April is Poetry Month: Anna Swir

Anna Swir wrote many poems about flesh. Here is her poem, "Thank You, My Fate," which I read at our wedding:

Great humility fills me,
great purity fills me,
I make love with my dear
as if I made love dying
as if I made love praying,
tears pour
over my arms and his arms.
I don’t know whether this is joy
or sadness, I don’t understand
what I feel, I’m crying,
I’m crying, it’s humility
as if I were dead,
gratitude, I thank you, my fate,
I’m unworthy, how beautiful
my life.

— Anna Swir
Translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz

All's Unfair in Love and Baseball

Did you watch baseball last night? Did you see the end of the almost perfect game? We changed channels to be there, to see the moment, to witness baseball history. What we saw instead was heartbreak but also baseball history.

Tiger’s pitcher Armando Galarraga threw a perfect 8 and 2/3 innings. On the last ball the hitter makes contact and runs but Galarraga takes the ball to first and tags him out. The whoops begin but are cut short by the almost instant safe call by umpire Jim Joyce.

Shock everywhere. TV viewers could see it was out but the umpire called safe. Game over. Perfect game squelched. I rolled on the floor in pain. Sympathy. Empathy. Seeing something taken away unfairly.

That’s the part we can all relate to. The unfairness of it all. Galarraga did everything he was supposed to do. He was supposed to be celebrating today. But he’s not. It was unfair. Love and baseball and life are unfair. Marriages should not end especially “perfect” marriages of 20 and 30 years where everything seemed, at least, to be perfect should not end. But they do.

People fall in love with the most unexpected others. People get hurt. There is no instant replay except at the watercolor and at the bar and the family reunion where it’s like a sports talk show when everyone can trash the ex. And kids get hurt too and they are really just innocent bystanders. It’s unfair. All of it. But that’s why we love baseball. Even when it hurts as bad as it did last night it’s still a great game and it is just life.

Time Travel--What is Meant to Be

I am reading “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger. The movie was so-so but the book is intriguing and delicious. It is one of those books that would never have survived an MFA program workshop..I can just hear the whining—Time Travel!!

But yes and it works. It works in plot and in metaphor and in spiritual challenge. It raises the questions of why we are where we are in our lives and why some relationships make sense even when they make no sense at all.

This week I read several articles that say that relationships like mine with John, “never work” but this one seems too. And we were both in marriages that were “perfect” but then in what way were they not?

“Were you looking for me?” I asked John yesterday. And he said yes, “all of my life”. “I was so afraid I’d die and never have loved like this.”

Those are the kind of words that you do read in romance novels. WE have them here and we have all the other kinds of words too including, “screw you” and “No friggin’ way”. But I keep praying and trusting—and sometimes not trusting.

Will we someday know why this happened in our lives? Will we get a note or a nod from the future and have peace with the cost of being together? I don’t know but I like to think this was meant to be.