all the time in red, in the dance of running hair, the translucence of the redorangefire of the irish skin, the eyes (have you seen eyes?) trees green green green light of the immortalimprobablespirits in the of the the trees, trip trip trip on a stone because it is real (right?)... save the people save the people (people? what the rutting hell?) woman man that one the one I can know talk about can universals even work work work NO! it is in love and skin sweat dreams that we try to reach reach reach to the "other" naming a human human human is impossible impossible only know know know that it is the other the powerlovetranscendentpersondaughtersonmotherfatherstorylifecoffeecryrattlegreenblueMoscowSeattle you can't know just be in reverence breathe breathe "Bless the Lord, Oh my soul" the wonderawemajestyachieve of the thing THING I TELL YOU

Several Poems

All of these poems have been on my mind for reasons I'm still attempting to discern:

Muslin by Jane Hirshfield

"I never knew when he would come,"

my friend said of her lover,

"though often it was late in the afternoon."

Behind her back the first plum blossoms

had started to open,

few as the stars that salt the earliest dark.

"Finallyweeks would go by, then months,"

she added, "but I always let him in.

It made me strong, you see,"

"the gradual going without him.

I think it taught me a kind of surrender,

though of course I hated it too."

Why he would appear or stay away

she never fathomed - 

"I couldn't ask. And that also seemed only good."

A small bird fluttered silent behind her left shoulder,

then settled on some hidden branch.

"Do you ask the weather why it comes or goes?"

She was lovely, my friend, even the gray

of her hair was lovely. A listening rope-twist

half pity, half envy tightened its length in my chest.

"When he came, you see, I could trust

that was what he wanted.

What I wanted never mattered at all."

The hands on her lap seemed quiet,

even contented.

I noticed something unspoken begin to

billow and shimmer between us,

weightless as muslin,

but neither of us moved to lift it away.

A Story About the Body by Robert Hass

The young composer, working that summer at an artist's colony, had watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost sixty, and he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she made amused and considered answers to his questions. One night, walking mack from a concert, they came to her door and she turned to him and said, "I think you would like to have me. I would like that too, but I must tell you that I have had a double mastectomy,"  and when he didn't understand, "I've lost both my breasts." The radiance that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity - like music - withered very quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said, "I'm sorry. I don't think I could." He walked back to his own cabin through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl - she must have swept them from the corners of her studio - was full of dead bees.

"My Last Breath" by Evanescence

hold on to me love
you know i can't stay long
all i wanted to say was i love you and i'm not afraid
can you hear me?
can you feel me in your arms?

holding my last breath
safe inside myself
are all my thoughts of you
sweet raptured light it ends here tonight

i'll miss the winter
a world of fragile things
look for me in the white forest
hiding in a hollow tree (come find me)
i know you hear me
i can taste it in your tears

holding my last breath
safe inside myself
are all my thoughts of you
sweet raptured light it ends here tonight

closing your eyes to disappear
you pray your dreams will leave you here
but still you wake and know the truth
no one's there

say goodnight
don't be afraid
calling me calling me as you fade to black

holding my last breath
safe inside myself
are all my thoughts of you
sweet raptured light it ends here tonight

A Few Poems around a Common Theme

The Country Of Marriage

I.

I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.

II.

This comes after silence. Was it something I said
that bound me to you, some mere promise
or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death?
A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood
still and said nothing. And then there rose in me,
like the earth's empowering brew rising
in root and branch, the words of a dream of you
I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer
who feels the solace of his native land
under his feet again and moving in his blood.
I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped
my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss
that lay before me, but only the level ground.

III.

Sometimes our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to.
The forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,
provided we stay brave
enough to keep on going in.

IV.

How many times have I come to you out of my head
with joy, if ever a man was,
for to approach you I have given up the light
and all directions. I come to you
lost, wholly trusting as a man who goes
into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend
slowly earthward out of the air. I rest in peace
in you, when I arrive at last.

V.

Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange
of my love and work for yours, so much for so much
of an expendable fund. We don't know what its limits are--
that puts us in the dark. We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing
a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only
accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the light
enough to live, and then accepts the dark,
passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I
have fallen tine and again from the great strength
of my desire, helpless, into your arms.

VI.

What I am learning to give you is my death
to set you free of me, and me from myself
into the dark and the new light. Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.

VII.

I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,
containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.
I give you the life I have let live for the love of you:
a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,
the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life
that we have planted in the ground, as I
have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all
beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself
again and again, and satisfy--and this poem,
no more mine than any man's who has loved a woman.

Wendell Berry

The Wedding Vow

BY SHARON OLDS

I did not stand at the altar, I stood

at the foot of the chancel steps, with my beloved,

and the minister stood on the top step

holding the open Bible. The church

was wood, painted ivory inside, no people—God’s

stable perfectly cleaned. It was night,

spring—outside, a moat of mud,

and inside, from the rafters, flies

fell onto the open Bible, and the minister

tilted it and brushed them off. We stood

beside each other, crying slightly

with fear and awe. In truth, we had married

that first night, in bed, we had been

married by our bodies, but now we stood

in history—what our bodies had said,

mouth to mouth, we now said publicly,

gathered together, death. We stood

holding each other by the hand, yet I also

stood as if alone, for a moment,

just before the vow, though taken

years before, took. It was a vow

of the present and the future, and yet I felt it

to have some touch on the distant past

or the distant past on it, I felt

the wordless, dry, crying ghost of my

parents’ marriage there, somewhere

in the echoing space—perhaps one of the

plummeting flies, bouncing slightly

as it hit forsaking all others, then was brushed

away. I felt as if I had come

to claim a promise—the sweetness I’d inferred

from their sourness, and at the same time that I

had come, congenitally unworthy, to beg.

And yet, I had been working toward this hour

all my life. And then it was time

to speak—he was offering me, no matter

what, his life. That is all I had to

do, that evening, to accept the gift

I had longed for—to say I had accepted it,

as if being asked if I breathe. Do I take?

I do. I take as he takes—we have been

practicing this. Do you bear this pleasure? I do.

Wonder as Wander

BY SHARON OLDS

At dusk, on those evenings she does not go out,

my mother potters around her house.

Her daily helpers are gone, there is no one

there, no one to tell what to do,

she wanders, sometimes she talks to herself,

fondly scolding, sometimes she suddenly

throws out her arms and screams—high notes

lying here and there on the carpets

like bodies touched by a downed wire,

she journeys, she quests, she marco-polos through

the gilded gleamy loot-rooms, who is she.

I feel, now, that I do not know her,

and for all my staring, I have not seen her

—like the song she sang, when we were small,

I wonder as I wander, out under the sky,

how Jesus, the Savior, was born for, to die,

for poor lonely people, like you, and like I

—on the slow evenings alone, when she delays

and delays her supper, walking the familiar

halls past the mirrors and night windows,

I wonder if my mother is tasting a life

beyond this life—not heaven, her late

beloved is absent, her father absent,

and her staff is absent, maybe this is earth

alone, as she had not experienced it,

as if she is one of the poor lonely people,

as if she is born to die. I hold fast

to the thought of her, wandering in her house,

a luna moth in a chambered cage.

Fifty years ago, I’d squat in her

garden, with her Red Queens, and try

to sense the flyways of the fairies as they kept

the pollen flowing on its local paths,

and our breaths on their course of puffs—they kept

our eyes wide with seeing what we

could see, and not seeing what we could not see.