August 10: From "West Wind," Actual Love, Sharp Spear

Mary Oliver on love and re-incarnation . . . 

From "West Wind"

by:  Mary Oliver

1.

If there is life after the earth-life, will you come with me?  Even then?  Since we're bound to be something, why not together.  Imagine!  Two little stones, two fleas under the wing of a gull, flying along through the fog!  Or, ten blades of grass.  Ten loops of honeysuckle, all flung against each other, at the edge of Race Road!  Beach plums!  Snowflakes, coasting into the winter woods, making a very small sound, like this

soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

as they marry the dusty bodies of the pitch-pines.  Or, rain--that gray light running over the sea, pocking it, lacquering it, coming, all morning and afternoon, from the west wind's youth and abundance and jollity--pinging and jangling down upon the roofs of Provincetown.

9.

And what did you think love would be like?  A summer day?  The brambles in their places, and the long stretches of mud?  Flowers in every field, in every garden, with their soft beaks and their pastel shoulders?  On one street after another, the little ticks in the gutter.  In one room after another, the lovers meet, quarrel, sicken, break apart, cry out.  One or two leap from windows.  Most simply lean, exhausted, their thin arms on the sill.  They have done all that they could.  The golden eagle, that lives not far from here, has perhaps a thousand tiny feathers flowing from the back of its head, each one shaped like an infinitely small but perfect spear.

For the most part, Mary Oliver's poems are usually one or two pages long, focused on a single experience or image.  So, writing this blog post on two sections of a longer Oliver poem is a little strange and difficult.

But I like strange and difficult.  Plus, these two sections are all about love.  Idealized love versus actual love.  Oliver doesn't buy into the "love is like a red red rose" kind of love.  No, her love is two little fleas under the wings of a gull.  Her lovers meet, quarrel, sicken, break apart, cry out, jump out of windows.  Love that's a thousand tiny feathers on the head of a golden eagle, each one a sharp spear.

I know what Oliver is talking about.  In my experience, love is not all moonlit strolls along a beach, hand-in-hand with your lover.  Love is messy.  Cutting.  Painful.  Suicidal (sometimes).  The hard work of love happens after the steam of first sex, after the wedding gifts are opened and the honeymoon is over.  When the kitchen sink is piled with dirty dishes and there's three baskets of laundry to fold, that's when love is put to the test.

As most long-time disciples of this blog know, my wife and I have had our marital struggles.  Mental illness and addiction almost ended our union on more than one occasion.  So, I'm kind of an expert on navigating the tidal waves of love.  For a while, I even rated our struggles like hurricanes.  Category 1:  I forgot to make the bed this morning.  Category 5:  we're living in separate homes in distant cities.  Yet, in two years' time, we will celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary.  Our daughter will be going to medical school soon, and our son will be a high school sophomore.  

It certainly hasn't been an easy three decades at times.  I share these details not because I want you to feel sorry for me or to think I'm some kind of hero (or idiot).  I gave up worrying over other peoples' opinions about my marriage and family a long time ago.  I'm not sharing these details because I'm jaded and bitter.  I'm not.  My goal isn't to discourage people from falling in love.  Just the opposite, as a matter of fact.

I believe in love.  I believe that love is reincarnated, over and over, in relationships.  I'm not the same person I was 35 years ago when I proposed to my wife.  My wife isn't the same person who accepted my proposal.  I'm not the person who stood in front of crowded church and said "I do."  Ditto, my wife.  We've grown and changed and struggled and become different people over the last three decades.  Our marriage has followed suit.  We may have started as a summer day, but, sometimes, we've been fleas and stones and snow and rain, as well.

But we still have our summer days, where the garden is full of blooms--peonies and roses and black-eyed Susans.  In fact, I would say that more and more of our days are filled with the soft, pink petals of tulips.  Come winter, we may be two fangs of ice hanging from the roof.  Yet, we have been together, are still together, defying the winds and droughts and blizzards.

For that, Saint Marty sends up a golden eagle "Hallelujah!"  Watch as it dips and wheels and soars in the setting sun.