Three summers I spent by the river in the heat of a homeless camp. (Having left my father’s home, which was my home, though I knew it not.)
Three summers of night terrors howling through my tent as the stars threw down their furious spears. (Having left my mother’s home, which was my home, though I knew it not.)
Three summers trolling the streets in blistered feet while eyes turned sideways at my glance. (Having lost all I loved, which loved me still, though I knew it not.)
As I walked the flesh melted from my bones, my teeth melted from my mouth. My thoughts dried up and blew away. Past and present dried up and blew away.
Nothing was left behind to claim a name, to know what I was or wasn’t.
Empty, careless and carefree, I danced along the street like a wind-tossed leaf, like a moon-mad fool, marveling at how all I saw danced with me.
Now my tent is my temple and the river flowing past me washes through me—mother and father and all I love and always was and ever will be.
Now as I walk the streets flowers grow at my feet, and every eye turned toward me is mine.
By Deborah J. Brasket
The story of the Prodigal is a favorite found in almost every faith because it tells deep truths we all recognize. We are all prodigals in some ways, whether living homeless on the streets or in the home of our dreams, if we have not, as this Prodigal has, returned home to our true self. If we have not gone through the weaning process that strips us of all we never were and gives back to us all we are, the magnificence of our oneness with the All-in-all.
This poem, too, is influenced by the tales of the old Zen Masters, relating their journey to enlightenment, a process known as “losing and losing.” Often they began their journey in abject poverty. Chuang Tzu describes how he was able to free himself from the limitations of the finite mind and gain an insight into his innermost being: First freeing himself from the concerns of the world, then from all externalities, from gain and loss, right and wrong, past and present. Finally he was freed from his own existence, from birth and death, I and Other. He sees the One and becomes part of the One. At that point, he was able again to enter again into the world of men, but this time with “bliss-bestowing hands.”
The photo above is one I took at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. I wrote a blog post about that visit called “Fascinating Faces, Tao and the Arts.” I wrote: “Some works of art speak to you on a level that is hard to define. You gaze and are drawn inward. Something in you identifies with what you see there. It’s not outside, it’s in here. It was there before you saw it, and the seeing is just a reminder of its presence.” I felt an especial affinity with this face.
I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
FromLet America Be America Again
Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed— Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek— And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean— Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That’s made America the land it has become. O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home— For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore, And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
. . . . .
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain— All, all the stretch of these great green states— And make America again!
Mother to Son
Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor— Bare. But all the time I’se been a-climbin’ on, And reachin’ landin’s, And turnin’ corners, And sometimes goin’ in the dark Where there ain’t been no light. So boy, don’t you turn back. Don’t you set down on the steps ’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard. Don’t you fall now— For I’se still goin’, honey, I’se still climbin’, And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
Under the Midnight Blues Painting by Colin Bootman
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil. If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. We must admit there will be music despite everything. We stand at the prow again of a small ship anchored late at night in the tiny port looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning. To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth all the years of sorrow that are to come.
The title of this poem is so interesting. How sometimes we feel we must defend our pleasures, our moments of delight, in the face of so much suffering in the world.
Finding the balance between wanting to save the world (as if I could) and wanting to lay all that aside and just savor it while I can, has been a lasting theme in my life.
More and more I’m tending toward the latter.
My favorite treatise on the subject is the tale of the Zen monk being chased over a cliff by a tiger. He grabs hold of a vine to keep from falling, while a hungry alligator snaps at his heels in the river below. Just then, he spies a juicy red strawberry hanging nearby. He reaches out with one hand to pop it into his mouth.
My body, now that we will not be traveling together much longer I begin to feel a new tenderness toward you, very raw and unfamiliar, like what I remember of love when I was young —
love that was so often foolish in its objectives but never in its choices, its intensities Too much demanded in advance, too much that could not be promised —
My soul has been so fearful, so violent; forgive its brutality. As though it were that soul, my hand moves over you cautiously,
not wishing to give offense but eager, finally, to achieve expression as substance: it is not the earth I will miss, it is you I will miss.
