The Family Of Things

You do not have to be good

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

 

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

 Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 

are moving across the landscapes

over the prairies and the deep trees

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —

over and over announcing your place
in the family of things. 

-Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
photos: Rome 2013

*     *     *      

It's the best of times, and the worst of times. Everyday we're tugged this way and that by the stories of tragedy, heroism and helplessness. Some of us are just baking our way through the lockdown, or sitting numbly, waiting for release, or November, or both; or all of the above. Then there are the protesters who can't or won't stay home. It's tough for everyone. So we sew face masks and wash our hands and keep on standing six feet apart at the grocery. Or not because maybe we're still going to work everyday, one of the 'everyday heroes' though paid less than heroically and likely without health insurance. Sometimes I feel stupid because who knows, maybe the conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers were right after all, and I worry that I didn't even bother to find out what they were yelling about on youtube. Like maybe we should have been digging bunkers after all instead of following make-up tutorials or dancing on tiktok.  But nevermind all that. Here I offer the wonderful Mary Oliver to keep on reminding us its going to be okay. And what better series to pair her poem with than these photos from a trip to the beautiful Eternal City? Ah Rome, indeed it was nice to remember how I veni'd and vidi'd, but this city and its living breathing stones arranged in marvels of cathedral, tomb and bloodlust amphitheater definitely still vici's me. Totus tuus :)

A Spark On The Wind

Life is the only way 

to get covered in leaves,

catch your breath on the sand, 

rise on wings;

to be a dog,

or stroke its warm fur;

to tell pain 

from everything it's not;

to squeeze inside events,

dawdle in views,

to seek the least of all possible mistakes.

An extraordinary chance 

to remember for a moment

a conversation held

with the lamp switched off;

and if only once

to stumble upon a stone,

end up soaked in one downpour or another,

mislay your keys in the grass;

and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes;

and to keep on not knowing

something important.

 *A Note--by Wislawa Szymborska, photos from Amsterdam, 2019

I think poetry isn't easy to appreciate just any old time. But they say people turn to poetry when they're in search of their own histories, to hear their own thoughts and feelings spoken for them. Certainly the lockdown has me feeling up and down, confused, bored and lonely, anxious and afraid; impatient, lazy and mournful all at the same time. It's a mixed bag. But that's how it is right now. And I remembered how reading the lines of this poem for the first time made me feel a kind of gratitude for the poet and the loveliness of her gentle words. And so I hope it'll be the same for you, dear friend out there, or you who may have stumbled upon this here quiet spot I stake as mine. Funny how it's easier for me to tell you these things when on the so-called social media circus I'm sanguine, I'm light, I'm not all freaked out and panicky. But that's where the real theater lies anyway. About my photos--well they've long been sitting on my laptop. I don't know why. But here they are now--I didn't know the world would be so different by the time I'd get around to posting them.