Love Story

Love Story

Love, what would you have me know? –Robert Holden

Love, what would you have me know? These days
my brain is overflowing, so at least a hundred times a week it spits away the bits that seem irrelevant. This must be why you bypass thought and arrow to the heart. I don’t forget what’s spoken there . It stays, however long neglected.

When I scrub my oaken floor, the caustic fluid strips the upper layers—grime, old wax, and varnish—but the hardwood soul of it remains as if connected with the far-off forest and the very tree it came from. It retains its fodder—minerals of earth and drops of water, blizzards, sunlight, even winds that shaped its early-morning silhouette. Scars fade to invisibility; the nutrients remain.

Love, tell your timeless story. You don’t use a shred of space. The hum of life will never make a person fat or lazy. It’s an energy insisting, “Come this way,” whatever mortal mind might say in opposition. I don’t listen to the whine advising separation. I’m attuned to music that endures. When all is said and done, the harmony’s eternal. It can penetrate, it will transcend the grave.

And so, love, speak away. There’s no place you can’t reach me. If there were, my spirit would not see it. If it did, it would not go there. Love, sing on. What would you have me know?

'You are the reason for the unexpected hummingbird'

Van Gogh, Wheat Field Under Clouded Sky, 1890

Terrified of Bliss

Angels with the Blessed Virgin -- Botticelli



 A PRAYER TO MY ANGELS



O ye angels, fly to me
and lift me out to sea, above
the waves that rest but never sleep
while there is work undone.
Perhaps the sea’s an angel too;
it has the timeless job to do
of cleansing this untidy earth
and birthing it anew.

Galatea — Raphael

O ye angels, carry me
upon thy wings, a brief escape,
then stay a bit, I beg of thee,
and help me concentrate.
My mind, it likes to creep away;
in vain I order it to stay
and serve the purpose I’m about;
but it’s gone out to play.


O ye angels, lend thy power
to my responsibilities;
I seek the effort of an hour
before my labors cease.
I have no gold to save or spend,
nor do I want thine, angel friends;
instead I need thine energy
when lethargy begins.


At last, ye angels, when the task
is finished and the cottage neat,
I’ll have but one more boon to ask:
my prayers lay at God’s feet.

THE JOY OF THE LIGHT OF GOD



Alleluias rolled from the east



What are we waiting for? Why do we

hesitate? For here and plain as dawn

when every demon of the night has

fled, we see the joy of the light

of God. We need only step out of

the mist—no odyssey have we

to undertake or foe pursue, no

secrets to discover. There is only love to

be accepted, met with gratitude... now

only happiness to claim. Anxiety, regret

and shame—these were the evils

that evaporated as we watched. No

sooner were they gone than Alleluias

sweet and strong rolled from the east

and would have swept us off our feet

and carried us aloft, had we not clung

to earth, so terrified of bliss we are if it

should cost surrender of the shreds

of skin we still identify as “us.” The

lungs, the bones, contorted hands

and feet; the pain, disease, decay are

us, we say? As if God meant us to be

temporary, having used up our

allotted days, too old and slow to

overtake the measured plodding step

of entropy. But we are woven of a

better fabric, one that grows more

durable with wear and time and testing.

Still we hesitate, though faith has been

replaced by certainty.

St. Francis of Assisi with Al Kamil -- 15th century

With reluctance mixed with fascination

do we draw a little nearer, inches at a time.

We cringe when light falls full upon us

and the unfamiliar frightens us. We are

accustomed to the cold, the dark, and sink

into delirium as we might fall upon a rotting

pallet in a beggar’s squalid inn, when our

soul’s comfort and security, clarity of sight,

the soundness of the body, heart repaired

and spirit whole are certain, not mysterious

as once they were, remote, the whisper

of a promise too ethereal to tempt the

desperate, the wanderers in need of solid

benefits, of food and shelter. Isn’t it more

sensible to hesitate? God isn’t going anywhere.