A New Beginning for Our Ending
I too feel a new tenderness toward this body that holds me so tenderly in return, within its soft, wide confines. That moves me and moves with me wherever I go. That holds within all that I am, memories and emotions that ebb and flow, that mere touch, taste, scent, releases. And even now, after all this time together, when a foot or knee fails, when bones creak and muscles sigh, and the weight of you seems too much to bear, still, still, you gather me in your arms. You hold me near, breathe me in, lift me up, and lay me down. You try so hard to be what I need, to do what needs doing. Too often I have railed against you, dismissed you, disowned you. Let me see you now as friend, as lover, as mother. As dear to me as sky and earth and tree and sea. Let me cherish you as you have cherished me, and when the end comes, let us rest and rise together.
They say opposites attract. That was true when my husband and I first met. I found in him everything I felt missing in myself—he was strong and brave, adventurous, self-confident, practical, capable, a man of the world. I was shy, timid, uncertain of myself, a romantic, an idealist, inexperienced. I was a senior in High School. He was a marine returning home from two years in Viet Nam. I thought I had found my soul mate, we seemed to complement each other so well, like two halves of a whole, yin and yang.
The truth is, we were just what we needed at the time. This dark, moody often angry young man who could also be so sweet and loving fulfilled a romantic yearning in me to sooth the savaged soul—Beauty and the Beast, after all, had always been my favorite fairy tale. And he was sorely needing the sweetness and innocence he saw in me, after the things he had witnessed in war. We fit together perfectly in each other’s arms. We still do.
But now I no longer believe in soul mates. I discovered that all the things I was attracted to in him, that seemed to be missing pieces of me, were really undeveloped parts of myself, and a sense of “completion” could not come from outside me but from within. Once I realized that and began to discover that I too was strong and brave, adventurous, self-confident and capable, I no longer yearned for a soul mate. I could stand upright and free even while fully committed to our marriage. We did not need each other, but we chose to be together. We were committed to creating a life that we both could love and enjoy together.
I had always loved what Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet had written about marriage, and came to see the wisdom of his words:
“Let there be spaces in your togetherness. And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart. And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.” ― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
I also came to realize what Anne Morrow Lindbergh in Gift From TheSea” wrote:
“When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.
The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits – islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.”
And finally, I whole-heartedly embraced what Madeleine L’Engle in “The Irrational Season” wrote:
“To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take . . . . If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation… It takes a lifetime to learn another person… When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected.”
My husband and I are celebrating our 50th anniversary today. Here’s what I’ve learned about lasting love:
That marriage is a journey, not a destination, and the way will be hard, and filled with obstacles and challenges and heartache. That real love is not “true love.” It’s not a given. It doesn’t come ready-made. You have to fight for it, you have to work for it, you have to shake it out from time to time, and mend it and keep adding stitch after stitch, row after row, if you want to make it big enough and strong enough to last a lifetime.
Our marriage quilt is a tattered thing, but beautiful in its homeliness, in the places where its obvious rips and tears have been mended over and over again, the places where it’s grown thin and threadbare and had to be reinforced, as well as the places where it’s warm and soft and scented with memories that bring deep pleasure.
Loveliest of all are the stitches we are still sowing day by day, moment by moment, hand in hand, together.
I will end this series of posts on love and marriage with the last love poem I wrote my husband, two years after our marriage had almost ended. And two years before we began our grand adventure of sailing around the world with our kids for 6 1/2 years. But we’d already done some warm-up cruises on bare-boat charters in the Caribbean by then, which this poem mentions.
It is a simple, playful poem, meant to please a man who is not a lover of poetry, but loves the woman who writes it.
To Dale, On Our Twelfth Wedding Anniversary
Sometimes you ask me if I truly love you, Like the answer’s hid behind a lock and key. You are my love and all the world must know it For it’s scattered ‘cross the land and half the sea.
