The Instant
by: Mary Oliver
Today
one small snake lay, looped and
solitary
in the high grass, it
swirled to look, didn't
like what it saw
and was gone
in two pulses
forward and with no sound at all, only
two taps, in disarray, from
that other shy one,
my heart.
I led another poetry workshop tonight. It was part two of the workshop I lead on the first Thursday and Sunday of every month. The theme this time was "love," for obvious reasons, considering the upcoming holiday. But I didn't focus on just romantic love, but love in all its forms. Love of a child. Love of a particular place. Love of animals (like Oliver's love for that snake in today's poem). Love of nature. Love of Bigfoot. (Okay, that one was just me.) It was a literal love fest.
Of course, love is a complicated thing. Always is. It is true that we hurt the people (and things) we love the most, and vice versa. There are some people I love who have caused me great pain in the past. My wife and I are going on 30 years of marriage, and those three decades have not always been easy. Our Love Boat has almost turned into The Poseidon Adventure a few times. Yet, through forgiveness and a LOT of hard work, we are still together.
I come from a large family. I had three brothers and five sisters. Three of my siblings have died. I love(d) all of my siblings. However, I don't get along with all of them. In fact, I hardly speak to a couple of them for reasons I won't talk about here. I still pray for those siblings. Wish them happiness and joy. However, I just can't share the same oxygen with them. And I have learned to accept that.
I'm not sharing any earth-shattering wisdom here. Love is complicated. Period. That's why it's one of the great themes in literature, movies, music, and art. Think about it. Romeo and Juliet love each other, and we all know how that turns out for them. Jack ends up at the bottom of the Atlantic while Rose bobs along on a piece of Titanic flotsam until she's rescued. The couple in Grant Wood's American Gothic look like they haven't had sex in years, and there was always something strange between Greg and Marcia Brady. Don't even get me started on all the shit have to go through Jack and Ennis on that mountain.
Love (in all its forms) is the element that binds us all together. Without love, bad things happen: wars, genocides, institutional racism, the election of Republicans. Sometimes, love is hard. Sometimes, it's as easy as eating a brownie.
Here's a little thing Saint Marty wrote about love in workshop tonight . . .
Jigsaw Puzzle
by: Martin Achatz
My dad was a puzzle to me,
a Charles Foster Kane whose Rosebud
I never found. A life-long Republican,
whose favorite president was JFK.
Member of he John Birch Society
who loved Lucille Ball even after
Winchell declared her a card-carrying
commie. Hard-drinker, he sat
in his chair, sipped Seven and Sevens
all night until he couldn't remember
the basement from the bathroom
door, plunged down basement stairs
into a metal support beam. The next
morning, his face swelled to the size
of a Thanksgiving turkey, stitches
knitting his forehead back together.
But here is the thing I remember most
about my dad--him in his hospital
bed, breathing his last breaths,
and my mom beside him, holding
his hand, rubbing it with her thumbs, saying
over and over to him, "You were
a good husband, yes, you were,"
as he squeezed his eyes shut and tears
rolled down his face, as if the world
had become too painful to look at any more.
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