Fran Leibowitz once said, "There is talking, and there is waiting to talk." I'm waiting longer, these days, letting the space between words, between phrases, take its own shape — space that isn't force-filled with more words. My habit of many years has been one of talk and wit and quips and laughs — it's not so easy letting go of some of that. But something is coming into focus, in those gaps — hazy still, amorphous, indefinite. Patience is my ally, as well as the challenge.
And, well, it's January.
It's winter.
Interminably grey.
---
The Layers
I
have walked through many lives,
some
of them my own,
and
I am not who I was,
though
some principle of being
abides,
from which I struggle
not
to stray.
When
I look behind,
as I
am compelled to look
before
I can gather strength
to
proceed on my journey,
I
see the milestones dwindling
toward
the horizon
and
the slow fires trailing
from
the abandoned camp-sites,
over
which scavenger angels
wheel
on heavy wings.
Oh,
I have made myself a tribe
out
of my true affections,
and
my tribe is scattered!
How
shall the heart be reconciled
to
its feast of losses?
In a
rising wind
the
manic dust of my friends,
those
who fell along the way,
bitterly
stings my face.
Yet
I turn, I turn,
exulting
somewhat,
with
my will intact to go
wherever
I need to go,
and
every stone on the road
precious
to me.
In
my darkest night,
when
the moon was covered
and
I roamed through wreckage,
a
nimbus-clouded voice
directed
me:
“Live
in the layers,
not
on the litter.”
Though
I lack the art
to
decipher it,
no
doubt the next chapter
in
my book of transformations
is
already written.
I am
not done with my changes.
--Stanley Kunitz
Beautiful! Your words, your listening, that poem.
ReplyDelete