There’re winds and waves much sweetened by our pleasure, Rocks and sand well smoothed by hips and thighs, Grass that grows much greener from our nearness, And trees that rustle still with our sated sighs.
If you climb a certain stream that flows near Big Sur, You’ll find a rock well made for lying on, It knew our love before it was made sacred And longs to feel our lover’s urge again.
While high along the rugged spine of Baja, Where boney cliffs fall far to find the sea, We saw the world stripped bare of all but beauty And we alone like Adam and his Eve.
The moon once tipped the hills beyond Coyote And laced Conception Bay with fluorescent light, We swam out naked through silken waters where You wound me round your hips and held me tight.
And cupped within the palm of Virgin Gorda Lies an island and a secret, sandy cove, where We waded from the sea like mating mermen And stretched upon the sand to prove our love.
The wind once made an early morning visit As we rolled upon a hook in Carib Bight, While sweeping down the hatch it caught us naked And added its cool breath to our delight.
Now wind and sea and rock and tree can tell you The answer that you say you do not know, You are my love and all the world’s a witness For its sung wherever winds and waves do blow.
NOTE: This ends a series of posts celebrating 50 years of marriage,an anatomy of love as it evolves over time, exploring married love in all of its manifestations: Innocent love,erotic love, disappointed love, love lost, love renewed, and love that lasts.If you missed any in the series, you can read them by clicking the links above.
Not long after I decided to leave my husband I met someone new. I was working part-time at a book store and he was a publisher’s rep. We would go for coffee or walks in the park and have long, stimulating conversations. We spent hours on the phone talking about literature, philosophy, the arts, religion—things I loved but my husband had no interest in. I could feel myself falling in love with him, thinking perhaps he was the “soul mate” I’d always longed for. He seemed to feel the same way about me.
I had already asked my husband for a separation, suggesting he move out. He only laughed and said he wasn’t going anywhere. I knew I would have to be the one to go and began planning my escape. Soon, I thought, terrified by what he might do if he knew I was already seeing someone.
Then he found out. When he confronted me, I told him the truth, that I had fallen in love with someone else. I was astounded by his response. It was so unlike anything I had imagined. He said he did not blame me. He had always known that I was “too good” for him, and if this man was better, he’d step out of the way.
But after confronting the man too, after meeting and talking with him, he said the man wasn’t good enough. He was the better man, and he wanted me to give him another chance. He was sure he could make me fall in love with him again. And while I knew that was impossible, I felt I had no other choice but to let him try. We had been married ten years by then, and I felt I owed him, and our marriage, at least that much. I figured eventually he’d realize it was futile, and then he’d have to let me go.
It was hard at first, to stop seeing the man I felt I had fallen in love with. I felt I had put my real life in limbo, and was living a lie. I mourned my lost love. The life I imagined spending with him was like a shadow that followed me everywhere. I feared it was a life we might never realize together—at least in this life time. That’s when I wrote the following poem.
The Other
It’s amazing how you multiply as time moves Everywhere I see your face appear It grows more clear the longer we are parted Like time itself conspires to bring you near.
Sometimes I feel your presence close behind me Where I could turn to find you standing there Turn toward arms pressed close about me As if mere motion was the answer to my prayers.
Sometimes your presence seems to float before me Upon a sea of bright tranquility I watch my soul swept out to meet you And marvel at mind’s sweet complicity.
Sometimes I feel as if I were a twosome And one of me moves never far from you, The other is mere exercise in motion Eclipsing everything in me that’s true.
Someday I pray that we shall sit together Before a sea resplendent in the sun We’ll eat a little morning meal together Before we rise into new life as one.
Eventually this sense of sadness faded. My husband and I began “dating” again. We spent long leisurely weekends together going to concerts and museums and strolls along the beach. We began cultivating a taste for California wines and listening to jazz music together. We chartered sailboats in the Caribbean and renewed our dream to sail around the world together.
