Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

I've returned to this poem every fall for probably five or six years now. Summer is my favorite season, and autumn is bittersweet. This year is no different, maybe even more-so because it has been a joyful year and I'm sad to see it drawing to a close. The first few leaves are falling to the ground and my two remaining best friends in the area are moving to Tulsa and to Germany. I haven't found another piece that gets at this sharpness as well as Mary Oliver's "Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness." I actually wrote my previous post just after sifting through this poem.

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

by Mary Oliver

"Every year we have been

witness to it: how the

world descends

into a rich mash, in order that

it may resume.

And therefore

who would cry out

to the petals on the ground

to stay,

knowing, as we must,

how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?

I don’t say

it’s easy, but

what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world

be true?

So let us go on

though the sun be swinging east,

and the ponds be cold and black,

and the sweets of the year be doomed."


>>>
Tabitha and Jamie,

I am happy for you as you leave in the same way I am happy the leaves are falling. I have no doubt it is what you are supposed to be doing. That the result will be hard-won growth after a time that may be dark and difficult. As Mary sums up so well, "I don't say it's easy, but what else will do if the love one claims to have for the world (and for one's friends) be true?" Our time together in NWA was longer than I dared hope for and I am grateful. I enjoy our quirky keeping in touch through all manner of things--Pinterest and Instagram and Marco Polo videos and snail mail and random pictures and Amazon packages and messages that start with, "Hey, remember when?"

I'm proud of you and I love you very much.

That Which Belongs to Both

A first draft poem that finally sums up what I've felt a long time about autumn. Unlike almost everything else I've ever written, it pieced itself together in a matter of minutes. I'm happy with it for now.

That Which Belongs To Both

The crisp green that belongs to both 

fall and spring is at the tops of the trees. 

Have you ever noticed that spring spreads 

from the bottom up, as fall does from the top down?

As if each lives out the verb with which it shares a name.

A certain few weeks each year, 

a photo can’t capture whether or not 

the green is coming or going. All looks the same, 

like pictures of sunrises and sunsets—I never could tell them apart. 

Something about that sameness 

in ending and beginning is comforting, I think. 

It Is No Bad Thing To Celebrate A Simple Life

“It is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life."  

—J .R.R. Tolkien

This quote sums up quite a bit of what I've learned from my last few years.

 Writing since college has been difficult. There are no longer huge self-discoveries happening every other week, no classes expanding my worldview, no professors pushing me to dig deeper into my abilities. In short, it has been quiet. Simple. And for the most part, I have loved it. And felt guilty for loving it. After going through so much for my degree, shouldn't I have some kind of great ambition? My friends are starting their careers, getting married, having children, moving overseas, working toward the dreams we all had of making an impact on the world, making our lives meaningful.

For a long time, I was burdened with the weight of “Find your purpose!" But even four years out of college, I never figured out what God's voice sounds like, never heard my special mission—that thing that would give my life meaning. After waiting so long, I finally stopped listening and have found more peace than I've had in years. I've stopped doubting myself and have let myself want a certain direction in life, a direction that simply makes me happy, without constantly wondering if what I want is bad simply because I want it—my “flesh" wants it. Taking control of where I'm headed has eased a deep anxiety I thought I would always have to live with. Giving up my frantic search for meaning has allowed me to be fulfilled by what I have and where I am, therefore—quite ironically—giving me a sense of meaning.

Now, small things matter most. Shared vegetables from a coworker's garden. Coffee in bed before a long work day. Taking friends to a new favorite restaurant for the first time. Watching hummingbirds from a shaded back porch. Adopting a dog. Writing again.

In my previous relationship, my ex was so set on finding that ultimate existential meaning, he didn't see the hope and contentment (not complacency) offered by small things. He was adamant that happiness and meaning are not the same thing, and that meaning had to come first, then happiness. In the end, it meant that he was never satisfied. Our life left him restless. He wanted to find his individual purpose, and he couldn't do that with me—or possibly anyone else—as a partner. I naively waited for years for his “I" to become “us," but it never did. And so, we lost all that we had built together over three and a half years. Although it's been seven months, I'm still healing in a lot of ways. How exactly does one go about recovering from such a stark rejection? 

Starting over has been difficult, but so worthwhile because now I have a clear idea of what and who I want for my future. Searching for meaning shouldn't require rejecting happiness. It is not an either-or choice. I believe now that following what makes you joyful often leads to a fulfilled and meaningful life. The small things lead to the Big Thing.

My Big Thing is finally taking shape. I've read a lot recently—All The Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, The Count of Monte Cristo, A Man Called Ove, Born to Run, Where the Crawdads Sing, Fahrenheit 451, the first few Harry Potter books. I've learned that I love John Steinbeck's style in The Pearl and Of Mice and Men. I've felt alive and I want more of it. I think I want a master’s degree in library science. Pursuing that degree will provide opportunities to continue experiencing what has given me so much satisfaction.

I definitely want a simple, quiet life. Finding Corey, someone who also wants that, has made me happier than I thought possible. We want a place of our own, one filled with green things and delicious dinners and a table full of friends. Craft beers and ciders during the weekly trivia night at Gusano's. We want enough money to give without worrying, to travel a couple times a year, to try all the international food we can find, and to save for the future. We want to plant blueberry bushes in a yard and gather the fruit five years later. Plenty of time to read and to be outside.  A dog, or two, or three. We want to take care of those we love and to live in a way that makes Northwest Arkansas more sustainable, more welcoming to outsiders. To be aware of the wide world and its problems, but to still believe that making small changes matter. Together, all those things are within our grasp.

And it is no bad thing to celebrate that.

