Poem 14 - Under One Small Star

This is another poem that I’ve loved for an awful long time. I love poems like this, poems written out for the universe—and for whoever else is listening. Poems about limitations and finding your small place in the largeness of things.

Wislawa Szymborska won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. She passed on in February at age 88.

Under One Small Star

Wislawa Szymborska

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.

My apologies to necessity if I’m mistaken, after all.

Please, don’t be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.

May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.

My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.

My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.

Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.

Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.

I apologize for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths.

I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m.

Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.

Pardon me, deserts, that I don’t rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.

And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage,

your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,

forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.

My apologies to the felled tree for the table’s four legs.

My apologies to great questions for small answers.

Truth, please don’t pay me much attention.

Dignity, please be magnanimous.

Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train.

Soul, don’t take offense that I’ve only got you now and then.

My apologies to everything that I can’t be everywhere at once.

My apologies to everyone that I can’t be each woman and each man.

I know I won’t be justified as long as I live,

since I myself stand in my own way.

Don’t bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,

then labor heavily so that they may seem light.

from Poems New and Collected 1957-1997

(Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)

Nightmare

Not still asleep, not quite awake, the dream played like a movie across the white screen of my consciousness: my husband wanted a divorce and I was powerless to stop him. I was awake enough a few minutes later to know that this powerlessness was something I’d always felt in my marriage and needed to address in my heart. My husband is a very strong individual. He speaks with certainty and authority. I, on the other hand, have always taken more time to be certain. He thinks I’m afraid of making decisions because I’m afraid of being wrong. I feel like he doesn’t hear me out. It’s a classic Mars-Venus thing, I’d bet, but when it shows up in your dreams, you know you have to work on it.

At any rate, I woke up just 13 minutes before me alarm, so I decided to wait for it to go off until I rolled over and asked him to hold me and tell me he loved me, so I was sure it was all a dream. When the alarm went off, I rolled over, and…he wasn’t there.

I dissolved into a sobbing mess.

Was the dream true or wasn’t it? Was I really alone? This is certainly exactly what it would feel like.

I have a couple friends who are in the before and after stages of divorce. Unable to fathom the heartbreak and pain and betrayal of dreams, I’ve always kind of kept my distance from thoughts of divorce. My husband (and his kids), after all, is all I have. Even thinking about losing him was just too much.

But when I woke up alone, I thought, “So this is what it’s like. This is the other side of losing someone you love.” I couldn’t stop crying. I padded into the living room to find my husband asleep on the couch. My voice stuck in my throat twice before I could give him my customary morning greeting, “Wakey-wakey.” I stood over him a crying snotting mess, and he didn’t notice for a long time. Then he smiled a sweet smile and asked, “What’s wrong?” He’s the only person I’ve ever met who can come out of a deep sleep and smile and say something kind. Every. Morning. Of. His. Life. It is reason enough to stay married to him.

I put my head on his chest, and he folded his arms around me. I choked out, “I had a nightmare. And then I woke up and you were gone.”

“Nightmares aren’t real,” he said. Whenever he says something true, he sounds like a father. A teacher. And then, “I love you, and I’ll always be here.”

After more holding and sobbing and snotting, I made me way to the bathroom to take a shower. My stomach was still heaving trying to catch my breath. He followed me, held me to him, looked into my eyes and said, “You are so beautiful.”

Only a man truly and deeply in love could say that to a woman with a fresh haircut, swollen eyes, and a river of mucus flowing down her face. Only my husband could say it and mean it.

“You never say that to me anymore,” I squeaked. It had nothing to do with the nightmare, but I’ve been meaning to complain about it for awhile now.

“Maybe I don’t say it as much as I used to, but I do say it,” he corrected. Father. Teacher.

And then, “It’s okay. You’ve been doing a lot of prayer work on drought lately. This is just like that. Know that nothing you need can be taken away from you.”

He is my rain. He is my river, my irrigation when my heart is especially dry and my crops are failing and I feel like I’m going to lose the farm.