Little by little I began falling back in love with him. It began with a deep respect for how he had reacted when I told him I’d fallen for someone else. There was no anger, no accusations, no recriminations. No jealousy or hurt feelings that I could tell. Never did he hold it against me, or try to make me feel I had wronged him. He absolved me of all blame. All he wanted was the opportunity to prove he was the better man, prove he could love me enough to make me want to stay with him. How could I not love that?
I realized I had deeply underestimated him. He revealed a strength of character and depth of love that I hadn’t realized he possessed. A dignity and humility and gentleness I hadn’t seen before. This was the foundation upon which the renewed love I felt for him grew. And it was the stronger and richer for it.
Now looking back, that period in our marriage seems like an aberration, a mirage almost. I barely remember the name of the man I thought I’d loved, and his bitter assessment of the whole affair—that I willed myself to love him to have the courage to leave my husband—may have the ring of truth.
Despite this happy ending to that episode in our marriage, it wasn’t the last time our love was tested and bent near breaking. But never again without the hope that this too would mend in time and make us stronger. And it did.
Love is the hardest thing we can ever do—love for our spouses, our children, our parents, ourselves, each other. Love for the world we live in. Love for that which created all of this. If we think love’s easy or should be easy, that it won’t have radical mood swings, won’t lift us up and throw us down, won’t drift away when we’re not attentive, won’t wither if we’re not feeding it, or spring back, full and fresh, when we water it with patience and kindness, then we don’t know love at all. And maybe we can’t know it, until we live it, and let it live in us.
(To be continued) In celebration of April as National Poetry Month and our 50th wedding anniversary (yes, I was a child bride), I’ll be reposting a series I published here years ago,an anatomy of love as it evolves over time, exploring married love in all of its manifestations: Innocent love,erotic love, disappointed love, love lost, love renewed, and love that lasts.
When I first fell in love, it was a hot thing—urgent, possessive, almost feverish at times. I truly saw love as being two souls in one body. We were opposites that complemented each other. He was my missing half, and I his.
But I wasn’t content with that. In some fervent way I wanted to be him, become him, live inside him, feel my heart beating in his body and his in mine. I wanted to meld with him.
Not surprisingly, I discovered this just wasn’t happening. There were times when our love felt like that, when we seemed so close, but then it would slacken and drift away. And when that happened, he seemed almost like a stranger to me, someone I barely knew, and did not understand at all.
That’s when I wrote the following poem.
Love’s Duplicity
I look at you and see Incredibly A face at once slighted by closeness, yet Dimmed by the distance I hold you; A face overlooked and over known, yet Laced by fingers, fearful to possess you. And you look from eyes Half-halting Wary that you know me.
I look at you and see Incredibly, How the lines forming you Flow not into my own But lie separately, falling On planes apart. Reasoning makes no clearer, No nearer That we lie two, not one.
I look at you and see Incredibly, How the brown hollow of your eyes Will ever haunt mine, and I cry for me, for all whose heart’s desire Is held ever at half embrace: Half wanting, half waiting, Half knowing What we’ll never know.
I look at you and see Incredibly, How these feelings we are one Or we should be, How we are strangers Never touching, Lie at odds in me. Is it odd I reap of love the bittersweet?
Eventually I realized we weren’t soul mates and probably never would be. And while I still yearned for us to become closer, he was content with the way things were.
While I wanted to know everything about him, there were parts of me—important parts—that he simply had no interest in. Like my passion for the arts, literature, philosophy, religion, writing. He knew I wanted to be a writer—that I wrote poetry and short stories and kept a journal—and he liked that about me. But he had no interest in what I was writing, never asked to read anything. Never seemed interested when I offered to share what I wrote. He wasn’t curious at all.
Finally, I let go trying to become closer, and we drifted away from each other. Our marriage became almost sterile, perfunctory. We shared a house, children, a bed. That was all. I realized that I no longer loved him. At times I barely liked him.
