Meanwhile (after Mary Oliver)
The introductory poetry writing class begins at 1 o’clock
sharp. The instructor’s name is Merry-- not Mary, like Mary,
Jesus, and Joseph, but Merry, like Merry Christmas, like
happy. I expect nothing less from a community college
poetry class offered only in the summer. So the skeptic in me
tunes in. Merry begins by reading us a poem by Mary Oliver.
There is an odd urgency in her voice.
You do not have to be good.
It is exactly what every beginning writer wants to hear:
it’s okay to not be used to this yet. It’s okay to fumble,
to experiment. It’s okay to let your guard down and be
wrong.
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.
I do not know what this soft animal wants. I do not know
what it loves, or who. Softness is something
I have trained out of my breath. Softness is what lies behind
curtains I never intend to open.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
The girl with warm chocolate eyes writes about the family she
left back home a thousand miles away. The woman who
reminds me of my mother writes about the once love that
turned sour. The boy with the crooked lenses tells us
about his loneliness. The guy who hides behind his beard
makes up for his pain with a good laugh, with biting sarcasm.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
It is, at times, hard to step into tomorrow. To accept it
as it comes. Sometimes, I fall too deeply in love with yesterday.
Sometimes, I can’t imagine a future if it looks anything like
this.
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.
I can see it so clearly: a gray sea, a yellowed hill, a mountain
bathed in purple glow. All of these things I have loved and left
behind. Today, the oldest student in the class
describes a canyon, or a mountain, or another sea, one that
I haven’t yet seen, one that I may never see myself. And yet,
I see it: between the four brick walls of that classroom,
it is here,
singing to us, loud and unafraid.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
And too soon we are heading home again. We are saying our
goodbyes. And those who once felt like strangers hold within
them pieces of my heart. And yet again I have fallen in love with
something that I must leave behind. But this is not pain.
There is something worth loving here, in this dimming autumn light.
Who knows
where we will go. Who knows how long each of us have left.
And perhaps it doesn’t matter.
Meanwhile
we are young.
Meanwhile
we are growing, learning, making mistakes.
Meanwhile
we are all waiting on an answer, on a name called
in the dark, on a tomorrow more golden than yesterday.