We were only yesterday tender hearted

On this last day of the month, a poem from Elegy, Mary Jo Bang‘s staggering reflection on loss following the death of her son.

“February Elegy”

This bald year, frozen now in February.

This cold day winging over the ugly

Imperfect horizon line,

So often a teeth line of ten buildings.

A red flag flapping

In the wind. An orange curtain is noon.

It all hurts her eyes. This curtain is so bright.

Here is what is noticeably true: sight.

The face that looks back from the side

Of the butter knife.

A torn-bread awkwardness.

The mind makes its daily pilgrimage

Through riff-raff moments. Then,

Back into the caprice case to dream

In a circle, a pony goes round.

The circle’s association: There’s a center

To almost everything but never

Any certainty. Nothing is

More malleable than a moment. We were

Only yesterday breathing in a sea.

Some summer sun

Asked us over and over we went. The sand was hot.

We were only yesterday tender hearted

Waiting. To be something.

A spring. And then someone says, Sit down,

We have a heart for you to forget. A mind to suffer

With. So, experience. So, the circus tent.

You, over there, you be the girl

In red sequins on the front of a card selling love.

You, over there, you, in black satin.

You be the Maiden’s Mister Death.

 

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Love someone who does not deserve it.

I had the pleasure of seeing the incredible writer, farmer, and environmental activist Wendell Berry (1934-) last night, speaking on everything from land use to the necessary distinction between optimism and hope. At the beginning of the evening, he read this manifesto of a poem, and the images have been rolling around in my mind ever since:

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

 

What we told each other to help us through the day

I have read Ada Limón’s new collection Bright Dead Things twice now, cover to cover, and still can’t get enough of her beautiful wisdom, her way of making me reconsider the every day.

“The Great Blue Heron of Dunbar Road”

That we might walk out into the woods together,
and afterwards make toast
in our sock feet, still damp from the fern’s
wet grasp, the spiky needles stuck to our
legs, that’s all I wanted, the dog in the mix,
jam sometimes, but not always. But somehow,
I’ve stopped praising you. How the valley
when you first see it—the small roads back
to your youth—is so painfully pretty at first,
then, after a month of black coffee, it’s just
another place your bullish brain exists, bothered
by itself and how hurtful human life can be.
Isn’t that how it is? You wake up some days
full of crow and shine, and then someone
has put engine coolant in the medicine
on another continent and not even crying
helps cure the idea of purposeful poison.
What kind of woman am I? What kind of man?
I’m thinking of the way my stepdad got sober,
how he never told us, just stopped drinking
and sat for a long time in the low folding chair
on the Bermuda grass reading and sometimes
soaking up the sun like he was the story’s only
subject. When he drove me to school, we decided
it would be a good day, if we saw the blue heron
in the algae-covered pond next to the road,
so that if we didn’t see it, I’d be upset. Then,
he began to lie. To tell me he’d seen it when
he hadn’t, or to suppose that it had just
taken off when we rounded the corner in
the gray car that somehow still ran, and I
would lie, too, for him. I’d say I saw it.
Heard the whoosh of wings over us.
That’s the real truth. What we told each other
to help us through the day: the great blue heron
was there, even when the pond dried up,
or froze over; it was there because it had to be.
Just now, I felt like I wanted to be alone
for a long time, in a folding chair on the lawn
with all my private agonies, but then I saw you
and the way you’re hunching over your work
like a puzzle, and I think even if I fail at everything,
I still want to point out the heron like I was taught,
still want to slow the car down to see the thing
that makes it all better, the invisible gift,
what we see when we stare long enough into nothing.