A veil of sadness descended over me, a yearning for something I feared I would never have. I felt my soul mate was still out there somewhere, waiting for me. But I realized I may never find him.
The following poem expresses that feeling of waiting for something that may never happen. It was originally published in a college journal.
Hot Hills in Summer Heat
I watch them every summer, the hot hills
Crouched like a lion beside the road,
Tawny skin pulled taut across
Long, lean ribs.
I would take my hand and trace
Round ripples of male muscle,
Feel the hot rise and cool dip
of his body.
I see the arrogance—rocky head held
High against a blazing sky, the patient
Power unmindful of the heat
that holds me.
One day he will rise, stretch his sensuous
Body against the sky with one, low moan.
On silent paws he will pursue me.
And so I wait.
by Deborah J. Brasket
We’d been married ten years by then, but I felt I could no longer live like this. It was time for me to leave.
(To be continued) In celebration of April as National Poetry Month and our 50th wedding anniversary (yes, I was a child bride), I’ll be reposting a series I published here years ago,an anatomy of love as it evolves over time, exploring married love in all of its manifestations: Innocent love,erotic love, disappointed love, love lost, love renewed, and love that lasts.
In celebration of April as National Poetry Month and our 50th wedding anniversary (yes, I was a child bride), I’ll be reposting a series I published here years ago,an anatomy of love as it evolves over time, exploring married love in all of its manifestations: Innocent love, erotic love, disappointed love, love lost, love renewed, and love that lasts.
Part II – The Geometry and Geography of Love
I wrote these poems while still quite young, and very much in love, and loving the way our bodies “meet and mingle” when making love. I loved the “lean lines” and “anxious angles,” the patterns we made spread across the bed.
I was fascinated by how the masculine and feminine forms complemented each other. It inspired the following drawing, something I was playing around with at the time, enjoying the lean look of pen on paper.
A Pleasing Design
I find satisfaction in form, In bare geometric patterns, In line upon line bisecting line, In spacious planes spread out and open.
I like this silky stretch of skin, Simple curves and supple cones, I like the firm feel of your flesh, Swollen contours, anxious angles.
Mostly I like the intricate pattern We create, stripped bare and essential The piling planes and lacing lines, The way we meet and mingle,
When one fine ray of you cuts Clean through me, and within that intersecting interlude we come To a common and satisfying point.
By Deborah J. Brasket
Several love poems I wrote at the time involves the “topography” or “geography” of love, exploring each other’s bodies as if exploring an intimate landscape, with all its hills and streams, forests and caves, and vast flowing deserts.
Even then, so long ago, I was fascinated by how the human and natural worlds interconnect, and seem to complement each other.
In Exploration
I like the lay of your land.
You stretch before me in large and rugged proportions.
The sheer volume of your mass with its vast and varied landscape is an irresistible invitation to explore you.
You are shaped of firm and fertile earth pressed lovingly round solid granite.
I lay my face close to smell the sweet and salty scent of you And there I hear low, deep rumblings of subterranean waters.
I trace you with my finger to find Sudden softness, deep impenetrable forests, and parts of you so finely chiseled I must stop and marvel.
When I touch you my hand spans continents, for there’s no lusher garden, no sweeter field, no depth more resounding, nor peak more pure than what I find in touching you.
I rise and hover over you like a cloud then slowly, gently, cover you with my body. I feel the touch of skin on skin, your warmth rising through me and press so near I hear Your heartbeat in my body.
I am spilling with the rich fill of you, Knowing all my sweet and wild secrets lie Ever open to the finger of exploration.
Then I find within the far-off orb of your eye a space so vast and distant, and long to explore the intangible reaches of your mind.
In celebration of April as National Poetry Month and our 50th wedding anniversary (yes, I was a child bride), I’ll be reposting a series I published here years ago,an anatomy of love as it evolves over time, exploring married love in all of its manifestations: Innocent love, erotic love, disappointed love, love lost, love renewed, and love that lasts.