Girls' Night

Every other Wednesday I get a "girls' night." I'm not sure why it's plural, because I stay home alone, but it's a nice time to fill myself up, to renew. I watch recorded episodes of "19 Kids and Counting," "The United Bates of America," "The Little Couple," and "Sister Wives." I screen calls. I make BLTs and french fries. Or, I occasionally order in Chinese food (Chicken and Mixed Vegetables, Wonton Soup, and Crab Rangoons). I read, I sing, I make a mess if I want to. I wear something fun and don't leave the house. It's a day I look forward to for two weeks.
Here are some photos from last Wednesday's Girls' Night.

My fortune cookie. I was too full to do more than nibble it.

My current music of choice to sing along with. (Everyone sings better when no one is listening.)

After watching my shows and eating supper, I did a little book organizing in my study. I found these fun Jane Austen books recently at a garage sale.

And finally, the note I left for hubby when it was all over.

What I'm Praying About...

 Human footsteps

Until he has fully transcended the human form, man cannot ignore the material world and his material obligations. Still, I find I often focus so much on my spiritual identity that I totally ignore my human one. Lately, I’ve realized the need for taking human footsteps in setting limits in my life. I look to the Bible and Science and Health for spiritual advice, but applying that to the situation is up to me. The trouble is in knowing which—and sometimes, how many—human footsteps to take. I’m realizing more and more how thin the line between love and selfishness really is. Same with patience and inertia.

Poem 13 - Ode to Tomatoes

If you’re gardening this summer, you’re likely overrun with tomatoes at this point. Here’s an ode to tomatoes—one of my favorite foods—by Pablo Neruda, known for his poetic odes.

Ode To Tomatoes

Pablo Neruda

The street

filled with tomatoes,

midday,

summer,

light is

halved

like

a

tomato,

its juice

runs

through the streets.

In December,

unabated,

the tomato

invades

the kitchen,

it enters at lunchtime,

takes

its ease

on countertops,

among glasses,

butter dishes,

blue saltcellars.

It sheds

its own light,

benign majesty.

Unfortunately, we must

murder it:

the knife

sinks

into living flesh,

red

viscera

a cool

sun,

profound,

inexhaustible,

populates the salads

of Chile,

happily, it is wed

to the clear onion,

and to celebrate the union

we

pour

oil,

essential

child of the olive,

onto its halved hemispheres,

pepper

adds

its fragrance,

salt, its magnetism;

it is the wedding

of the day,

parsley

hoists

its flag,

potatoes

bubble vigorously,

the aroma

of the roast

knocks

at the door,

it’s time!

come on!

and, on

the table, at the midpoint

of summer,

the tomato,

star of earth, recurrent

and fertile

star,

displays

its convolutions,

its canals,

its remarkable amplitude

and abundance,

no pit,

no husk,

no leaves or thorns,

the tomato offers

its gift

of fiery color

and cool completeness.

Poem 12 - Welcome

Here is a wonderful poem about growing, changing, and belonging. I’m feeling this poem right now. And Dunn should have won some kind of an award for the line “the clear goddamn of thunder.” Simply brilliant.

Welcome

Stephen Dunn

if you believe nothing is always what’s left

after a while, as I did,

If you believe you have this collection

of ungiven gifts, as I do (right here

behind the silence and the averted eyes)

If you believe an afternoon can collapse

into strange privacies—

how in your backyard, for example,

the shyness of flowers can be suddenly

overwhelming, and in the distance

the clear goddamn of thunder

personal, like a voice,

If you believe there’s no correct response

to death, as I do; that even in grief

(where I’ve sat making plans)

there are small corners of joy

If your body sometimes is a light switch

in a house of insomniacs

If you can feel yourself straining

to be yourself every waking minute

If, as I am, you are almost smiling…

The Importance of Modeling to Children

If you want him to be happy, choose to be happy.

If you want him to appreciate, be thankful. 

If you want him to have good friends, examine your own.

If you want him to value time, don’t waste yours.

If you want him to stay out of debt, honor yours.

If you want him to be humble, teach him to apologize.

If you want him to be ethical, do the right thing—even when he’s not looking.

If you want him to be courageous, do hard things in front of him.

If you want him to be selfless, make sacrifices for him.

If you want him to be forgiving, don’t judge him.

If you want him to learn right from wrong, you can’t always say “yes.”

If you want him to be a good person, be a good parent.

Friends, please do not use or reproduce my words without my knowledge and consent.