rinse

VI. (from The Country of Marriage)

What I am learning to give you is my death
to set you free of me, and me from myself
into the dark and the new light. Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.

-Wendell Berry

Grace
for Gurney Norman, quoting him
The woods is shining this morning.
Red, gold and green, the leaves
lie on the ground, or fall,
or hang full of light in the air still.
Perfect in its rise and in its fall, it takes
the place it has been coming to forever.
It has not hastened here, or lagged.
See how surely it has sought itself,
its roots passing lordly through the earth.
See how without confusion it is
all that it is, and how flawless
its grace is. Running or walking, the way
is the same. Be still. Be still.
“He moves your bones, and the way is clear.”

-Wendell Berry

The first of these, I plan to hang in our house to remind us of the pool from which we take and drink, from where we draw our strength. There is a baby crying here and while this sound usually tires me, today I am feeling much like her, going on little sleep because my own crawled into the bed at 2:30am and proceeded to sleep rather loudly and once I was awake, I was restless. I even tried earplugs, which didn't help whatsoever. Instead, I had the echo of silence and a muffled but still noticeable breathing, wiggly kid next to me and I could hear the other one asleep in the living room, he is not quiet either. I am the kind of person who needs to sleep in a space far, far away from everyone,everything. The second poem I felt in my bones this morning at yoga, the first class taught by a woman who had been in the two classes I went to in November. This is about my body, perfect in its rise and fall, the place it has been coming to forever. I found a copy of Our Bodies Ourselves, Pregnancy and Childbirth, for a buck. I brought home books from the library on stamping, and a book called knitting lessons (it's not instructional). What can we learn from what we do, from habit, from construction,creation,intentional assembly? The longer I sit here, the more I crave chocolate.

I read this, this morning. I want to make a space in our house for reflection. I imagined two button jars and words to remember: kindness, mindfulness. Moving the buttons from one jar to the next when we need to be reminded. Empathy. Can empathy be taught? Is it shadowed by intellectual maturity, drowned by practice and stubborn hearts? We don't teach it, we type instead.

I can't sleep. I have trouble sleeping. I think about this ring a lot. If only light was the problem. I wish it was this simple.