Part I, Some Silly Little Love Poems, Loosed at Last
He was a young handsome marine, fresh from his tour of duty in Vietnam. I was senior in high school, a flower-child who wrote poetry and read Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. We were the opposites that attract. I dropped out of school to marry him because he had to move away for work and I couldn’t live without him. But as an Ironworker building bridges and topping off sky-scrapers, his work kept taking him away from me. And as a freshman in college with a baby on the way, I could not follow, so we were constantly being parted. I wrote these poems to mourn his absence and celebrate love’s sweetness. The last one shows too the fear I felt of losing him forever, for his work on the high iron was so dangerous. These poems lay in a drawer for decades till published here.
Now, While
Now While the love-light of your eyes Shines upon my face, And your bare-bodied shadow Presses close to mine,
Now With the moonlight and trees Spreading patterns across our bed, And the corners of the room lie dark and drowsy,
Now Let us kiss and love.
Then While our bodies still hungrily cling Let us sleep,
Closely breathing, Closely dreaming, Close in love.
Gone
You’re gone! And though I know You’ll be back Monday The word gets caught between The empty of my arms
Just Asking
We loved We came to be like Mirrors, reflecting like
I saw myself An image in your eye.
When you’re gone I find myself And empty likeness
I question, are you gone Or am I?
Would That Love
Would that love move me once That it move me far enough Would that love move me now In all I do.
For the way is far too strong That would push against the throng, Cut me loose to lose myself In loving you.
Since the day will surely show When I’ll have to let you go What a waste to love you then With clutching arms.
So let me meet your every wish Make myself a selfless gift That I fill to overflowing Loving you.
And when we part, if part we must, I’ll unclasp in loving trust, For Love spent us to the full In every way.
I’m still trying to understand why this poem moves me so much, and thought maybe you can help.
And What Good Will Your Vanity Be When The Rapture Comes
says the man with a cart of empty bottles at the corner of church and lincoln while I stare into my phone and I say I know oh I know while trying to find the specific filter that will make the sun’s near-flawless descent look
the way I might describe it in a poem and the man says the moment is already right in front of you and I say I know but everyone I love is not here and I mean here like on this street corner with me while I turn
the sky a darker shade of red on my phone and I mean here like everyone I love who I can still touch and not pass my fingers through like the wind in a dream but I look up at the man and he is a kaleidoscope
of shadows I mean his shadows have shadows and they are small and trailing behind him and I know then that everyone he loves is also not here and the man doesn’t ask but I still say hey man I’ve got nothing I’ve got nothing even though I have plenty
to go home to and the sun is still hot even in its endless flirt with submission and the man’s palm has a small river inside I mean he has taken my hand now and here we are tethered and unmoving and the man says what color are you making
the sky and I say what I might say in a poem I say all surrender ends in blood and he says what color are you making the sky and I say something bright enough to make people wish they were here and he squints towards the dancing shrapnel of dying
light along a rooftop and he says I love things only as they are and I’m sure I did once too but I can’t prove it to anyone these days and he says the end isn’t always about what dies and I know I know or I knew once and now I write about beautiful things
like I will never touch a beautiful thing again and the man looks me in the eyes and he points to the blue-orange vault over heaven’s gates and he says the face of everyone you miss is up there and I know I know I can’t see them but I know
and he turns my face to the horizon and he says we don’t have much time left and I get that he means the time before the sun is finally through with its daily work or I think I get that but I still can’t stop trembling and I close
my eyes and I am sobbing on the corner of church and lincoln and when I open my eyes the sun is plucking everyone who has chosen to love me from the clouds and carrying them into the light-drunk horizon and I am seeing this and I know
I am seeing this the girl who kissed me as a boy in the dairy aisle of meijer while our parents shopped and the older boy on the basketball team who taught me how to make a good fist and swing it into the jaw of a bully and the friends who crawled to my porch
in the summer of any year I have been alive they were all there I saw their faces and it was like I was given the eyes of a newborn again and once you know what it is to be lonely it is hard to unsee that which serves as a reminder that you were not always
empty and I am gasping into the now-dark air and I pull my shirt up to wipe whatever tears are left and I see the man walking in the other direction and I chase him down and tap his arm and I say did you see it did you see it like I did and he turns and leans into the
glow of a streetlamp and he is anchored by a single shadow now and he sneers and he says have we met and he scoffs and pushes his cart off into the night and I can hear the glass rattling even as I watch him become small and vanish and I look down at my
phone and the sky on the screen is still blood red.