When One Room Is Lit And Another Is Not

My current poem offering—because the thought of the calendar earning an extra day every four years fascinates me when our time on earth seems short and ever shorter sometimes. 

February 29

BY JANE HIRSHFIELD

An extra day—

Like the painting’s fifth cow,

who looks out directly,

straight toward you,

from inside her black and white spots.

An extra day—

Accidental, surely:

the made calendar stumbling over the real

as a drunk trips over a threshold

too low to see.

An extra day—

With a second cup of black coffee.

A friendly but businesslike phone call.

A mailed-back package.

Some extra work, but not too much—

just one day’s worth, exactly.

An extra day—

Not unlike the space

between a door and its frame

when one room is lit and another is not,

and one changes into the other

as a woman exchanges a scarf.

An extra day—

Extraordinarily like any other.

And still

there is some generosity to it,

like a letter re-readable after its writer has died.

As Generously, As Inexhaustibly

A little reading for anyone coughing and sniffling their way through the second round of winter colds with me--a poem taken from my current obsession, The Beauty. The book is one of Jane Hirshfield's many collections and was a Christmas present from my sister. Despite my attempts to ration out the new poems, I finished it weeks ago and have no doubt there will be several more Hirshfield-inspired posts to come. 
                                                        

A Common Cold
BY JANE HIRSHFIELD

A common cold, we say—
common, though it has encircled the globe
           seven times now handed traveler to traveler
           though it has seen the Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an
           seen Piero della Francesca’s Madonna del Parto in Monterchi
           seen the emptied synagogues of Krasnogruda
           seen the since-burned souk of Aleppo

A common cold, we say—
common, though it is infinite and surely immortal
           common because it will almost never kill us
           and because it is shared among any who agree to or do not agree to
           and because it is unaristocratic
                     reducing to redness both profiled and front-viewed noses
                     reducing to coughing the once-articulate larynx
                     reducing to unhappy sleepless turning the pillows of down,
                          of wool, of straw, of foam, of kapok

A common cold, we say—
common because it is cloudy and changing and dulling
            because there are summer colds, winter colds, fall colds,
                     colds of the spring
            because these are always called colds, however they differ
                     beginning sore-throated
                     beginning sniffling
                     beginning a little tired or under the weather
                     beginning with one single innocuous untitled sneeze
           because it is bane of usually eight days’ duration
                     and two or three boxes of tissues at most

The common cold, we say—
and wonder, when did it join us
           when did it saunter into the Darwinian corridors of the human
           do manatees catch them do parrots I do not think so
           and who named it first, first described it, Imhotep, Asclepius,
                 Zhongjing
           and did they wonder, is it happy sharing our lives
                    as generously as inexhaustibly as it shares its own
                    virus dividing and changing while Piero’s girl gazes still
                         downward
                   five centuries still waiting still pondering still undivided

while in front of her someone hunts through her opening pockets for tissues
                         for more than one reason once

The World Is In Pencil

 This poem is on my mind tonight; I'm not sure why. It offers a subtle comfort though--the thought that all this, the world, is a loving work-in-progress, something about it always being erased and re-worked.

The World Is in Pencil

Related Poem Content Details

BY TODD BOSS

—not pen. It’s got

that same silken 

dust about it, doesn’t it, 

that same sense of 

having been roughed 

onto paper even  

as it was planned. 

It had to be a labor

of love. It must’ve

taken its author some

time, some shove. 

I’ll bet it felt good

in the hand—the o

of the ocean, and

the and and the and 

of the land. 

If You Want God Yet Sometimes Wonder

Last Saturday some of my closest friends from college and I had our annual Christmas party. We all ate a potluck Christmas dinner, had a white elephant gift exchange, sang Christmas carols (including my favorite, O Come O Come Emmanuel), read reflective Christmas Scripture passages, drank Kenyan tea, ate decorated sugar cookies, and played games like Catch Phrase and Taboo. It was lovely and restful and the first time this season I felt I was truly practicing Advent, fully anticipating the celebration of Christ's birth on the 25th.

Christmas is always the lightest spiritual season for me, a time when heavy questions about why there's so much suffering in the world quiet down and I'm left with an awe of the lengths that this God I don't understand took to connect with us. The red and green and gold everywhere make life feel a little crisper, a little cleaner to me. There was snow on the ground a few mornings ago, bright even as it melted. 

The physical celebration of Christmas, the hunting down and wrapping and giving of gifts, the travel home, the decorating, the baking--all things I love--sometimes requires so much physical energy that I have little strength or time to take in and store up the hope Christmas offers, the knowledge that humanity is not left alone on earth. With Christmas only days away, I was a bit frustrated and disappointed going into the party that I hadn't taken in much of the spiritual rest Advent offers. 

As I experienced this unease of missing out, I remembered a required reading from my senior year at JBU, a quote from a contemporary English Benedictine nun named Maria Boulding:

“If you want God, and long for union with him, yet sometimes wonder what that means or whether it can mean anything at all, you are already walking with the God who comes. If you are at times so weary and involved with the struggle of living that you have no strength even to want him, yet are still dissatisfied that you don’t, you are already keeping Advent in your life. If you have ever had an obscure intuition that the truth of things is somehow better, greater, more wonderful than you deserve or desire, that the touch of God in your life stills you by its gentleness, that there is a mercy beyond anything you could ever suspect, you are already drawn into the central mystery of salvation.”

So this morning, as I prepare for the drive back to East Texas, as I pack and load up my car with my miniature dachshund and her bed and the presents and all the luggage I think I need for the three-day trip, that hopeful thought is enough--We are walking with the God who comes to us in our wondering and our weariness, and there is a mercy beyond anything we could suspect.