April is Poetry Month so,
“Let us remember…that in the end we go to poetry
for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in
which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be
less apt to destroy both.” --Christian
Wiman
For this Poetry Month I’ll be adding some poems
about cancer and caregiving and relationships. I hope you’ll make them part of
your meditation and that you will share them with your friends and family.
I’ll begin with my favorite, “What the Living Do” by Marie Howe:
Johnny,
the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down
there.
And
the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up
waiting
for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's
winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through
the
open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't
turn it off.
For
weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag
breaking,
I've
been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly
bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,
I
thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking.
Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.
What
you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever
to call or not call, a letter, a kiss--we want more and more and then more of
it.
But
there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window
glass,
say,
the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep
for
my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I
am living. I remember you.
--Marie
Howe