It starts out as just an ordinary encounter on a street corner and kaleidoscopes into something quite different. The narrator is preoccupied with his phone, with enhancing an image of a sunset to show off to others. When approached by a homeless man preoccupied with the coming rapture, he fakes empathy, saying “I know I know”, but not really knowing, not really caring. He continues to humor the man by saying, in essence, yes, I know, the rapture is coming, but since all my people aren’t here, I’m not really ready for it right now.
And it’s at this point the poem shifts from the real to the surreal, the homeless guy before him kaleidoscopes into something else, and takes hold of the narrator’s hand. Now they are “tethered and unmoving.”
From here until the end is a dreamlike episode, where poignant moments and phrases seem to flow, one after the other, like that river flowing from the man’s palm: the sun’s “endless flirt with submission,” “I love things only as they are,” “the end isn’t always about what dies,” “now I write about beautiful things like I will never touch a beautiful thing again,” and “the face of everyone you miss is up there.”
By now the narrator is trembling and sobbing. He keeps saying “I know, I know, or I knew once,” as if he’s forgotten the things he should know. And then comes this vision: “when I open my eyes the sun is plucking everyone who has chosen to love me from the clouds and carrying them into the light-drunk horizon and I am seeing this and I know”. He sees all these faces and precious moments from his past and says: ” it was like I was given the eyes of a newborn again.” Then he adds “once you know what it is to be lonely it is hard to unsee that which serves as a reminder that you were not always empty.”
After this vision and revelation, the scene devolves back into an ordinary street scene. The homeless man, when asked, apparently has not seen what he saw. He scornfully pushes the narrator away, and continues his journey into the night with his cart full of empty bottles.
I’m still struggling to put into words what moves me, but it’s in the images I’ve highlighted above, and the refrain “I know I know or I knew once.” It’s in that feeling that things aren’t really as they seem to be, they are so much more; and also in the fact that all we really want or need is already right here before us, if only we had eyes to see.
It’s in that coalescing of the real and surreal, the now and forever, the ordinary and extraordinary, and how they morph back and forth, dreamlike and elusive. It’s in that eternal yearning for “something more,” and, at the same time, the need to surrender to what is. To let that “dancing shrapnel” of light break us apart so we are open to this moment, right here, before us.
There’s so much more to say about this poem, and I’d be really interested in knowing what you think.
The constant reference to a poem is interesting too, making this a kind of meta-poem. The narrator himself is a poet it seems. And I wonder, does the act of writing (my writing this post, his writing that poem) does it take us out of the moment or deeper into it? And when I say “moment” do I mean what is happening right now in this room and outside my window as I write, or what is going on in my head and heart as I write quite unaware of my surroundings? Are they the same moment? Or are each part of a kaleidoscopic now, moments within moments?
The word “rapture” is mentioned only once, but referred to again and again, and perhaps the title of this post, “the rapture is already right in front of us,” comes closest to capturing what I take away from reading this poem. The rapture not referring to the Biblical sense of people being plucked off the streets into heaven, but to the ecstatic joy that lies just out of sight within the present moment, if only we have eyes to see.
Many thanks to The Vale of Soul-Making for introducing me to this poem and poet. And many thanks for the painting by Robert Roth that captures without words what I really wanted to say here.