 LOVE STICKS

Love comes later, in the wake of pain,
like rescue after piracy. Sometimes the

buccaneers escape with their ill-gotten
gains and damn the bodies and the sailors
who survived. These are forgotten or
outshone by treasure seized according to the
code of honor thieves and brigands go by.

Guardian angels

I have love. Sometimes I keep it chained but it escapes eventually. The chase is
futile. I pursue it anyway, at
least to see where it alights. I’ve little
hope of catching it but I can sabotage
attachment anyway until it flickers
out of sight.


Both love and I know which of us is wiser,
stronger, and more patient. Truth be told,
I’d really rather give the game up, let love
lead, but ego won’t permit me to, not
yet at any rate, though soon, I’ll wager.
It feeds on my weakness, and I’m weary
now, as one becomes from filibustering.
Its loyalty is oddly given, not bestowed where I would choose. It forms unsuitable
alliances and clings tenaciously. I
win, it says and flashes me a saucy
grin, and so do you. It’s only face you
lose. I’ll get it back to you.


Love is like a tireless suitor, one who
could have gone away for good but stays to
tease me, plays a waiting game. I
wonder if it plans to catch me up in
some transgression. Hardly likely, as it’s
had a million chances. Still it sticks as if to
lure me, which is curious. It surely knows
I don’t deserve it. 

Native Soil

There She Is

Karen was a woman who wore stylish
linen suits to work and chunky turquoise

jewelry sometimes or a string of pearls

and navy T-shirt dress whose hem would

skim the floor, but for the three-inch

heels she wore; and she adorned her
office and herself with clever pieces from
boutiques — a long silk scarf in pink pastel

tossed on with casual elegance, one turn

around the neck above a crisp, white
cotton shirt and Levi’s... plain clay
saucers, different sizes, meant to set your
plant pots on, were coasters,
paperweights, and places to put odds and
ends... and sturdy woven baskets, long
before the world discovered them, wore

large, neat labels: “Out” and “In.”

She always took the summers off — her
husband was the Dean of Men — they had
“a little place” somewhere in Ireland, it
might have been a castle or a pub. She
loved it, that was all I knew, and though
she lived with such élan and dressed with
flair and ingenuity and didn’t care what
anybody thought, and was so kind and
always took me to the symphony and then
for drinks at Hickory’s to celebrate my
birthday, and adored ballet and was a
friend of Balanchine and once, at least, I
know she went to Moscow for a
weekend... not that she was ever sickly, I
don’t think she missed a day of work in
fifteen years, but toward the end of May
she’d summon up, from God knows where,
this superhuman energy and raucous joy,
and, “There she is,” I’d think, though I
could not have told you what was missing.
It’s as if you’ve never seen a flower, and a
coral-tinted rosebud shows up one day at
your door;
you’re overcome;
you vow to
treasure it forever,
and the morning after,
all its petals have unfolded and you stare
in wonder at it: “There was more?” you
say in bafflement. And that was Karen, all
at once unfolding like a rose.

There are those who never grow quite as
they should except in native soil, and I
suppose when Karen first met Ireland,
there was sudden recognition, something
like immediate addiction to a sense of
place she’d not have felt the lack of till
she had it. I confess I’ve felt the tug of it
myself, from elsewhere, who can say? I’ve
yet to learn. It happens when the sun is at
a certain slant, the trees throw shadows
out, just so, and something beckons in the
wind, a scent, a sound, except I don’t
know which direction it would have me go,
but, oh, I yearn for it and grieve as if I
know the thing I’m grieving for, and all this
in the time it takes to breathe one breath,

inhale, exhale, and while you’re at it have

a brief encounter with a universe outside

of time and space where words are

weighty and irrelevant. But it’s the poet’s

job to make the poem speak if not the

words, and so: There is a place I’m meant

to be and it will find me or I’ll stumble

over it, and then I’ll know that I’ve come

home.

(And no, it isn’t death or heaven, not as

strong as premonition, not as vague as

funny feeling, not an ache but more a sort
of itchiness, as if I were a migratory bird,
instinctively aware of season, storm, and
course; a kind of magnetism, I suppose,
and only wish I knew which way is north.)